B - Bullies

For as long as people have had to interact with each other, there have always been those people who prey on the ones who are weaker than them. And this dynamic will always exist. Bullying is part of life and it will never be eliminated. We can evolve our methods in how we choose to deal with bullying when it occurs and implement measures to prevent it as much as possible, but it will never be eradicated.

Bullying exists in virtually all aspects of life. It is not only on the playground, but it is in the workplace, in families, in churches, in social clubs and many other places. However, the place that gets most of the attention on this subject is the public school system.

I am no stranger to this practice. Throughout most of my school life, I was on the receiving end of bullies getting their jollies by picking on the weak or the different. I wasn't smaller in the physical sense. I was always rather tall for my age and I wasn't without strength. However, I was one of the awkward kids. Not strange or weird, but I just didn't quite fit in the way most of the other kids seemed to. And being one of the outsiders attracts extra attention for some reason.

My earliest memories of being bullied came from the kids who grew up to be the jocks. I didn't think of it as bullying at the time. It was just a near-daily barrage of being harassed or laughed at by the cooler kids. It was jokes at my expense, insults and "Hey, look at Minor" type comments when someone saw me doing anything that might register a laugh.

Today, I recognize that I was not a weird little kid. I had just gotten tagged as one of the "not cool" ones and it is hard to shake your reputation when you go to a small school. I was in the 5^th grade when I noticed how this worked. It was right at the end of the day when one of the students was up at the teacher's desk and suddenly exclaimed, "Brett has his shirt on inside out." I looked at my shirt and he was right. It was inside out. We had just gotten back from P.E. and had gotten in late from the ball field so had to change quickly to get back to class. Honest mistake. Especially since it was a solid colored t-shirt.

However, the entire class erupted into laughter and everyone was pointing at me. I couldn't crawl under my desk because that would only make it worse, but I really wanted to. I grinned acting like I was laughing at myself also and made my way to the closet to grab my jacket and cover my "unforgivable mistake."

I made my way back to my seat and the laughter died down after a few minutes. Soon, I heard someone say, "Greg, what are you doing?" There was a guy in the back of the room who had tried to put his jeans on over his shoes. Remember when I said we had been rushed out of the locker room. He had not been able to get one of his pant legs past his hi-tops and the denim was still caught on the shoe.

Stuff like this happens, but I couldn't help but notice no one was laughing at him. In fact, several girls ran back to help and they were all giggling as they tugged on his pant leg.

We had both experienced a public wardrobe malfunction, but I was the one ridiculed for it. The only difference was, he was one of the cool kids. I was used to being laughed at but hadn't noticed the hypocrisy until that day. I never forgot it.

There were a few guys who picked on me and knocked me around daily, especially in P.E. The locker room was the worst since the teacher was rarely in there and no one ever stepped up to stop someone from being picked on.

I do not want to paint a picture like it was a horrible, miserable experience. Being bullied sucked, but I was a reasonably happy kid. I was being battered. I took hits now and then, but it was mostly intimidation and ridicule. That doesn't make it right, I just want to paint an accurate picture.

These patterns continued on into high school. I was one of the nerds and I knew it. I had accepted it and that really just made things worse. I had developed a bit of a superiority complex. I was smarter than everyone else and I knew it. Whether this was true or not didn't matter. I certainly believed it at the time.

Whether I was smarter was never proven, but it was true that I had a quick wit and a sharp tongue. This meant that as soon as anyone started anything with me, I had a quick retort. And it was usually a good one. I loved the fact that I could get people to laugh at my bullies instead of laughing at me. If a comment was lobbed at me, I shot back quickly and the crowd around us burst out laughing at the embarrassment I had just delivered to my aggressor.

I loved knowing that I had won intellectually, but it also greatly increased the probability of this becoming a physical altercation. I took more punches in high school than I ever did in junior high and I totally believe it was because I couldn't keep my mouth shut. I am not shifting blame here. Bullies are bullies and they were the ones in the wrong, but there were many times I could have avoided the beating by taking a different approach.

By the time I graduated high school, I had morphed out of being an outsider. I was not one of the popular kids, but I wasn't at the bottom of the social ladder anymore. My last two years of high school were actually pretty cool and I almost never got picked on. Or maybe I just learned how to deal with it better.

Those same bullying tactics would never work on me today. It's much more difficult to get under my skin these days. I can more easily laugh at myself. I can also laugh off situations that at one time would have been socially traumatizing.

Plus, all those years of dealing with difficult people gave me the skill set to have a pretty successful run in sales as an adult. I used to ask management to send the angry and mean customers to me. I just had a way with the customers who wanted to throw their weight around.

Once again, bullies are bullies. I am not letting them off the hook for their behavior, but in many situations, they only have so much power over their victims because the victim allows it. Most (not all) bullying can be easily walked away from or shaken off. Quite often, if a bully is not getting the desired effect of intimidation or humiliation that he is aiming for, he will move onto another person who might provide him with the intended response. However, this is often difficult for a child. These are skills that are learned (by some of us) as we grow older.

My posts this month are about people I feel have affected my life and I believe that my bullies had a definite impact. I learned a lot from them. Yes, being bullied sucked but it influenced how I interact with people and how I handle difficult situations. It also affected the way I view the world and the people in it. I wouldn't wish to go through it again, but I really do believe that the experience when coupled with time and maturity helped develop me into a stronger person

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This month, I am participating in the A to Z Challenge. Each day this month, people around the world are writing blog posts and working their way through the alphabet. Each person decides their own personal theme. I am writing about people who have affected my life.