What is your worst bullying story?

[jcrew2001]

Just like in Columbine, it seems that Cho was unable to deal with the harsh bullying that he had to deal with early in life. Perhaps teachers could have done more. Perhaps the language barrier was too great, not to mention the speech difficulties.

What was your worst bullying experience in school? Did you ever get revenge?

Did you ever see Asian kids getting bullied because of their race/english deficiency?

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

1. I had serious speech impedements as a child.

I think bullying is red herring.

[BlooInBloo]

6. Good thing you didn't have writing impediments. :)

[jcrew2001]

9. Studies have shown that revenge is far more

satisfying than anything else. Bullying plus a difficult home life plus social ostracism, plus speech difficulties, plus violent movies plus access to guns, leads to serious problems.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

11. Studies show that demon posessions lead to premarital childbirth

Violent movies?

Give me a break.

[jcrew2001]

13. violent movies didn't cause this but it was certainly

a blueprint for his actions. People are obsessed with all kinds of movies - star wars, star trek, godfather, taxi driver, etc.

Its just part of life - some people take things too far.

[H2O Man]

14. I had a speech impedement

in grade school. It might not have been considered serious, though I was one of two students in "speech class." (I remain friends with the other decades later!)

I can't think of a single instance of my classmates being mean to me because of it, but I didn't speak much.

But there was a gym teacher who didn't like my hair, which had been influenced by the Fab Four. He grabbed me one day, and it was an ugly episode. That afternoon, my oldest brother picked me up from school. He saw I was upset, and he found out why. My brother was a professional boxer, and he went into the school to communicate with that gym coach. The guy never picked on me again.

[Catherine Vincent]

31. Did you ever ask your brother what he "communicated" to the teacher?

hehe!!

[H2O Man]

58. Yes.

I surely did.

[maveric]

56. I'm a stutterer and had to endure a lot of cruel shit throughout my school years.

And it wasnt just by classmates. Some teachers thought it was funny to see me struggle like I did and made read aloud more than most. When I stuttered they would laugh right along with my classmates.
This freaked me out so much that I avoided many classes that required reading aloud and my grades suffered. It made me HATE going to school. Luckily I graduated HS.
This sometimes carried over to the workplace too. I was said to be "retarded" or "goofy", and promotions were not to happen.
Now at 50 I guess that I have somewhat of an attitude about my dysfluency and when people laugh or make fun of it I get right in their fucking faces about it.
Stuttering should be classified as a "disability" if it hampers those afflicted from getting by like everyone else may.
I cant tell you how many promotions I was passed over on because they dont want a "retard" in management position. The people who got those promotions were quite often unqualified or professionally inferior to me.

[tinfoilinfor2005]

88. When my grandson was three years old, he came down with a childhood disease

called Henoch Scholein Purpura. Nasty stuff, but once it goes away, it usually doesn't come back. However, one of the many side effects is swelling of the brain. The day he came down with HSP, he started to stutter. The docs said that it could be due to the swelling and would hopefully disappear in time, which it did. But it took two years, and during that time, I was amazed at some of the inconsiderate comments of both children and adults regarding the stutter. At the grocery store one day a lady asked him his name. With great difficulty he started to answer, but before he could finish, she turned and walked away. He swallowed hard and turned red because he was so embarrassed. I swear I wanted to go grab her and yank her hair out. But my doctor, who is a stutterer, told me that studies show that people who stutter have a higher IQ. Small consolation though if people treat you like an idiot.

[Breeze54]

119. My little brother is a stutterer.

Some of the nuns were very cruel to him, as were the children. Hell, they learned it from their teachers!! Sick, sick, sick!
My brother was teased and bullied relentlessly. But not on my watch! Not when I was around or if I heard about it! He had a lot of developmental problems as a baby. He didn't sit up until he was a year old. Short stature, on top of it. Learning disabilities, etc.; to boot. But he grew out of some of the problems with age and deals with the rest. He's one of the nicest guys you'd ever want to meet! He'd give you the shirt off his back in a heartbeat! ;) But when kids started or tried teasing him or going at him? They then saw ME...coming at them!!! Kickin' ass and takin' names! And I'm not much taller than he is!! But I can be mean and scary when I want to be!! :rofl:

Now my brother rubs elbows, with the Hollywood elite, in Aspen; stutter and all! No flies on him! ;)

We all have our disabilities. Mine is eyesight, or lack there of... and I used to get beat up by the teachers and accused of being a smart ass! They'd command; "READ from the blackboard!!" But I couldn't! I couldn't see it! I didn't know I couldn't see! Until they all (family included!) realized...I COULDN'T SEE!! Fucking morons! And that wasn't until 5th grade! It was a long five years, let me tell you! Ouch!

I think all that made me tougher though and a fighter....just like you. ;)

---------------

Sorry for the rant but your post stuck a nerve... Apparently! :rofl:

;)

[Lorien]

158. My father stutters, and I was also speech impaired

my upper and lower jaws were deformed, so I was both speech impaired AND ugly as a child. I also wore very thick glasses. I was bullied incessantly at school and the teachers did nothing to stop it. It wasn't much better at home; my mother sometimes referred to me as "that retarded ape" when she was talking to my sister (whom she adored and still adores. Me, not so much. I'm the bastard child).

I never wanted revenge. I just wanted to be invisible. Now I pretty much AM invisible. My jaws have since been mended, but I live along and work alone as a self employed person. I have a fair number of friends, but I won't get too close to anyone because of poor self esteem and low expectations.

There's no excuse for allowing bullying in schools, IMHO.

[Fresh_Start]

2. I'm half-generation American

you don't have to be Asian to have been bullied because you didn't have the right accent.
Thats with no english deficiency but only an accent problem.
I moved from an urban area to a rural area. The people in the rural area were confused by my City accents.

Any difference at all, can be cause of bullying.
Eyeglasses, height, weight, religion, unusual family structure, social class, lack of money, .....

[Rocknrule]

3. Pretty much my entire 7th grade year

which was a year after Columbine btw

It always surprised me that most school shootings are at high schools, not middle schools. That's where most of the bullying is.

[jcrew2001]

4. Its called revenge and access to guns

is why high schoolers can get access and learn how to use guns.

Cho had mental problems, he obsessed over violent movies, he obtained 2 guns and he went on a rampage. He never had a community of friends/supporters, a social outcast, who no longer valued life.

[MLFerrell]

98. Lots of people no longer value life.

Typically, they just commit suicide.

Fucking asshole Cho should have shot himself on SUNDAY...

[Wcross]

139. I owned a gun at the age of eight years old.

I don't understand your statement that high school children can get access to guns and learn how to shoot. Kids of any age can get access to guns if their parents are careless. Remember that kid that shot a girl up in Michigan, I believe they were grade school kids. All because his crack head uncle left a loaded pistol where the kid could get to it.

[jcrew2001]

159. but older kids can get guns, ammo

and plan an attack.

[shanti]

16. yeah, me too

that 7th grade year is a killer for many kids :(

[Rocknrule]

18. It only made it worse

when I heard people waste time blaming music and videogames instead of bullying. It's like they're saying "bullying is good, videogames are bad."

[KansDem]

53. Self delete

[PegDAC]

101. The onset of puberty

is HELL!

[Ian David]

5. Mr. Phillip Tarzia, at the now-defunct High Croft School in Williamstown, Massachusetts...

r. Phillip Tarzia (a teach and housemaster) used to organize the entire dorm to pile-on and hit a mildly retarded kid, just after lights-out, nearly every night.

One day, I finally told the owners of the school, Mr. and Mrs. Milne, about it.

They told me, "Mister Tarzia is a licensed psychologist, and we trust his judgment."

Whose name do you think that kid kept calling to for help every night, not realizing who had been organizing the beatings?

Eventually, Phillip Tarzia was was pulled-over while vacationing in Texas, and his Visa had expired or something, so he was deported back to Italy.

I think I am the only one in the dorm who never participated, but I am still ashamed to say that I also never did anything to try and stop it. It wasn't exactly a safe place for me, either.

As bad as things were for me there, I would go through it all over again if I could go back and do something more for that kid than just staying quietly in my bed and ignoring it.

[dsc]

19. that is one immigrant I am glad was deported

That was pure evil.

[Ian David]

25. Well, we unfortunately lost a good guy we actually liked who had been traveling with him.

They were both deported-- the other guy was sent back to England.

I have a feeling that the story about their immigration status "raising a red flag" was just a cover story. I wonder what REALLY got them deported.

It must be a matter of public record somewhere, but I'm not THAT curious.

Still...

If someone here has a PACER account and some time on their hands...

[dsc]

28. One would have to wonder

I had a brutal PE teacher as a little kid and to this day I won't do physical stuff.

[wicket]

131. Wow, what a sick fuck

n/t

[JTG of the PRB]

7. Oh, let's see...

I wasn't so much bullied in my life, but I was teased rather mercilessly, almost exclusively about my weight. It started back before kindergarten, and continued into the early parts of 9th grade... So that's about, oh, 11 or 12 years, give or a take a couple months.

Sometimes, it made me so angry that I wanted to punch somebody. One time, I did. That was the first (and last) fight I ever participated in, back in 4th grade. Most of the time, it just hurt and made me cry. It was part of the reason I was an unhappy child sometimes. I did my best to fight through all the stupid crap kids gave me, and my parents always said I did a great job. I never felt so great though...

A lot of that pent up hurt and frustration carried over into my high school years, which were emotionally tumultuous (from Columbine to unrequited love and everywhere in between), and it pushed my into a depression cycle that lasted for about seven years.

Kids can be unnecessarily cruel to one another, and often times that cruelty is never punished or corrected. That has been my stance since day one, and it will be my stance until my dying day.

[Catherine Vincent]

8. The only bullying I got was in early elementary years.

I was called a "giraffe" by some of the other students because I was always the tallest girl. I hated being tall. Of course as I got older, I was happy to be tall. :)

[Ian David]

10. There was a really tall girl I used to call "Tree." God, I wanted her so bad. n/t

[Catherine Vincent]

12. You wanted to climb that tree, eh?

But you may be onto something. If I remember correctly, it was always the boys that called me "giraffe". Maybe they were attracted to me but didn't know how to handle it?

[Ian David]

15. I wanted to climb that tree like a drunken monkey.

But back then, our seduction skills pretty much consisted of the kind of namecalling and taunting that's only fun when you're tied-up and have negotiated a safeword.

[Catherine Vincent]

24. LOL!

[wicket]

132. Reminds me of the Steve Miller Song "The Joker"

"Youre the cutest thing
That I ever did see
I really love your peaches
Want to shake your tree"

;)

[dsc]

17. Middle school was Hell for me

with lunch and PE being the worst. I was called faggot and worse so often I thought my name was faggot. I guess the worst was one day when my regular clothes were stolen and I had to wear my PE clothes the rest of the day. This was the 1980's and those tight shorts were what I had as PE clothes. Worse at lunch these three people who bullied me mercilessly literally picked me up and put me in a trash can and had a bunch of people dump their trays on me. I was covered with food. When they finally let me out they spat right in my face. I was totally humiliated. I tried to clean up as best I could but for the most part I had to walk half the day a total mess. They gave me my clothes back the next day.

[Catherine Vincent]

26. How awful!

Here's a late :hug: for ya!

[dsc]

thanks

I won't lie I cried and begged to be let go. Worst was that not one damn adult did a thing. I even had a teacher tell me if I "were more manly" that wouldn't happen to me. This from a gay teacher I later found out.

[Gelliebeans]

63. I am so sorry

that happened to you. :hug:

[dsc]

75. thanks

I went to my 20th high school reunion last summer and mede peace with it so to speak. I was an openly gay man and the sky didn't fall.

[orleans]

118. my first knowingly gay friend was a boy who started school w/me in 8th grade

we hit it off immediately (we were in a few classes together) and i adored him. we told people were were brother & sister and made up a complicated story about how our parents were divorced, and he lived with our dad and they moved back here, blalbalba. that eased his way a bit. girls would tell me they wanted to go out with my brother--he became popular (not with the jocks, but with the other types). we were hippies & creative types (writing & theater). i was pretty wild and a little tough so he got a wild/tough reputation by hanging w/me. people either became his friend or left him alone.

i remember only one blatant incident that happened to him and it had to do with our english teacher. one day in class the teacher told him: "shut up fagot!" seemed like most everyone was horrified. but he didn't want to report it to the office or the principle. (we used to really push this teacher--i can understand him saying shut up to one of us but calling my friend a fagot? no.) on the way out of class i told the teacher: "don't ever do that again or you'll be sorry." he never did anything like that again. but, through the years i have wondered how this first year english teacher had negatively affected the lives of other kids.


when i was in grade school i was bullied by two people. a boy who lived up the street from me would follow me home and spit on me. and then a girl who was a couple years older (and lived down the street) would walk with me, shove me, push me. i pretended to make friends w/the girl, invited her over a couple times. they (the boy & girl) were both assholes.

[dsc]

172. that was cool of you to be his friend

and I am glad he had it pretty good.

[meldroc]

36. Jesus. If that happened to me, I would be tempted to go Columbine on all of them.

[dsc]

39. It is hard to explain how totally mad I was

but I was a little guy back then and I had no real ability to fight back so I just had to take it. To this day I can't understand why adults would have thought that was just a little hazing. Some adult should have stopped this but since they thought I was gay (correct) I wasn't entitled to be treated like a real person (not correct).

[Rocknrule]

64. I probably sound horrible saying this

but when I was in middle school, I sometimes wondered secretly if they were right to do what they did. I didn't want to shoot anyone myself, but sometimes I wondered if bullies really did deserve death for making others' lives hell.

[marions ghost]

37. Napoleon Dynamite

is that u?

[dsc]

41. Never saw the film

I take it that type of thing happened in that film. I have heard the film is good and I have seen the lead in other films and enjoyed him so maybe I should take a look.

[marions ghost]

43. Good film

He's a survivor, like you.:)

[dsc]

47. The trailer looks cute

I might check it out this weekend.

[Breeze54]

79. That's horrible!

I'm really sorry that happened to you. :hug:

Where were the damn teachers?? Why didn't they put a stop to it? :grr:

[dsc]

81. Only one teacher and he was a coach

and the people who did it were his athletes. I didn't tell my parents due to being ashamed of the incident and deathly afraid of the inevitable question "why do they think you are a faggot?"

[meldroc]

20. I got hell in junior high school.

I was born with club feet, and was a good bit smaller than other boys my age, so that made me a target.

There were several kids who made it their mission in life to make my life hell. Just totally fucking constant name-calling, spitting, tripping, etc. On several occasions, I resorted to throwing punches to try to put a stop to it. Of course, the teachers did absolutely nothing. :mad: On occasions, the bullying happened right in front of them, and the teacher would pretend that nothing happened.

To this day, I'm filled with fucking rage going back to that shithole of a school. One or two bullying incidents can be tolerated. When it happens over and over, day after day, it eats at you.

[dsc]

23. I can so relate

[gatorboy]

21. What's yours?

[jcrew2001]

161. its wasn't that bad

but i can definately understand cho's experience, especially since he seemed to have communication problems as a child.

I'm thankful for the kids that stuck up for me and tried my best to avoid the bullies. There were some terrible days as many here probably have had.

I've tried my best to repress them and not relive the tormenting.

[magellan]

22. I was bullied throughout my school years

From elementary school onwards to senior year in high school I was bullied. It would be impossible to name the worst incident. Every day it was something new and dreadful, just because I was shy and sensitive and had strange interests for a girl (sci-fi). I tried every trick in the book to get out of going to school as often as possible. Unfortunately things at home weren't any better; my mother was an angry alcoholic and personality disordered. I didn't come into my own until I joined the military right out of high school and learned to stand up for myself.

I won't say it's been easy to gain a little self-esteem and get on in the world, but I work at it every day and have no trouble making and keeping friends. I've never committed a crime and value people. IOW what I endured as a child didn't turn me into a sociopath or psychotic.

My mother's history enlightened me. She had a good childhood, was popular in school, etc. and still wound up troubled and then dead by her mid-forties.

What we become isn't just nurture, it's nature as well. And there's often just no telling which part will win.

[Kelly Rupert]

27. Ah, another Middle School experience for me.

Got my ass kicked a few times, got taunted nearly every day. Faggot, queer, the like. Eventually I got pissed, and once while being physically hassled, I kneed the guy in the balls. After a few "pussy-ass" fights like that, the physical aspect stopped, but it wasn't until I got to high school that I managed to get any friends.

Never saw an Asian kid get bullied. Got bullied *by* a few Asian kids.

[Ian David]

30. After being bullied, learning to make the right kinds of prank calls was a great equalizer

I was probably one of the first people in my neighborhood to get 3-way calling.

I was certainly the first one to figure out how to remove the mouth piece on the phone, and then connect two people together who hadn't called one another, and then sit there and listen.

"Hello?"
"Who's this?"
"Who's this?"
"You called ME.."
"No, I didn't.. Hey, Joe?"
"Bob?"
"Yeah! Did you call me?
"No... that's weird. Anyway, who do YOU like?"

[meldroc]

46. Swift kick to the nuts works.

I did that to one bully who was repeatedly harassing me. Doubled him over instantly and put 95% of the harassment to a stop. B-)

[RC Quake]

29. I was bullied from 9th-12th grade

A smart ass comment by my sister sent me to the top of the cheerleader/football jock shit list.

My sister & I were shopping when 5 cheerleaders from my grade came into the store. I simply told my sister that they were stuck-up cheerleaders that I really didn't like, but when we got closer to them, she blurted out, "Are those the sluts you were telling me about?"

I spent the next 4 years being tossed down the stairs at school, tripped in the hallway, locked in the bathroom, called every name in the book, hair pulled, books stolen, locker vandalized, etc.

Yes, it was horrible. I wanted nothing more than for all of them to feel what I was feeling, but never did I want to harm any of them (although they did deserve it). Funny thing, though. I became great friends with one of them after we went to college. Forgiveness is a wonderful thing.

[TlalocW]

32. Pretty much all through school

Nothing overly horrible - I was only in two fights (both before age 10). I lost one and won one, but the one I won was against two people, but I still went home crying even though the other two guys hadn't touched me because I felt bad that I was fighting. What was funny was that my dad was coming out the driveway as I was riding in on my bike crying, and he went and gave a talking-to to my two attackers who were sitting on a porch holding their stomach and head respectively.

Other than that, it was just the normal everyday teasing and physical intimidation of growing up a math/computer nerd in a small farming community in Kansas with a last name that's really easy to make fun of.

At least until high school when just for the heck of it I started lifting weights and then went out for wrestling for 2 years - the teasing seemed to die down a little after that, and apparently some of my formerly bullying classmates were scared of me after that, which was fine.

Plus I also developed a very quick wit and could get popular kids laughing at the other popular kids, and during test days, if someone tried to pick on me, I would say, "Well, darn. Looks like I'm going to have to blow the curve on the test to teach so-and-so a lesson," and that would get everybody mad at the person picking on me.

The worst picking-on was some sort of "initiation" in band class. The sophomores through seniors (who had been through it when they were freshmen) would grab a freshman and take him or her down to the ground and give them red-bellies - the pulling up of the shirt and people taking turns drumming on their stomach. They could never get me, which pissed them off. At one point, 15 of them tired to crowd into one of the practice rooms that had an old couch in it to get me (I was sitting on the couch, reading a book - it was a free day, no practice), and I jumped on the couch and then into the crowd with my elbows out, knocked a few people in the mouth and then shoved and hit my way through until I found the band director in another classroom. I made the situation worse by telling the attackers that they were obviously suffering from some sort of repressed homosexual/sado-masochistic urges if they wanted to get me so badly, and that while I was flattered, I didn't feel attracted to them. That pissed them off more, but as the band director was in the room at the time and found it funny, they couldn't do anything.

My sophomore year, after I had been lifting weights for a while, the lead trumpet player (who was the instigator of most of the red-bellies), tried to grab me by himself, and I took him down and just held him on the floor in a wrestling pin until the band director came back in. Then my junior year when he was one of only two seniors, and I was then the biggest guy in band (he usually depended on the help of bigger people), I announced to the class that the red-belly tradition had come to an end and asked if anyone had a problem with that while I looked directly at him. He didn't say anything, and all the freshmen and sophomores were happy with my announcement.

TlalocW

[Akoto]

I left school due in part to bullying.

I don't want to go too much into the details. Suffice it to say, from middle school into high school, I was severely picked on and taunted. The teachers were involved during high school, too. As I was also suffering from anxiety disorder at the time, it was too much and I left during 11th grade.

I did so much better after I was out of the school system. Worked on my education at the community college, and came to terms with my anxiety and all of that past humiliation. I'm no longer afraid of people and humiliation like I used to be. Ironically, my career pursuits actually lead me toward working with people.

[marions ghost]

52. I had problems with abusive teachers too

mostly in elementary school. Teachers can subtly communicate to more aggressive kids messages about who among them might be a good target, ie. a weaker prey. Elementary teachers need a whole lot more training in how this works IMO.

But it was my younger sister who had the worst time. She got beat up on a daily basis after school by a group of boys. This was not a complimentary gender-based hazing. They were looking for an easy target. While other kids were torturing insects and small animals, these guys were thinking of new ways to abuse my shy, soft-hearted (absentminded ADD) little sister who never hurt a flea. Some kids are just fun to torment because they don't have many defenses. Everybody always thought my sister was exaggerating, but she told me some of the stories later in adulthood. I am so sorry that nobody ever helped her at the time.

[EnviroBat]

149. An elementary school teacher where I went school.

She was a black woman, and I attended a predominantly black school. Being a white kid was not easy. This particular teacher called me to the front of the class so she could crack my knuckles with a ruler. This was her sick little method of discipline. Some kids around me were laughing about something, and she called me up and said I was the one disrupting the class. I tried to plead my case, but this only enraged her further. Then she proceeded to ask another student to bring her a second ruler. Apparently she surmised that this would have double the effect. Needless to say, she drew blood, and shoved me back toward my desk. I was too afraid to tell my parents what happened, as my father would have gone berserk. I'm sure there would have been a really bad incident, had I not kept my mouth shut. Not a good place for a little kid to be in. Back in those days, my old man was a gun-toting ex-Navy bad-ass, and I learned from a young age that Dad didn't take shit from nobody. I think the guy that was fooling around with my Mom found that out the hard way as he needed a machine to help him breathe for awhile when Pop got done with him. Terrible thing living in fear of everything when your little. I want so much more for my kids when and if I ever have any.

[likesmountains 52]

33. Mine was not so much bullying, but cruelty to another person..several

of us in my HS thought it would be funny to get this poor, just off the farm, lived in a shack (we knew b/c he rode our bus) kid to think I wanted to go steady with him..believe me we went on and on until he showed up with a ring for me...then I totally insulted him and we all laughed. That was in 1970 and I still remember his name and how shitty I felt..

[MLFerrell]

106. At least you grew up over the years...

Too many don't. They endlessly rehash their "glory days" of high-school football, fucking the cheerleaders, and picking on the "weird kids".

[likesmountains 52]

182. Thanks, the memory of that day still stops me in my tracks...and I am a better

person for it..

[Raksha]

34. Seventh grade was the worst,

but every other year was hell too, every school I went to, New York and California, all the way through high school. I was always the weird one. No matter where we moved, I always got "found out." By the time I graduated from high school I was pissed off at the whole world. Even though I know I wasn't the only one who went through that kind of hell, it's still too painful to talk about all these years later.

[Critters2]

35. My brother had Asperger and I wore a back brace

When people tell me I'm going to hell, I tell them I've already been to Wethersfield Junior High.

[dsc]

42. yeah that would be the daily double to say the least.

[Annces]

38. In early grade school

Our family was one of the last remaining families in a neighborhood that went from all white to all black. My family members started getting harassed physically on the way home from school. I think my older brothers got it more seriously. I refused to go outside for a period of time until we moved.

[treestar]

40. Nothing physical

But I did not pay good attention to fashion in junior high and used to hear about it, or be called weird.

I feel that society of that time was stuck on conformity to a sick degree. For example, only one thing would be in style so you'd have to wear it whether it flattered you or not. There was like one hairstyle. It is weird, because we had no uniform in our school, but there were still certain fashion "rules" that girls had to obey or they'd hear about it.

It's tragic when you are a child not knowing how shallow and stupid it is, but instead thinking it really matters.

[ends_dont_justify]

44. a lot of times, actually. Then I had growth spurts and they left me alone

I vowed not to use my size to seek revenge or cause others pain...and have adamantly taken a POV that if I must defeat someone, it is to be done in the arena of ideas. I think it's weak and cowardly to harm people, even those harming you, unnecessarily. Most who bully can be easily defeated with simple logics....and making the leader look bad in front of the group hurts him far more than taking a black eye with some friends.

It shouldn't be on anyone's head to deal with bullies though, no matter how they do, except law enforcement. Bullying is a form of harassment and abuse that is simply ignored in this country.

[InvisibleTouch]

45. I can think of quite a few...

...and for the most part high school was a horror chamber for me, but the story that comes to mind is from 9th grade: I was, and am, a voracious reader, and I'd always have a book with me to get in a few minutes of reading between classes. Often the bell would ring to start class, but the teacher hadn't started yet, so I'd just continue to read until she did. I should note that when class actually started, I'd always put the book away and pay attention. One teacher took extreme offense, and snatched the book from me, then started reading from it out loud to the class in a mocking tone. It was a book on rather a touchy subject (teen angst and suicide, which was, incidentally, a topic not too far removed from my personal experience at the time), so she used the subject matter to twist the knife additionally. Worst of all, she didn't give the book back. It had been lent to me by a friend, so rather than losing my own book (would have been bad enough!) I lost someone else's book that they had lent me in good faith. The only irony is that while she was doing her best to ridicule me, I could feel, without a word being spoken or any visual cue, the sympathy of the entire classroom with me at that moment. Perhaps for the only time in my whole school experience, when I was otherwise the eternal stranger in a strange land.

Did I ever get revenge? Heh, don't I wish. Though I did often fantasize about this teacher having a stroke or heart attack in front of me, needing someone to call an ambulance, and my dangling the phone just out of her reach with a smile. She was a wizened old prune even at that time; she's surely long dead by now.

[dsc]

49. That is like the scene from Dawson's Creek

The gay kid, played by Kerr Smith, is outed by his teacher when he is made to read a poem in class. I admit, I would have been so angry had I been you.

[InvisibleTouch]

109. Well, I sometimes still kick myself...

...that I didn't just calmly stand up to the teacher and say, "Look, you know very well I stop reading as soon as class actually begins, and you know from my grades that I pay attention. No, I'm not giving you the book." Sure, she would have gone ballistic, but so what? But I was 14 and had just been through a horrific personal trauma a few months earlier, so wasn't exactly in a condition to do that. That truly was the only time I ever had a problem with a teacher, though; the rest was caused by the other kids.

I didn't see the show you refer to, but it does sound like the same sort of thing. Maybe the series writer had that same godawful teacher years ago? :)

[slackmaster]

48. Pretty much constantly hassled in middle school years

There was always some idiot jock or other asshole who tried to gain street cred by picking on a nerdy, younger, late blooming kid with glasses who recognized the value of getting a good education.

Did you ever get revenge?

Yes. Many times. (ETA my revenge was very specifically targeted against the individuals who bullied me. There was never any collateral damage.)

Did you ever see Asian kids getting bullied because of their race/english deficiency?

No.

[blues90]

50. Mine began with my father

As a child nothing i did was ever good enough and I was called boo hoo Terrisa because my middle name is Terry and I was easily hurt .

By the time I started school and since we moved alot from illinois to florida I was in a few different schools for the same year . I was shy and this seems to bring on the bullies , the school yard bullies in the early years and then the pick on the shyness during jr high and due to a deep voice i was made fun of in high school .

Most of the time since I was not into sports and as a male this is a difficult place to be .

I had a group of friends who were all the bad boys and got into music at 8 which was another big no no way back in the 50's . I also had to use all my summer vacations from 8 years old on working with my father building custom homes so this only made things worse and me more isolated .

I found help in art and music and yes there were times where I broke things to let out the anger .

I was not a geek as the terms apply most times I was just shy and this seems to be the worst thing on earth one can be . It seems to single you out as a target for bullies as far as my experience went .

So you get beaten up walking home from school or picked on by the frog faced , bull necked gym teachers and their ilk .

I never accured to me to get revenge , I was popular with the ladies and this may have made things worse . I am not gay but may have been thought of this way .

If I could change one thing it would have been the shyness , if there were help back then this would have been great .

[Madspirit]

51. Not the Bullying

I don't think it's the bullying per se. Kids have always done that. I think it's that there are no longer brave adult figures in school to ally with the bullied children. When I was a kid, a million years ago, bullies got in trouble.
Lee

[juno jones]

54. I was bullied some in school

One day, when being pushed around the hall by a older boy, I hit him with the bag in which I had all of my home ec stuff...including my sewing shears. They went thru the bag and he had to have seven stitches in his arm. It got around school that I had 'stabbed' him, and the teasing went away fast. Fortunately for me, this was a more bucolic time and I was a straight-A student being picked on by a (future) dropout. So I was allowed to remain in school. His sister threatened me for a month or two...two years later we became friends and she apologized...even said her bro deserved it.

I still think bullying should be severely and publicly punished. No kid should have to go thru that. It is not acceptable behavior and unless we teach our children that we wind up with young republicans...

[NashVegas]

55. There Were Three Assholes in 10th Grade English

"Cool kids" who used to throw gum at the back of my head, it would get caught in my hair.

My revenge was living well. They don't mention what they do, now, on their Classmates pages.

[dsc]

57. Gum in the hair totally sucks

for that alone I think gum should be banned.

[NashVegas]

123. Gum Doesn't Mess Up Hair

Gum-throwers do :)

[Evoman]

59. I wasn't bulled that much...mostly due to my weird situation.

I've lived in low income housing for all of my elementary/high school years. When I was in kindergarten to grade six, I lived in what is considered one of the worst neighbourhoods in Canada (stabbings, rapes, etc are common). Ironically, the school was really friendly...yeah, there were some gangs, but most of the kids had absentee/drunk parents, so they craved adult attention. And in general, the kids were friendly to each other. You had to be tough, no doubt, but I was never bullied. In fact, I had several large friends...despite the fact that I was skinny and not very strong. However, I did develop a "don't mess with me" mentality.

Then our low income housing company asked us if we wanted to move to a better neighbourhood where a house had become unused. My mom took them up on it, and we moved to a better neighbourhood. Enrolled to a new school...a middle-upper class school.

And BOY was it different. The amount of stratification was bewildering to a guy like me that had never seen the like. There were "the nerds", "the burnouts", "the popular",etc. The bullying was merciless for a lot of kids. It could have been pretty bad for me too...because I was lanky, I was a target. Fortunately, I was too stupid and suprised to just let people tease me and accept my alotted place....also, I didn't know what a clean fight was, lol. The first guy that teased me, I jumped from behind and kicked the shit out of him (he was a little fellow, but popular...mouthy, and relied on his friends). That wasn't enough apparently..I still hand't made my point, so I threatened some of his friends with a steel pipe. They still teased me a bit, but it was very mild. I found some friends among the nerds, and I got throught it pretty good. I never bullied any other kids, unless you call my tussles bullying (which were not insistigated by me).

[zalinda]

60. Yeah, I was bullied in school, but for the most part

I was able to ride over it. Back in the 50's and 60's the bullying just wasn't a brutal.

But, for my son it was another story. We have since found out that he probably has Asperger's and has ADD. He would constantly get teased, they pulled chairs out from under him and tried to put gum in his hair, tried to put him in a locker, etc. But, the school psychologist blamed my son and told me that it was his own fault because he didn't talk to any one. (I hated that bastard, and I have to admit, I still get a little smile on my lips when I remember he died of a heart (who knew he had one)attack just a couple of years later, while still a relatively young man.)

I didn't realize at the time how bad it was, even though I seemed to be constantly fighting with the school officials about one thing or another about my son. When Columbine happened, my son finally confessed to me that that could have been him. He said if he hadn't have had me as a mother to talk him through all the crap that was happening in his life, he could have easily have done that. You could have knocked me over with a feather after that confession, since my son is one of the nicest and gentlest souls around. He is much better now, but has such a hatred of school, he couldn't go to college.

We have to realize as a nation, that bullying, whether in school, business or as a nation has to stop. Because EVERYONE does have a breaking point. It's whether they take it out on others, themselves or both that makes the only difference on who lives or dies.

zalinda

[dsc]

61. I feel so bad for your kid

To say I can relate is an understatement. It was determination to escape my surrondings that led me to excell in school and go to college.

[zalinda]

68. Add to that

Here was a kid when in California at a school where bullying was NEVER tolerated, he would say when looking a bunch of kids. "There are some friends I haven't met yet." To see what that sunny, bright kid became when we moved to Syracuse, was heart breaking.........and still is. If things had been different and he could have stayed at that school, I wonder how much different and happier he would be today.

zalinda

[bamademo]

73. I couldn't go to college after high school either

I just couldn't imagine going through 4 more years of cruelty. Fortunately I went back later after about 4 years.

[flyarm]

62. as a 12 yr old i broke my neck and was in a neck brace ..in those days

it was a huge metal brace..that held my head up,,and was half way down my body front and back..and with a big metal plate both sides and a big metal chin..i was teased horribly..after spending 6 months in a hospital in traction..

but i didn't care that i was teased ..i was just so thrilled that i wasn't paralyzed..

i knew how lucky i was..

and my mom was incredible, telling me over and over ..the sticks and stones stuff..

sometimes i would cry..when i was alone..but i still knew how lucky i was..

i had a roomate in the hospital, that died of cancer..and i loved her, even though i couldn't see her..as i was in such a state of traction..with my head pulled back...but we talked..ahhh we talked...and sang Beatles songs..."I want to hold your hand!!" ..she was beautiful ..her voice was beautiful.. she was also 12, my age..i grew up fast that year..so i had no hate for anyone..i just knew they didn't know what i knew..how fragile our lives were..

i learned to laugh at those who teased me and bullied me..

it did make me shy for much of my early youth..but when i grew out of that..well..now i am hell on wheels!!

i thank my mom for understanding and telling me daily how beautiful i was ..with or without the brace..

she would hold my head to help me wash..and she would tell me over and over how beautiful i was..

that is what mattered to me..and that is what helped me grow without scars internally...unconditional love..

p.s.thank you mommy...i miss you every day..and hope i am half as good a mom..your legacy lives within me..

fly

[Avalon Sparks]

74. Absolutely beautiful post Flyarm

very touching.

[dsc]

77. I second that

it was totally great.

[July]

91. flyarm, thank you for that.

I am so cynical sometimes, but you had me in tears.

How strong you were, and how great your mom was! I don't know if I would have found the valuable lesson in my experience that you were able to find in your difficult moment.

You are clearly as good as your mom was at separating the wheat from the chaff. How did you know how lucky you were? You were a child, it is amazing. I am well and truly impressed, and I'll remember what you've said.

[Digit]

65. I was very popular in High School and was chided for being friendly with the "picked on"

I never could stand people picking on others. It is mean and I could really feel how they must feel.

I could see their value and could not see why others could not.

I am 55 years old now, and have received numerous emails from these former classmates actually thanking me for being nice to them. Those messages are treasured and brought tears to my eyes.
I would like to think that I helped to dissuade some bullying. I only wish I had the wisdom then that I have now, and I would have done alot more to help.

[Rocknrule]

66. Something else I remembered

I went to church camp 2 consecutive summers, the first of which was when I took up Christianity. Although the counselors were shocked to hear about it, I took alot of racial slurs from other campers (I'm 1/2 Asian), more than any other time in my life. Also, one of the counselors dressed and played the part of a very stereotypical Asian during a "counselor dress-up" contest. Looking back on it, it's one of the things that now disgust me about most Christianity.

[Lerkfish]

67. I was considered gay, and I got good grades, was ugly, wore my dad's hand me downs

was forced to wear a crew cut when the style was shoulder length hair and my parents made me wear those Buddy Holly glasses with a strap in the back.

Nothing wrong with being gay, I wasn't, but I was an artist so they made that assumption. This was in the late 60's, so being thought to be gay was not the picnic it still isn't now. :)

anywho, I got bullied A LOT, but I never even considered revenge. I concentrated on survival.

The worst bully (and the stupidest) used to come up behind you, sharply kick you in the back of the knee, causing your legs to collapse and slam you to the floor.

There wasn't a lot of diversity in my bible belt school

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

69. In junior high there was a girl who belonged to a tough crowd. She would pick on me

and her friends would chime in. At some point I couldn't take it anymore, and during chorus class, she was walking up the steps to her seat and I put my foot out, deliberately tripping her. I then told her to meet me after school that day. I never showed up and I guess she didn't either as she never bothered me again. :)

[GaYellowDawg]

70. Oh, there are so many...

The middle school top 5:

1. Another student urinated in a bottle and threw it in my face as I was talking. Other kids called me "Piss Boy" or "Piss Drinker" for months. I was so ashamed I couldn't and never did tell teachers or my family.

2. One day the gym teacher left to do something at the office right before class and told all of us to be changed by the time he got back. After changing, four other students thought it'd be funny to strip off my shorts and underwear and drag me out in front of all the girls.

3. I got repeatedly dragged through the long jump pit and had sand dumped down my shorts. Naturally, I was called "Sand Ass" for weeks.

4. Stuffed in a locker. The students who did it locked it, too, and I had to wait until someone could cut the lock to get out. When I finally got to class the teacher trotted out a "finally decided to join us" line and that got added to the humiliation.

5. I was scratching my nose and the teacher told me to stop picking my nose or that I'd get to what little brains I had. That was good for a few weeks of being called "Bugger Eater."

[dsc]

72. Christ

You poor guy. Let's just say I can relate and glad you made it out.

[Gregorian]

84. That's really frightening.

The locker thing is what really scared me. It almost happend to me. I can think of nothing more frightening.

Damn. I think we're learning a lot here. Kids are pretty cruel. Adults need to start paying a hell of a lot more attention.

[Geek_Girl]

71. I went to an all white junior high

I'm part hispanic and have dark skin. I was called the N word the S word and many other racial slangs. It happened on a weekly basis by a couple of boys. It really is the one thing that has stuck with me all these years and it still hurts to think about it.

[Gregorian]

76. As the smallest kid in all of my schools.

I was the smallest of 1200 students. No, there was a Chinese kid who was smaller. I was so small people didn't even pick on me physically. But the pressure was huge. No socialization. No girlfriends. However, I was an amazing musician. I was in the high school band while in sixth grade. So that tempered things.

Yes, I did get revenge. There was this guy who was always harassing me for my size. He was big. He now is the captain of a petroleum seismic research ship. In seventh grade we were walking to an auditorium presentation. He harassed me for the last time. I swung a punch that literally lifted him off his feet. He was a blockhead, and didn't even feel it. I spent the summer in a cast from broken metacarpals.

I was Cho-like in college. The frustration of being the underdog, combined with the discovery that college was not for learning as much as being prepared to go to work for the corporation just pushed me over the edge. I remember calling home and saying how much I wanted to take an M16 to everyone in my class. But that was just talk.

I've posted the most severe stuff in my life here. I've revealed my darkest secrets. I trust DU.

I also want to say that DU has been a place where I have grown. I'm still learning. But I've had the opportunity to express myself, and I'm grateful. Of course, this is intelligent discussion. But still, this was where I finally found some form of acceptance.

Edit- there is something else. I had an entire history of wealthy experiences as a young kid. I was an eagle scout. I volunteered thousands of hours at a Veterans Administrative hospital. I was teaching doctors how to interpret electrocardiograms when I was only 17 years old. I was a trained classical musician. So even though I infrequently went off the deep end, I had a strong foundation on which to fall back. I'm not a total weirdo.

Edit- OMG, I had it good compared to some of you. Truly amazing.

[Breeze54]

78. When the 4th, 5th, 6th, 9th grade nuns

beat me, slapped me, hit me with rulers, threw me across a room,
locked me in a closet...oh, just remembered, that was 1st grade.
None of the kids in school fucked with me, that I can remember,
only my older siblings did but I kicked their asses - literally! ;)

I defended the weaker kids from the bullying kids though.
Especially my little brother. I can't stand bullies!

[Madspirit]

80. My Worst Bullying Story

My father started beating me at 18 months and kept it up until I left home at 15.
Lee

[dsc]

83. some people don't deserve to be parents

[Madspirit]

102. Where's your avatar? n/t

[dsc]

104. they get turned off when traffic is high

[renate]

130. I'm so so so sorry

:hug:

I'm glad you're here among friends now.

[bklyncowgirl]

82. I had a couple of boys pick on me in third grade.

Someone hauled me off of one of them when I started to smash his head against the pavement. They stopped picking on me after that.

[Left Is Write]

85. Here is but a single incident out of many.

It was 1979, and I was thirteen. Thirteen is often a difficult age, even for the best of us. For me, it was near torture.

I desperately wanted to be like the other girls, seemingly so full of poise. I wanted to have their perfect Farrah Fawcett hair and their cute little figures poured into Calvin Klein jeans. I wanted to be like the girls who seemed to know instinctively how to put on makeup so that they looked the cover of Seventeen magazine, and who drew the admiring glances of the boys in class.

I was none of those things. I was the person for whom the phrase “awkward stage” was coined: I was skinny, and I had stubbornly blemish-prone skin. My clothes were wrong. I had no idea what to do with makeup, and I had no idea what to do with my hair beyond washing the oiliness out every day. I wore enormous glasses. I was too shy to look people in the eye. I was the proverbial ugly duckling.

Adolescent girls can smell weakness. They can smell fear. There’s a certain type of girl who looks for that scent, thrives on it, follows it to its source and torments the fearful. There’s a certain type of girl who needs to have a victim. Susan Richter was just such a girl.

Susan’s methods of torment were many. Her actions were innumerable. I could tell a hundred stories of what Susan did to me and still have stories left to tell. One incident in the fall of my eighth grade year remains crisp and distinct in my memory; looking back now, it is difficult to believe nearly twenty-five years have passed.

Susan was in my science class. Instead of desks, the students sat in groups of four at square, shiny black-topped tables. There was only one other student who would sit next to me, a shy girl named Andrea who hid behind a veil of long black hair and black glasses. No one else dared to sit by me for fear of incurring Susan’s scorn. Susan aimed her viciousness at anyone who tried to stand up for me. It didn’t take long before no one bothered.

Mr. Delaney, the science teacher, was often late to class by five minutes or more. On that particular day, he was very late. On that particular day, Andrea was absent. I sat alone at my shiny black table, the table in the center of the room, visible to everyone else. Mr. Delaney was not there to deter the actions of the malevolent.

The silence that hung in the air between the sound of the bell and the realization that Mr. Delaney would be later than usual was heavy with the bitter perfume of danger. I sensed rather than knew what was about to happen to me Fear permeated my pores. I wished to be home, outside, in Timbuktu, invisible – anything and anywhere but in that moment.

Susan caught my eye, her gaze narrowing as she whispered something in Anna Comstock’s ear. They both giggled, and Anna turned to look at me as well, a smirk forming on her smooth, round face. I wanted to run but was frozen, attached to my seat as surely as if I had been restrained. Susan jumped up from her orange plastic chair and advanced on my table. The class was silent, most of them watching Susan to see what she would do.

She carefully, deliberately climbed on top of my black table, standing over me and compelling me to look up at her. Then she laughed, pointing at me and looking around the room in glowing triumph at her captive audience.

“Look at her!” she cried. “She’s so ugly!” She looked back at me, pointing her finger straight at my nose. “Listen to me. Nobody likes you. Nobody. Are you scared? Are you scared now that Andrea’s not here to sit with you? She smells. Do you like sitting next to smelly?”

I remained quiet, my throat dry and closing. I felt sweat beads form on my forehead and above my lip. My heart pounded and roared in my ears as Susan continued her tirade.

“Nobody likes you! Do you hear me? I know…let’s sing. Let’s sing a song about Ugly Cathy.” She raised her arms as if to conduct the class in a choir practice and began singing loudly, using the tune from a McDonald’s jingle:

“Nobody likes Cathy, we all hate her so! Nobody likes Cathy, we all hate her so!”

I don’t know how long she went on. It might have been thirty seconds, and it might have been two minutes. To me it seemed an eternity, and I fought uselessly to hold back my tears.

Someone coughed loudly. Someone else signaled Susan that Mr. Delaney was on his way. She hopped down from my table and quickly ran to her seat next to Anna, laughing behind her hand at my anguish. Mr. Delaney came into the room, glancing around curiously at his students all sitting in silence.

He hesitated, appearing to want to say something and then evidently changing his mind. He opened his mouth, closed it, and then opened it again, flipping through his teacher’s text.

“Page 42, everyone,” was all he said.

Susan Richter faded into just a memory as the years rolled past me, but the sound of her voice lived on inside my head. I heard that voice echoing in my brain long years after the final bell sounded at Kennedy Junior High.

[dsc]

87. You are a hell of a writer

you captured the feeling of the moment beautifully.

[Left Is Write]

96. Thank you.

I don't have a DU Journal, but I'm considering starting one and putting that in it. I think bullying is a subject we all need to talk about.

[SayWhatYo]

86. Well, I was putting this kid in a garbage can....

but then he turned around and kicked my ass... I never bullied anyone again..


Just kidding, back when I was in high school I got "jumped" by about ten kids. They were mostly looking for a fight and I didn't really help the matter with my smart ass mouth. It ultimately ended up pretty bad for me.. I'm not really a fighter so I didn't fair too well with that...

As for constant bullying, it never became a problem because I simply started making fun of myself or the people trying to make fun of me... They then realized that the only way to get to me was to actually physically kick my ass.. Only a few were willing to do that.

[annarbor]

89. Age 9, Detroit, MI...kind of long....

It was 1971 and there were just two days left before school let out for Summer vacation. I was something of a teacher's pet and I simply loved school. The three-o-clock bell rang and we all ran out the front door of Biddle Elementary and set out for home. I was suddenly lifted off of my feet and thrown into the street by two of the school's biggest bullies. The problem was, there was a brand Cadillac rolling down the street and it hit me head-on, nearly killing me. My favorite teacher, Joan Nagrent, picked me up and carried me into the school and a Detroit police officer and his partner drove me, my dad and my little sister to the hospital for treatment. I spent that entire summer recuperating and started a new school, in a new neighborhood, later that fall. Due to the amount of damage to my forehead and face, I soon faced a level of bullying (frankenstein, scar face jokes etc)that far exceeded any that I had experienced before my accident.
I ended up repeating 7th grade, dropped out of school in the 11th grade and took a GED. I went to night school a couple of years later, got my high school degree and joined the Marine Corps. I know there are a lot of folks here that aren't fond of the military, but it helped restore a pretty shattered body....I returned to school and graduated with my Masters last year. I recently looked up the two guys that threw me in the street some 36 years ago. I heard that one guy, John, died years ago. Sadly, Boisey has spent most of his life incarcerated and is currently housed in a prison up north, for armed robbery....

All in all,
Life is good...but I'm heartbroken about the folks at VT...

Peace,
Ann Arbor

[rockymountaindem]

90. Once someone told me I deserved to die for being Jewish

I've brought that up here before. He never attempted to make good on his threat.

[alarimer]

92. I wasn't bullied so much as ignored

which I guess is better in a way. I remember inviting the whole class to my house in 8th grade for a pool party and no one showed up. They didn't call either to make up some excuses. I have never forgotten that. And I don't think I have ever gotten over it. To this day I am convinced nobody ever wants me around.

[Breeze54]

94. Awe....

we all at DU want you around!

[renate]

136. oh honey....

The truth is that in eighth grade your classmates didn't come to your pool party.

I'm devastated just reading about this happening to a kid--especially one at that tender self-conscious angst-ridden age--so I am NOT minimizing the pain of this. I am literally feeling a physical ache as I think about how this must have felt... and I can't fully imagine it because my self-protective mechanisms won't let me. But maybe the passage of time will make it possible to consider other possibilities.

Let's start with the most brutally honest. Maybe in eighth grade your classmates didn't want to come to your party. That's excruciating for the eighth-grade you. But that eighth-grader is just a part of who you are now. Even if this worst-case scenario is true--that people didn't want you around, as you said you feel now--please give some serious consideration to the fact that although that eighth-grader is part of you, so are all the other people you've been since then.

And now, as a parent, I'll suggest some less awful possibilities. What if the weekend you chose was a holiday weekend or Mother's Day or something and nobody could come (voice of experience here--we don't make a big deal out of holidays so I was oblivious to my poor choice). (And although it's unlikely that nobody could come on a particular date, if enough people bail, their friends aren't going to show up alone, so there's a snowball effect.) What if you didn't give people enough advance notice? What if your invitations wasn't clear and people didn't realize that everybody was invited, or they weren't sure of the time and date? And--this would have been my #1 huge huge huge reason for not coming to a pool party in eighth grade--what if the kids didn't want to wear swim suits in front of anybody else? I wouldn't have gone to my best friend's pool party, honestly.

Your experience was beyond heartbreaking. I am just crying inside thinking about it. But I can't bear to think of you continuing to feel this way about yourself. Over the years the facts--as you perceive and interpret them--may have morphed into something that isn't a real representation of what happened. There may have been actual reasons for people not showing up. You felt comfortable enough with your social position to have a party in the first place... I think kids who truly aren't popular are aware of the fact. There really could have been legitimate reasons for people not coming that have nothing to do with you.

We want to have you around now--that's for sure.

:hug:

[alarimer]

179. I no longer remember any of the details

It was a long time ago. And it is entirely possible they had legitimate reasons for not showing up (or calling??). At that time I went to a private school in Puerto Rico where many of the other students were very, very rich (one was heir to the Bacardi Rum fortune for one). My dad wasn't rich. I went to that school because his company paid for it. So there were differences between me and some of the other kids, that's for sure.

I had forgotten all about this incident until just a few years ago. So maybe it didn't mean that much at the time after all, but was a convenient excuse after the fact for why I often feel like I do.

[vickitulsa]

93. What a great thread, jcrew!

Good idea to do this, and I'm so -- well, honored, I guess I'd say -- to listen to everyone's torture stories. Saddened, too, but you guys tell it so well, and I appreciate it.

It sounds to me like too many have minimized the torments they suffered, and that's understandable, of course, but if you could only hear how awful those things you went through sound to many of us... my heart surely goes out to you all.

I was always a sort of strange girl, from first grade to the end of my college years. Mine was an abusive family, my dad was a tyrant (and a State Trooper, German, and hot-tempered), and I had a lot of obvious signs of emotional distress as a kid -- most of them sleep disorders, to the extreme.

But we were never to talk about anything outside the family, and I did my best to find joy in my dogs and riding my horse, getting away from the house as much as possible, and followed my brother's lead in making good friends, so I got by.

The thing is, though, I was always drawn to the kids who were being bullied by others! I couldn't tell you why I started this early on, but I look back to my first friends in first grade, and they were shy, awkward, sometimes non-hygienic or with speech impediments -- the outcasts no one else wanted to be with. Even if they weren't tormented, I always befriended the ones who seemed alone and lonely. Liked to make them smile, invite them to my house, play games, let them ride my horse, stuff like that.

By junior high, (this was in the 50's), the tormenting of outcast students had gotten pretty bad, though it wasn't severe compared to what I see among kids today. I could always make top grades without even studying hard, so I think that helped me to be respected. The popular crowd tried to draw me into their group, but to me they were shallow and sissified. (I was a major tomboy and tough as nails, and hated girls' clothes and read science fiction -- and could do gymnastics and ride and gentle wild horses!)

The poster's stories about band class rang a bell for me. Dad wouldn't buy me an instrument and the only ones the school provided were French horns, tubas, or drums (the entire percussion section, actually). I chose the drums, had to buy only the drumsticks, and because I was a classical piano student, I picked up on the drums quickly and loved them!

But several times I interfered in "hazing" -- it's all really just tormenting or bullying no matter what you call it -- of some other band members. I was verbally quick and adept, so I cut them down that way and made them wish they'd never started shit.

In high school, my three best friends were the ultimate outcasts of our grade level. All were very bright but socially troubled or impaired in one way or another, and again I avoided the popular crowd and sought out these more interesting girls! We grew quite close and stayed in touch for some years -- well, two of them and I did, the third dropped off the radar after graduation.

We were nothing alike, really, the four of us, and all four of us weren't friends, but I was close to the others individually. One was the brightest kid in our school's history, but couldn't tie her shoes when I met her in sixth grade. I taught her. She scored a 32 composite score on the ACT and got a scholarship to Berkeley! (THAT showed 'em!) :)

I also got in the face of anyone who treated any of my "weird" friends badly in any way. I was afraid of no one and for some reason no one ever tried to pick on ME -- just my friends!

All three of them, by the way, were depressed, often, and sometimes to the point of talking about suicide quite seriously. My best friend and roommate as a freshman in college killed herself on-campus with a gun.

I'm one of those adults who will interfere in situations I witness anywhere, anytime, when I see kids bullying and tormenting other kids today. Virtually every time, those hateful kids are self-doubting jerks themselves who (I think) are really just trying to keep their own deficiencies from being pointed out when they gang up on obvious targets.

I say, get in their faces and tell them off in no uncertain terms! Do it for your friends, for acquaintances, for strangers!

I for one totally understand the descent into madness and rage that some bullied kids experience and can understand fully just why they would resort to an explosion that harms others, after they have come to believe they have no reason to live and no future. I also believe the families drop the ball long before the schools or mental healthcare sources in their communities.

Hey, any o' y'all wanna come over to my house tonight? I haven't had a good game of Scrabble in awhile.... ;)

[Catchawave]

95. Usual dumbass childhood stuff....

but nothing as bad as I sometimes see on the DU....some pretty tough bullies on here :scared:

I once joked in the Lounge we should have a machine gun smilie.....probably too soon, huh?

;(

[ChaoticSilly]

97. Not so much bullied as endless teased

I was (still am, actually) the stereotypical geek - always the smallest kid in class, socially and physically awkward and made straight A's. I wasn't really bullied so much as always teased.

There was one guy in 7th grade, however, who loved to punch, shove, trip or put me in a headlock every time we crossed paths. One day he shoved me from behind and I finally snapped. I dropped by books, turned around, ran towards him at full steam, tackled him against the wall and proceeded to bang his head into a metal locker door a couple of times. When I realized what I was doing, I calmly stood up, picked up my books and walked away. He never bothered me at all after that.

The only other time that included violence was when I was standing in line in home-ec class for something. I can't remember what the class was doing that day or why we were in line, but I remember the next part clearly to this day. I was standing in line, not talking to or bothering anybody. The guy in front of me, a football player, turned around and punched me in the face. My jaw was numb for a few minutes, but I was so confused about why he did it and what I should do about it that I didn't even flinch. I just stood there staring at him. I don't know if I freaked him out or just amused him, but we just stared at each other for a few seconds before he turned around and left me alone.

I guess I was lucky that I was in mostly honors classes. Most of my classmates were fellow geeks and, while I wasn't really accepted by the geeks either, they at least didn't pick on me.

[grace0418]

99. My husband moved her from the Philippines when he was a toddler. He definitely

got picked on for being different. Most people didn't even know where he was from, they just called him "chink" or "rice-eater".

I, on the other hand, am white but I committed the heinous crime of being chubby and too poor to have fashionable clothes. Oh yes, and I got good grades, pretty much the kiss of death in my school.

[PegDAC]

100. Eighth grade was the worst.

I grew up in a relatively small city that had a disproportionately large number of millionaires. Being smart and poor was considered an unnatural act. I got it from both sides. Everyone from the hoods to the Mayor's son was calling my house at 2:00 AM threatening various and sundry physical assaults. In high school I had an English teacher who would openly ridicule my appearance and clothes in class. Did I ever get revenge? Well, the English teacher died, and at my 25th and 30th reunions, my former tormentors nearly tripped over themselves and each other apologizing to me. So maybe just living is the best revenge.

:) :toast: :hi:

[MLFerrell]

103. I have Asperger's syndrome, and a whole host of other "maladies"...

Like trichotillomania. In which the sufferer pulls his or her hair out, while in a trance like state.

Let me tell you how popular THAT made me...

I was the smartest kid in the whole damn county. I skipped seventh grade, and finished high school another year early on top of that, graduating when I was 16. That didn't help either. For years, my parents told me "Just ignore them. They'll get tired of it and eventually stop."

They didn't stop.

So, when I was about 13 or 14, I decided that Id had enough. I fought back.

The first few times, I got my ass kicked. Badly. Broken nose, black eyes, cracked ribs, etc. But I kept fighting.

One day, someone pushed me into a locker, hard. I still remember the eruption of laughter from my fellow students in the hallway at the time.

And I snapped. I stood against the locker, almost in tears. And I began to get very, very angry.

I turned around with my fists balled. And this asinine individual, who was maybe six inches taller and fifty pounds heavier looked at me with scorn and derision and said, "What are you gonna do, you pussy?"

I threw my backpack at him, and while he was distracted, I kicked him, as Cartman would say "Square in the nuts!"

While he was doubled over, I attacked him. I rained blow after blow onto his face, his body, anywhere that I could get to. I hit him so hard in the throat that he stopped breathing for a minute. And before I was done, I ripped a whole goddamned handful of his hair out of his head.

I was an animal, then. After the rage subsided, I looked around me. EVERYONE in the hallway was silent, jaws agape.

I got suspended from school for ten days. But nobody EVER fucked with me, ever again.

I know all too well what it is to be bullied. You don't just hate your tormentors, you come to hate yourself. For your weakness, your ineffectuality.

I fought back. And it was the best decision I've ever made. Violence should never be the answer. But all too often, it is the ONLY thing that some people will understand.

I know precisely why things like the Columbine massacre, or the recent events at Virginia Tech happen. The perpetrators were just like me, only they didn't have the strength to deal with it, so they lashed out in the only way that they could think of.

Their actions are horribly, horribly misguided. But I know what brought them to that end. For once upon a time, I was almost there myself...



"When all is said and done, we only control one thing about our pathetically short lives: Whether to be good, or evil." -Anonymous

[GaYellowDawg]

105. You said something SO profound...

I know all too well what it is to be bullied. You don't just hate your tormentors, you come to hate yourself. For your weakness, your ineffectuality.

I've let go of the actual bullying and the pain that was associated with it, but I still suffer from low self-esteem.

I'm glad you came out from under that.

[MLFerrell]

107. "I'm glad you came out from under that."

So am I. And that's EXACTLY why the people who commit these atrocities do so. They hate themselves for not being strong enough to stand up and say "ENOUGH!"

I thank God, fate, whatever, every day of my life that I WAS strong enough. The Virginia Tech massacre, and all the rest are what results when someone doesn't have the courage, the inner strength that I did.



I don't understand one thing, though. I dreamed, gleefully, of killing my tormentors. But NEVER would I have turned my uncontrollable rage on innocents. Some call it mental illness... I don't know what to call it. But I do know that I could not destroy life indiscriminately.

[GaYellowDawg]

110. I'll be honest

I wanted to subject the bullies to everything I was subjected to so that they would know how bad I felt. I didn't want them to die. I wanted them to hurt as badly as I did. I wanted to beat the living crap out of them but couldn't muster the courage and hated myself for it.

But you could have put a gun in my hands when I was the maddest and put the worst tormentor on his knees in front of me and I would never have pulled the trigger. I have always known I couldn't ever kill anyone for myself. I really want to emphasize that I'm not condemning you, just that I thought a little differently!

As for the worst tormentor, I've recently heard about him. He's recently divorced and he's so miserable and angry that he has no friends and his family largely avoids him. I would have thought that would make me happy but I actually thought it was kind of a shame.

Again, though, I'm glad you're in good shape now. I hope you continue to prosper and you are so happy that all your former bullies envy you.

[MLFerrell]

125. "I hope you continue to prosper and you are so happy that all your former bullies envy you."

Well, if they don't envy me, they goddamn well should. I'm working on a Ph.D. in History. Most of those fucks who made my life hell are still stuck within twenty miles of where I grew up, working shit jobs, reliving their glory days of high-school football ad infinitum, and knocking up cheerleaders whose lives were every bit as unsuccessful as their own.

When I was in school, I never could have dreamed that life would get better, much better. But it did. In a way, I understand Columbine more than the recent horror at V. Tech. Those kids were still 18 and in high school. They hadn't had the chance to get out and see what life was really all about. Cho did have the chance, and for whatever reason, decided that he was going to inflict his deeply personal misery on the innocent.

To this very day, when I see someone getting abused, I put a stop to it regardless of the threat to my person. I'm not afraid of other people anymore. But I remember all too well what it was like to live every day in fear. I live right down the street from a high school. Walking home one day when the kids were let out, I saw three playing "keep away" with a fourth student's hat. As I approached, these bullies kept at it, but moved aside slightly so I could pass. As I was walking by, I snatched the hat from the closest one, and said in a stern tone of voice, "Does this belong to you?"

You should have seen the look on this kid's face. I had forgotten how kids get the fear of God when an adult chastises them. Made me feel old. :)

"Um, uh, no it's..."

"It's WHAT?"

Gesturing at the kid they had been picking on, he said "It's uh, his."

I gave the kid his hat back. He was as stunned as the bullies were.

"Oh, and I SUGGEST you leave him the FUCK alone! Now get the hell out of here..."

Strolling away, I turned and looked back. The victim was walking on the other side of the street, and his tormentors were still on my side staring back at me, still in shock that someone had put a stop to their bullshit.

"What the FUCK are you looking at? I thought I said to get out of here!"

They ducked and turned shamefully. Problem solved, at least for that one kid on that one day. We as a society need to encourage our children to collectively respond to bullying incidents in the same way. With scorn and derision, not to mention a strong dose of their own medicine, if need be.

[dsc]

165. I saw one of my worst tormentors at my 20th reunion

he was totally wasted and I heard he had being drinking to excess for years. I am seven years sober and that melted my heart. I didn't have the heart to confront him I actually felt sorry for the guy.

[bleedingheart]

162. I know the pain you suffered through

I was a smart girl...I had guys spit chew in my hair...I had the tough guys and girls pick on me..I had people tell me my father died because I was so ugly...

one day I kicked the shit out of a girl who was tormenting me on the bus....and it stopped.

today I am glad there are video cameras on the buses and the type of bullying I experienced would get kids kicked out of school today....at least in the school district I grew up in..which is the one my Asperger's son goes to today...

[GaYellowDawg]

108. There's something I have to say in this thread's context...

Lots of things shared here. I did, too, but honestly, it was a long time ago and the things that happened to me are really more of a very old scar, not a fresh wound. The only reason why I was able to post those things, in fact, was because I worked out much of the rage and the hurt through therapy.

This is what I really wanted to say. For some of you, these things still hurt as if they happened yesterday. I can't tell you how much I respect your courage for sharing those things. It's not something I think I could have done when my past still hurt. So, to you:

A :toast:, a :hug:, and :applause:

[dsc]

167. thanks

It has taken quite sometime but I have gotten over most of it. Like you only recently could I admit some of this publicly because it hurt so badly.

[Wednesdays]

111. I witnessed a pretty bad episode of bullying when I was in 11th grade

I was the lone representative from my high school's choir, as a guest in another high school across town, singing with their men's glee club for a day. Shortly after we all boarded the bus to head to our performance, all the guys began chanting, "Chet...Chet...Chet!" It turns out "Chet" was sitting--all by himself--in the front seat, trying his best to keep his composure. I turned to the guy next to me and asked why everybody was ragging on Chet so much. His answer astounded me: it seems Chet had once been caught masturbating in a stall in the boy's room. Yeah...like no high school boys ever masturbate in the boy's room. :eyes: So, this one poor guy had to face public humliation for something I'm sure every one on that bus was just as guilty of.

I immediately turned around and led the guys in a chorus of "99 bottles of beer on the wall" for the rest of the trip.

[Colobo]

112. I swear I never knew or heard of anyone

masturbating on the men's room in my high school! I mean... maybe in Puerto Rico this is more taboo... but it never crossed my mind and was never mentioned even among us males in our "macho talks".

[IronLionZion]

150. I must have been a late bloomer

I never masturbated or even thought about sex until after high school. That's just me. :shrug: Now I think about sex all the time. :evilgrin:

[THUNDER HANDS]

113. if this thread has taught me anything

it's that there's a lot of really bad parents out there who gave birth to a lot of mean, fucked up kids.

No doubt they all grew up Republicans.

[submerged99]

114. I picked on other kids until around freshman year

I was sort of an agressive kid who picked on a lot of my peers. It's not something I'm proud of and I began to see how wrong it was when I got to be in the ninth grade.

By the time I was a senior, I made it a point to make friends with many of the people I had picked on when I was younger. I once even stopped one of junior high targets from getting roughed up. Another kid had him in a headlock on the side of the building and I intervened. He thanked me later on in the day.

Despite this, I know some people still harbored a lot of anger towards me. I guess there were quite a few people that I never knew I had bullied over the years and they had carried that, at least until we were in high school. There were a few times when rumors when around the school that so and so wanted to fight me and I hadn't had any sort of interaction with the person for a couple of years. So yeah, it does a lot of damage to the bullied.

Here's what helped me though. I had some older relatives who taught me the importance of fighting on behalf of outsiders instead of picking on them. Some of my peers-whom I looked up to- who were older also criticized my bullying actions and stressed it was something they looked down upon. I also had a strong, but level headed football coach who stressed that we treat other people with respect and made people on our team (which he defined as the entire school) respect one another..or else you had to deal with him.

[july302001]

175. You need to pay back your debts

You need to atone for what you have done. You need to do whatever you can do to be of public service to others. Volunteer as much as you can...even if it means substantial reductions in your income.

I was bullied in school and I feel that the bullies need to pay a debt to society for getting their cheap thrills at the expense of others in school.

[meldroc]

115. An observation

All these stories about bullies makes me realize something - why I'm so angry at the Bush Administration.

Certainly there are plenty of reasons for us to be angry at Bush, Cheney, Rove, Gonzales and the rest of them. They lied to us literally thousands of times now over six years, they cheated their way into power by fixing elections in Ohio and Florida, they started two wars that have killed hundreds of thousands of people, they destroyed our country's credibility and prestige across the world, they destroyed our civil liberties, they ordered torture, indefinite detention and extraordinary rendition, and have nothing but contempt for democratic governance.

But the reason why I hate them the most? They're bullies. Fundamentally, shaking a younger, smaller kid down for his lunch money and sending hundreds of thousands of troops in to slaughter and kill for oil are the same acts. They commit these acts with the same smirks, the same sneers and the same looks of contempt that I saw in the faces of those bullies that tormented me when I was little.

So for me, yes, it is personal. My anger and hatred for those sons of bitches burns with white-hot intensity at the core of my being.

[raccoon]

127. This needs to be repeated,

"(The Bush admin) commit these acts with the same smirks, the same sneers and the same looks of contempt that I saw in the faces of those bullies that tormented me when I was little."

[lligrd]

154. Hear Hear! This Is Exactly What Infuriates Me

I don't have any bullying stories because although I had bullying attempts I always stood up to them and they always backed down. In fact, I stood up and still do for others that were or are being bullied. And I will never back down from fighting this assinine administration's bullying.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

116. Freshman in college. six weeks after starting school.

I am white and was assigned a black roommate in this rich kids' private university.

Another black girl, who was very muscular, used to barge into our room and threaten me. She asked me where I was from. When I told her where I was from, which was an all-white school district, she decided I was a racist. My parents were liberals and they did NOT teach me to hate blacks. I told the R.A. about this and they did nothing.

Eventually about 12 midnight one night, she came into my room, grabbed me, and dragged me down the hall into her room. I tried to bite her hand and she slapped me, and with the whole floor watching, dragged me thru her room, and THREW ME OUT THE WINDOW. This was the second story of the dorm, and I landed on a 4 foot wide concrete ledge under the window. I had on a knee length polyester robe.
Nobody stepped in to help.

People used a connecting part of the building, to walk across the roof commonly. I saw some kids walking across the roof, a 100 feet away or so and yelled and waved at them. Somebody got me back inside.

I went to talk to the Dean of Students, Dr. Coleen Grissom, English professor, and she said "Kids get injured when somebody throws them in the shower during rush" and I kept telling this woman that this had nothing to do with rush. They had admitted this mean girl because they were trying to be liberal and use affirmative action to get more black kids enrolled.

A few days after I got over the shock, I called my parents from San Antonio on a pay phone in another dorm. My dad called up the Dean of Students and read the Texas Hazing Statute over the phone to them. He told them "I'm a father first, and a lawyer second."

My parents never came over there to confront the Administration. They should have. I was scared shitless of authority figures, as I am small. As a result, I got shuttled around to different dorm rooms, three different ones my first semester. None of the girls I was dumped on wanted me there. Apparently it got all over the school, because lots of other kids said Hi to me on my way to class, which made me paranoid.

The Dean of Students. Dr. Coleen Grissom, finallly admitted they should have expelled the girl who threw me out the window. But they didn't do a damn thing. We should have sued, but back then people didn't sue for everything that happened. This was in Sept. of 1972 at Trinity University in San Antonio.

The black boys were embarrassed about it. One of them went to me at the dining hall and asked me if I was scared, because this same girl, Cascell, sat down across from me at the table in the dining hall when I was attempting to eat. I told him "Yes" I was very scared. I think he convinced this girl to leave me alone. None of the black girl students would talk to me again. This was a case of affirmative action that just didn't work.

I assume my roommate and the bully dropped out of college. I eventually went back to that school and finished my B.A., after detouring thru junior college for another degree and a large state school.

And before that was seven years of hell in junior high and high school. I got called "queer" more times than I could count. I was a year and a half younger than everybody else, female, smart and wore glasses and was in the orchestra. Classical music saved my sanity and helped me hold on until I got to college.

When kids picked on me, I told them to go to hell, because my mother told me to do that. They would say "Ummmmm, you said a bad word and I'm gonna tell" and I said "Fine, my mother will back me up." Great big six foot tall girls would ask me if they could meet me for a fight after school and I never went, because I was little and chicken. The gym teachers (really dykey) were bad too. One of them wanted us to sit on the floor with our legs straight out in front of us and try to raise our butts off the floor and support ourselves on our FINGERS.

I told her "I'm a piano player and I'm not going to do that and break a finger." The next time she didn't ask us to do that.

ALso, lots of kids tried to kill me by tripping me during Red Rover so I would fall flat on my face and get the wind knocked out of me. I went to one of the orchestra kid's house one Saturday night for a party and we played Red Rover, and I got tackled by her brother who was a football player. I'm lucky I didn't get my neck broken. I was too stupid to refuse.

[minkyboodle]

117. I didn't have it nearly as bad as some here

In fact reading some of these posts I'm just so
amazed you all made it through. My bully story really
only involves one group of boys. I was an average
sized pretty normal boy so I didn't stand out a lot. I
dodged a lot of the more vicious stuff. Still this
one kid and his friends just had it in for me. I
was a bit heavy right around late elementary and
middle school so that type of teasing, poking, pant-sing
was par for the course for them.

One incident that I won't forget though I had a really nasty ingrown
toenail on my big toe. Had to have surgery on it
twice to finally get it right. After the second
surgery I couldn't wear a shoe and Greg the ring leader
came up to me and stomped with a shitload of force
right on my bad toe (had one of those half shoe things
on that didn't cover it). I wish I could have fought
back but I basically doubled over in pain, and my
7th grade teacher didn't do squat (I swear I saw him
grin). Anyway long story short me and the kid eventually
had one of those typical arm swinging do nothing school
fights and then when I got to high school he pretty
much stopped.

About the Asian kids being teased, I would have to say hell yes on that.
Elementary through junior high for me -1992 was the old school isolate the kids
ESL days. I sure hope its easier for international
kids now. One thing I hadn't thought about till reading
this thread is that several posters have stated it wasn't
as bad during their generations (earlier). This seems opposite
to what I always thought but maybe I was thinking backwards
on that. Either way great thread and thanks everyone
for sharing.

[dsc]

174. Ingrown toe nails are a bitch but when I got one in 8th and then 10th grades

I missed about a dozen weeks of gym total. I got mine stomped on once, and since he claimed it was an accident nothing was done, but it did make me miss an extra week of PE. I was tempted to pay him to do it again to be honest.

[minkyboodle]

183. lol

Missing PE now there is an angle that may be worth it :)

[dsc]

184. I admit it was so worth it

Getting to sit on the bleachers and write reports was way better than running around and getting humiliated. I did get a C though instead of an A but I even lived with that.

[slampoet]

120. I had 20+ fellow students beat me and cut off my hair at a senior skip day party.

The next day some of the hair was in the trophy case. A student would have had to have a teacher let them into the locked case.

I had maybe a hundred other incidents. I don't really talk about it.


As for bullying? I see it for a multitude of reasons.

Hell, I've seen 36 year old adults in the art scene bully a fellow artist who had Asperger's syndrome to the point of physical violence. Some people never grow up.

[dsc]

122. that is brutal

I got a forced hair cut at band camp as part of hazing. But at least all freshmen had something done to them so I wasn't alone. That just sucks.

[XemaSab]

121. Again, I don't think bullying CAUSED this tragedy.

When I was in 6th grade I went to a school that was almost all black, and they HATED me for being white. I didn't have a friend in the whole school. I don't want to dredge up specifics, but let's say I was scared to go to school and played hooky half the year with the collusion of my teacher.

[Nye Bevan]

124. The worst bullies at my primary school were the nuns

"Sisters of Mercy" my ass.

[lazyriver]

126. I saw one horrible display and it was led by a teacher.

Growing up in my little corner of northwestern NJ in the 70's and 80's must have been close to idyllic because bullying was not a widespread problem.

Let me start by saying I entered the reality based world when I went to High School. I attended a very small private Catholic school thru 8th grade and decided at age 13 I had experienced enough religion. Despite my parents' wishes I insisted on public High School.

This was the first place I ever saw any bullying and it wasn't all that prevalent. I was friends with everyone in HS - burnouts, jocks, nerds, band geeks, preppies, the 'popular' crowd, you name it. Occasionally, some of my "less popular" friends would experience minor degrees of bullying from other students but almost never any physical abuse. There did not seem to be any constant or even repeated incidents. For the most part, we didn't have bullies in my school. There were too many people who wouldn't tolerate them.

I guess that's why the worst case of bullying I ever witnessed (and later felt compelled to retaliate for) stands out so vividly in my mind 17 years after witnessing it.

Fall of my senior year - Gym class (of course)

The teacher had been there for 25 years and actually had taught and coached my father. He was an old-school gym teacher who hadn't realized his days in the military had ended. Gym class with him in charge was pretty close to boot camp. He walked up and down the rows of students calling all of us soft, worthless and weak during his 15 minutes of intensive squat thrusts, push ups and sit ups we did to start every class. He would single out the less athletic kids (boys and girls alike) and poke extra fun at their attempts to keep up with his maniacal pace.

He loved rainy days. On rainy days, we divided the the class into boys and girls and the female teacher would take the girls to the equipment room for whatever they did on rainy days. The boys stayed in the gym for "Bombardment" as the teacher called it. There was a junior gym glass held at the same time as ours and they were to be our opponents for bombardment. Both classes were ushered to one half of the divider and that space was split down the middle between the bleachers with tape to create junior and senior sides of the playing (slaying) field. Each side stood against the bleachers and the teacher would then dump a bag of volleyballs on the floor, blow a whistle to start the carnage and then step back inside his office door to watch us pummel the teeth out of each other with the balls. It was dodge ball on steroids and speed played on a half court and kids got hurt all the time.

So the stage is set for one of the most disturbing things I have ever seen a teacher do. One guy in our class, Andre, was a very non-athletic type. He hated this "game" because he really couldn't run or catch and he threw like a girl. He was a little different from most kids. I would describe him as a "Goth" kid before Goth was ever even remotely cool. Nobody ever really picked on him but he was close to invisible in social circles, choosing to avoid any contact with most people. I was friendly with him because I liked everybody, he lived near me and we would run into each other in the woods behind our houses while hunting or fishing. I was probably his closest friend and had even tried to bring him to parties with me to expand his circles. He was never comfortable doing so.

On bombardment days, he would try to step in front of an early low thrown ball to take a hit on the foot or leg to get out of the game. People who were out had to go stand against the side wall "out of bounds" until a teammate caught an incoming ball. People who got out early angered our gym teacher. He hated weakness and viewed Andre as its epicenter. So one rainy day in early October we're playing bombardment. As I'm trying not to get my head taken off while also trying to take someone else's head off with a volleyball, I notice Andre loping over to the side wall after taking his early hit. I saw the gym teacher call four of the seniors (all football jocks)over to his office doorway and he talked to them quietly. They were snickering as they walked away from him and back onto the gym floor. As volleyballs are whizzing back and fourth, I just barely noticed these four guys were hiding a few balls behind the bleachers as they caught them.

All of a sudden we heard the gym teacher blow his whistle from just inside his office door. That is supposed to mean time out and everyone stops throwing volley balls but as soon as it blew the four jocks came charging from the bleachers with the stashed volley balls running right toward Andre. As usual he was just standing there against the wall (concrete wall with padding coming up it only four feet from the ground)drifting off to whatever imaginary place he visited when he wanted to be someplace else. These four guys unloaded on him all at once by throwing right at his head from no more than five feet away. The first ball hit him in the nose, breaking it and causing the back of his head to bounce off the concrete wall with a sickening crack that echoed in the gym. Several more balls hit him in the face, chest, stomach and groin as he collapsed to the floor. His glasses were shattered and there was blood around and in his left eye. They picked up the rebounding balls and drilled him again and again as many times as they could in what resembled a shark feeding frenzy hooting and hollering the whole time as a pack of out of control teenagers is apt to do. As I was running over to stop them along with a few other guys from both classes, they suddenly stopped all at once. They had noticed all the blood and it became very clear something was wrong with him as he was not moving or defending himself. I instantly became aware there was only one sound now echoing through the gym, the sound of cackling laughter coming from inside the gym teacher's office. He was standing just inside the door and was laughing so hard he was crying and barely able to stand. Everyone else in the room was silent and staring at Andre, the guys who pummeled him and the asshole laughing in his office.

The first one to Andre's side was the ring leader of the four jocks. He was crying and kept telling Andre in a desperate voice, "Get up dude, you're alright! You're alright! We didn't mean to hurt you..." I got there next and somebody yelled for the school nurse who was in her office across from the gym. She was there in seconds and an ambulance arrived 10 minutes later to take Andre to the hospital. He suffered a significant concussion, broken nose, split lip, and a nasty big cut in his eyelid from the broken frame of his glasses. His vision was blurred for several days as a result of the blow to the back of his head. Privately, days later when he was back at home, he tearfully confided in me that he also had some kind of damage to one of his testicles. He wouldn't elaborate but whatever it was required surgery and painful recovery to fix. He was lucky no permanent physical damage occurred but he was never the same again. He dropped his regular classes and became even more invisible. He ended up enrolling in a work coop program where he spent half of every school day at a job earning credits. He did everything he could to minimize his time in the school and never went on to college. I lost touch with him a year after HS and often wonder what ever happened to him.

When the athletic director and principal began asking questions about what happened, they only asked the gym teacher and members of our football team who were in the gym class. They never asked me or anybody else. When I tried to speak with them about what I saw happen, I was told the whole thing was none of my business. I insisted that the teacher had put the four football players up to it and was countered with, "Were you in his office when he talked to them? No? Well how do you know what was said from across a crowded noisy gym? We'll get to the bottom of what happened." The four kids were suspended for three days each and never turned in their gym teacher and coach. He was placed on leave for two weeks but not for orchestrating an attack on a student. The reason for his suspension was communicated as "a lack of supervision that led to an unfortunate incident involving a dispute between some students". They suspended him for being in his office and not out in the gym during an unsupervised activity. Debate took place but it was decided bombardment was not an unsafe activity. Ah the late 80's... We played it many more times that year until...

Early June, a rainy day, the divider was drawn in the gym when we arrived for class so we knew what the day's activity would be. I asked for everybody's attention and laid out my plan. We all decided that today was going to be a little different when our teacher blew his whistle signaling us to start pounding each other. As part of his disciplinary action, he was no longer allowed to sit in his office during class. Instead he stood right in the door way and watched while calling us all a bunch of pussies.

Eric was the team manager for our soccer team and had keys to the gear storage lockers. He grabbed an extra bag of volley balls and set them just outside the door from the locker room to the gym. We would each grab two balls on our way in and stash them behind the bleachers. We sent Pete over to the junior side of the locker room to tell them about the plan and ask them to just stand there silently and do nothing when the whistle blew - we would take care of the rest.

Each side was lined up against the bleachers, our teacher dragged the bag of balls out to the center and dumped them on the floor and clenched his whistle in his teeth as he walked back to his office door snickering in his usual way. When the whistle blew, half of the seniors walked up to the balls the teacher dropped on the floor and picked them up. The juniors stood there nervously as instructed hoping they had not just been duped into their destruction. The seniors began rolling the volleyballs slowly over to the feet of the juniors who did their part and continued to simply stand there. The teacher came out on the floor and he was furious. He demanded the juniors throw the balls back at the seniors and they just stood there staring at him as the seniors at the front slowly shook their heads telling them not to. The teacher demanded to know what was going on and while he screamed at the students on the other side of the room, we at the back, the strongest arms in the room, gathered our stashed volleyballs from the bleachers and moved into firing range.

We pounded him when it started; 14 volleyballs, seven big strong kids all at once. Since he realized it was coming at the last second, he was able to drop and curl in the fetal position on the gym floor. He never received any serious injuries like Andre, but we pounded him for about five minutes straight while he cursed at us and threatened us from his cannonball position. I'm sure he was properly tenderized by the time another teacher came in from the hall and broke up our little party.

Six seniors were suspended for five days each. I got 10 (the rest of the school year) because I refused to write a letter of apology like my friends. I was also told I would not be allowed to attend the senior prom and got my only F of my academic career for fourth quarter PE. I couldn't care less about the prom because I wasn't going anyway and was still going to all the post prom parties where the real fun would take place. My three younger sisters each attended my old HS and have told the boys haven't played bombardment since that fateful day in June. In an indirect way, standing up to the bully led to the end of a pretty brutal game that stressed out lots of kids who weren't the strongest physically and was the scene of the worst bullying incident I ever saw.

Dedicated to you, Andre, wherever you are...

[MLFerrell]

128. Good on you!

I just wonder whatever happened to Andre. He probably carried that with him for a long, long time.

That teacher is a pathetic excuse for a person. He'll have a special place in Hell, undoubtedly.

[lazyriver]

129. I've thought about trying to look up Andre but am

a little reluctant to do so. I'm kind of afraid of what I might learn.

I hope the next plane of existence treats my old gym teacher as he deserves. He retired three years after I graduated with a nice fat NJ teacher's pension. My sister, who still lives (and now teaches) in my old home town informed me the guy died two years ago. I hope satan (or somebody even nastier) is throwing volleyballs at his soul right now.

[meldroc]

133. Sounds like Coach Bradley Buzzcut from Beavis & Butthead

except this guy never would be able to withstand being kicked in the jimmy...

[lazyriver]

141. He was a little older than Buzzcut but just as mean.

He also used to get a kick out telling one of "his guys" on our football team to "open up" on the JV guys during what were supposed to be no contact drills in practice when we weren't wearing pads. He said it "kept them on their toes" to get unexpectedly hit in the mouth every now and then. Nice guy.

[flying_monkeys]

134. Chilling story

but beautifully told. Now you have me wondering whatever happened to Andre, too....


(You have quite a way with writing!)

[lazyriver]

143. I don't remember how to spell his last name or

I'd probably be doing some searching to try to track him down. Now that I'm thinking about him again, I really want to find out how and where he is. It's a long German last name that didn't sound anything like it was spelled.

Makes me wish I hadn't lost my old yearbook. Oh, maybe I can get my sister to find one in the HS library!

Thanks for the compliment. :)

[foo_bar]

186. is Mutually Assured Dodgeball an NJ thing?

I guess it had to do with the low teacher to student ratio or preparation for Fort Dix. I actually looked forward to rainy days because it meant less time running in circles and doing push-ups, not that we didn't do plenty of that indoors too (I guess it had to be raining and a Friday to justify anarchy smash ball).

[Occulus]

135. My worst story?

School doesn't cover it for me. My whole childhood and early adulthood, right up to when I was forced out of college by my parents, was an experience in being bullied to one degree or another.

I grew up thinking I couldn't do anything right, and saw other kids with this or that talent succeeding at things I just wasn't suited for. When I tried (sports, for example), I was too uncoordinated to be much use on a team; that, and I just idn't like sports. That didn't exactly earn me any friends; being shy and sensitive helped even less... but my parents, for their part, told me to "ignore it and it'll go away". Well, it didn't; trying to ignore them only made it worse, and the old saw about bullies getting bored isn't always true: some bullies will keep at it until they get a reaction, no matter what. If I could go back and tell myself one thing, it would be to feed a fist sandwich to certain, select inividuals.

Well, years passed, and I became the kid that the bullied kids picked on. I had zero self-confidence and nearly zero self-esteem; by the time I was in fifth grade, I was starting to just not want to live any more. Then I figured out I was talented in music (keep in mind this little story as you read: I came home from school one day in fifth grade, on a day the band director came in to test us all for musical aptitude, to see if we might like to try being in band. He told me- and I told my mom- that I seemed to be good enough to pick up and play whichever instrument I wanted to; her response when I related this to her was "I'm sure he says that to all the kids."). For about nine years, music was the only thing that kept me from thinking I was useless, that I didn't have anything to offer. I was better than good; I was in choir, band, jazz band, various auditioned ensembles for high school students, played percussion instruments on the side, and when I was 19 marched with the Madison Scouts DCI corps. Of course, because it was music and not sports, I got teased even more, but I took satisfaction in the fact that, fifty years hence, I would still be playing oboe and piano, but the jocks wouldn't be playing anything. The bullying was quickly losing its effect! For the first time in my life, I felt pretty good about myself. I was happy.

I found out just how big of bullies my own parents were when turned 16 and was thus old enough to get a job. My mom was the worst- trying to take posession of my paycheck while I was at work, constantly harping on me to "get more hours", volunteering me to go in on my day off when I was out of the house (I was out riding my bike a few miles away), and she actually chased me down in her car! My parents would also talk about me in my presence, as if I were some sort of thing, an 'it', and not a person.

Keep in mind that as a very active musician a "steady job" at McD's was the very very very last thing I needed. What they couldn't figure out was that what I was doing was going to turn into not just a job, but a lifelong career. "A steady job" working with a nametag on my shirt was only going to witheringly inhibit me, and I tried to communicate that. But someone just wasn't hearing what I had to say...

My mom found out I was gay while my father was out of town. This was after several years of shivering fear 1) that I was and 2) that they would find out. At the age of 14, my mom told me that that would be the only thing that would really disappoint her, so I was desperate to keep it secret.

She threw me out literally into the rain that night, and I just wasn't prepared for it and had nowhere to go. Life kind of fell apart for me after that, and a year later, my grades had dropped over a full point and I was skipping or missing classes. That was enough for my parents to decide I wasn't worth supporting any longer (their words), and I had to leave school because they stopped helping me pay for it, knowing I was unprepared (that was part of the punishment). Not only that, but they (I've very sure, deliberately) timed the decision so that financial aid from the school or the state was dried up for the year. The timing of their decision is what truly forced me to leave, although I don't know if I was thinking clearly enough at the time to have taken advantage of available help.

By that point, I was very stupidly living with them at the time again, and I had to get a full-time job or get out (again, their words). I should have left and never looked back. Instead I abandoned music for a job I bitterly hate... because I was bullied into living my life their way.

But the sick part is, all this changed me. I later found out that they both knew exactly what my talents were by the time I was five years old. They saw me being miserable. They just didn't care. They knew, without a doubt, exactly what would have made me a happy child who would become a successful adult, and they deliberately and with malice aforethought withheld that.

My mom bullies me to this day. She gave me an IOU to get the piano (which I paid for half of, at 14 or 15 years old, I think, but for which they refused lessons; she once threatened to slam the lid shut on my fingers if didn't stop playing during her soaps) tuned in lieu of a birthday gift. Not only has she not done so, but to this very day flatly refuses to make good on it until I move it into my apartment- which she knows I can't do because I can't afford to move the thing every time I move into a new place, which is every few years or so.

Oh, and I read too much and I'm too smart.

(For my father's part, what can I say? He let most of it happen, participated occasionally himself, and intimidated me into cowed silence more times than I want to try to remember. He didn't mention mom kicking me out, ever. He took what he thought about it all with him to his grave.)

Today? Well, I was once able to get up in front of thousands of people and perform well and not bat an eye. I used to be a fairly proficient oboist, and despite never getting piano lessons, I once taught myself portions of the "Rhapsody in Blue" piano reduction, wrote my own scores often, etc., and etc.

I don't even want to do any of those things any more. It's too painful. It might be the talent I was born with, but truthfully- I'm shamed I ever even tried. I deeply regret spending the time on it I did. Every time I even think about what it was like to be on stage or in a band or orchestra in oncert my heart cracks into a thousand pieces and I'm likely to break down in sobs if I think on it too hard. I wish I hadn't ever done any of it because then I would only have the pain of my parents kicking me out for being gay; I wouldn't also have to live with having the career I was basically born to do pulled out from under my feet before I could get more than a taste of what it would be like. And that's the real pain, in that regard: I know exactly what I'm missing.

I feel like they broke me.

[flying_monkeys]

137. I am so sorry they did that to you.

But know what? They can *never* take that talent away from you - - ever. And even if it has been delayed some years, that talent is still inside you, waiting to be tapped. Music will give you joy again, kgfnally, I am sure it will - - it is just waiting for you to tap into it again. I urge you to remember the band leader's words from all those years ago - - you are "good enough to pick up and play whichever instrument" you want to - - and that means perhaps you express yourself on an instrument other than a piano *for now*.

Think about it, and I am so sorry your parents were not very good ones.


(And I assure you, the band leader didn't say that to MOST of the kids that day. On the contrary, some of us were gently told that perhaps we should retire our attempts :) )

[renate]

138. don't regret spending that time...

... your music was your soul expressing itself. It gave you happiness and a break from your worries at a time when other parts of your life were difficult. You needed it.

Someday when you're ready you may pick your instruments up again. It's painful now, but that doesn't mean you have to give them up forever.

I knew someone who (as far as I know) didn't have the dysfunctional family you did but who just put off her musical goals for financial reasons, but later in life, when she had more financial choices and more free time, took classes in cabaret singing and started performing. (In fact, I lost track of her when she left her job for one that gave her more time to sing. I don't know whether she made money at it, but she loved it and it gave her joy.)

Your parents may have broken you (they sound pretty broken themselves), but over time (you are obviously a strong person, having endured what you have) you will put your life back together. It may or may not include music, whether you do it professionally or just for the love of it. It's bad enough that your parents took that away from you for even a while--it'd be such a shame if they were allowed to take that away from you forever.

[ropi]

145. my story---posted on the other..but...

My story:

It seems that when I begin to write this story that the locker colors in my high school are most vivid. Why would I even associate the pain I felt during school with locker colors? It’s because each hall had a specific color to designate grade level.

Green:

It is 7th grade year. I am 12. I am scared because all summer I had heard stories of lockers getting stacked and books falling on your head. I have heard tales of many persons being jumped in the restrooms for lunch money. I don’t know if these stories are true or not, but I do know that I am frightened and I really don’t want to be harmed.

On the first day of school it has become apparent to me that in spite of my fear of lockers being stacked, there is something else waiting for me. All the rumors from elementary school have followed me across the parking lot. They have passed through the doors of the high school and down the hallway. On my locker is written the word ‘fag’. It was the first day of school. I only came to discover later that this new name, this word, this mark of shame was to define me for the next 5 years.

I quickly learned not to cross into the main school hallway as if I did I would be fair game for bullying. I learned this during second hour. Jock alley, as it was known, was a main passing hallway to other parts of the school. This is where the finest and the most popular gentlemen hung out. As I was new and young, my name had already traveled across the lot and to my locker, it was only a matter of time before I learned how it would hurt.

Since I didn’t have many friends at that time, I walked alone into the hallway. The normal chatter and banter silenced and I felt eyes turning towards me. This silence, which seemed to last forever, was finally broken with the hissing sound of the word ‘Faggot’. It became louder and louder as each ‘jock’, from grades 7-12 who stood there, chanted it. I recall turning red and keeping my head down. It was then that I realized there was no escaping.

Lunch hours became worse as no one would sit with me. I arrived in the lunch room and sat alone—which was how it was to be for the next 5 years. I recall walking and asking others in my grade, who were once friends, if I could sit with them. The answer was “no”. I finally found a place by myself at a far table. I ate with my head down and never faced anyone.

September turned to December, which turned eventually to May—the year became progressively worse. I realized that being quiet was my only defense. I learned to not smile. I learned not to speak up. I developed a nervous tic of pulling my clothing, which was mimicked.

The word written on my locker followed me all year—I learned that by showing no emotion, showing no reaction only exacerbated the situation. Once I spoke up to defend myself, and when I did find my voice, which had not changed yet as I was still only 12, I was immediately dubbed Fag-Smurfette. I learned that if I had to speak up in class that the only way I could do it was if I could whisper, so I spoke in a barely audible fashion until teachers gave up on calling on me. . . all that was green turned to grey afterwards.

Grey:

8th grade year was no better. By this time the rumors of my perceived gayness, my perverted state, my illness, had traversed the parking lot and had infiltrated the grade school. In the green hall fresh new voices added to the choruses of the older students. I became more and more an object of ridicule as the younger students realized by bullying me that they were free of the bullying.

In the grey hallway I had a locker. F-A-G did not meet me on the first day. But a few months later, someone nearby had memorized my locker combination and my locker was opened during the day. When I went to open it between classes-- the disposable bags from the girl’s bathrooms had been smeared across the inside of my locker, on my coat, on my books. Tampons and pads from the machines had been stuck and hung to all hooks inside and a note was placed in my locker. It read: “Here fag, you want to be a woman so much—you can start by learning to use these.” I remember standing there trying not to cry. Teachers were in the hallway. They saw what was falling out of my locker. Finally one came up to me and without a word she grabbed the items and helped me clean them out. She said nothing to me. She said nothing to the kids who were standing around laughing. She only went through the motions of cleaning things up.

Two days later scratched into my locker door was written the words “We kill people like you” and “The KKK is here to stay-Die Gay!”

Things were no better than the previous year. I ate alone. I walked with my head down. Grey turned to Pink and I became a freshman.

Pink:

Freshman year started off with a parent protest of my presence at the bus-stop. It was brought up to the school board that some parents did not want me to be on the bus as I may molest their children. My mother and father, who knew that something was wrong, learned of this later when I was asked by the bus driver not to remain on his route. For six weeks my mom drove me to school until a new bus could be found for me to ride. However, the same sort of protest arose. For two weeks I had to ride in the front of this bus with the Superintendent sitting beside me. The bus driver was then instructed to have me sit in the front seat closest to him. I could tell that he was not happy with my presence on his route.

High school gym was painful. For some reason the new rumors of me possibly being a molester had become so bad that I was told by the gym teachers to change my clothing in the stalls as other students complained that I looked at them while they were changing. How could I? All I remember is the gym locker room floor, the dirty color of the lockers, the rancid scent of cheap cologne and deodorant. I never looked at anyone because I learned 2 years before this that if I did I’d be ridiculed or punched.

I’d sit in study hall and read rhymes about me on desks. I’d read how I was gay and going to die of aids. I’d read on the desk not to sit there because during 5th hour I sat in that desk. I don’t know if anyone heeded the warning. I only remember sitting there with my face down trying to read and hoping that no one would see me.

The word that was written two years earlier on my locker was already branded on my forehead. I walked with it branded on my back. I felt the sting of it from younger and younger kids as more and more parents and older siblings instructed the younger ones of how evil I was.

Eventually the color pink changed to yellow. It was no better.

Yellow—

There may be once bright moment to be associated with this bright color as a new teacher who was extremely compassionate wrote a note on my paper one afternoon. She must have heard the taunting and known that it went on—she wrote to me “Promise me that you will not let them crush your soul”. It was too late. They had done it. What little bit of soul I had did lighten though. At least someone saw the pain. She never encouraged me to speak in her class. As usual, I kept quiet as I was afraid of my voice—afraid that I may sound feminine. I didn’t even know that my voice had changed so much from that time in 7th grade. It didn’t matter. If I did speak when I was called upon it was still in a quiet whisper. My head was always down.

Sophomore year was more of the same. New generations added to the now familiar litany of gay, fag, homo, molester, pervert—I had a more colorful life than I could imagine as every story of my sexual preferences, every possible sexual thing I had ever done (hell, I was still a virgin when I was 27), was told over and over again. Looking back, I had no idea how vivid their imaginations were. I’d suffer attacks on the bus—as I was told by the bus driver that I could no longer sit in the front as he was implementing a new system and I’d have to buck up and be a man. In the back I’d be taunted—I didn’t fight. I would close my eyes and imagine that I was not there.

Dark Grey.

AIDS. “I hope you die of AIDs! You will not live past thirty and I will laugh at your death, Aids”. My new name became AIDs. Mike and his girlfriend, Diane, who were both so very much the epitome of Christian Children, would remind me every morning of how I was going to die of Aids because that’s what God gave fags. They would hiss this at me as I’d get my books. I’d pray that the bus would arrive earlier to school. If it did, I’d not have to hear their words—but more than often it didn’t and for 180 days—that was my welcome every morning. Of course there were variations.

By this time my name was so well known that even younger kids, as young as elementary school began to add to the chorus that I heard in the halls. Fed up with having to protect me, the bus driver did nothing to keep the chants from occurring when I entered the bus every morning. I guess, however, it did get out of hand when I was told one after noon that I would not be riding bus 17 anymore, but bus 19. The collective cheer of each voice on the bus was my last memory. They were rid of me. They were rid of the pervert, the gay, the molester, the fag, the guy who would die of Aids.

By this time I had no social skills. I had no dates. I had no friends. I walked alone. My own brother, who was two years younger than me, would not walk to the bus stop with me. He was allowed to remain on bus 17. I was shuttled to bus 19 and it was more of the same. He did not support me when I went to explain to my parents why I had to walk 2 blocks down and they said I was blowing it out of proportion. (It was not until a few years ago, when I finally had a major breakdown that my parents apologized and they realized it was worse than they thought).

Bus 19 was worse than all. It was there that I learned that I had to sit on the floor as no one would let me sit with them. I went to complain and the bus driver told me I was lying. I went to complain at the office and the bus driver was called in and I was told once again I was lying. To prove to them that I did sit in a seat, the principal rode for two days with me. I was allowed to sit on a seat then. When he left, I had to sit on the floor. How the bus driver got away with that—it’s so against the law—but this was in a small rural area—he just let it slide. The bus driver, being a devout Baptist that he was, told me that he didn’t want me to sit in the front with the younger kids as he heard I was a molester—a fag—and he would not have them in danger.

I learned to squat to make it appear that I was seated so he could drive the bus later when another complaint was raised.

My senior year was no better. I had senior photos done. I begged my parents not to buy them as I hated the thought of having my photo placed in the yearbook. They purchased some for family members and for me to give to friends. Hell, I still have the box of wallet sized ones. I was not asked for one by anyone. The year was marked by nothing special. There were no dates. There was no prom. There was nothing-only torture of the same magnitude. During graduation ceremony when my name was called there was a hush and a ripple of giggles in the audience. I wanted to cry. Even more, I wanted to cry for my parents who didn’t know why there was a collective bit of giggling from the audience.

Did I want to strike out? Did I wish death on all of them? Yes. Did I strike out? No. I went deeper and deeper inside.

Many years later—after therapy—I got over my nervous tic and there are time when I still clear my throat before talking. I don’t trust many people as I saw the ugliness beyond imagination in human nature. I barely spoke a word during those times—even now it’s hard to write all of this.

I wish I could have written this narrative better. I wish there was a way to give it some of the pain I felt so the reader would understand.

[renate]

146. those emotionally crippled people tried to cripple you

Maybe they succeeded for a time, but at least you got through it, and got therapy. I doubt many of them got therapy to help them get over their cruelty.

You did an amazing job of writing that--not that anybody who hasn't lived through it could fully comprehend what years of that kind of ostracism can do to a person, but I can picture you in all those situations and my heart aches. Thank goodness those years are over now and you're away from those hateful, ignorant people. You made it.

I can't tell whether you think the teacher who helped you with your locker without speaking was good or not. For whatever it's worth (and maybe out of all those years of cruelty, one additional gesture of kindness would be huge), it sounded to me as though she meant to be supportive. If I were in her position I'd do exactly the same thing. Lecturing the people around you while they were in that mob mentality would have made your situation even worse (if possible), and comforting you in front of everybody would have done that too. She may have felt that if you'd started to say one word in reply to anything she'd have said, you'd have busted out crying (who wouldn't?) instead of maintaining your composure. So perhaps there were two acts of kindness from teachers, not just one. Or maybe not, of course; I don't want to give her credit if it's not due.

I wonder how many of the kids who tormented you were gay themselves. Maybe some of them bitterly regret the pain they caused you. And many some of the rest regret it too.

You are so strong, to protect your parents from this and to go through so many years of pain without anybody protecting you. Not that your strength makes it okay for all this to have happened--you paid too high a price for that strength. But at least now it's yours, and you're away from those people.

:hug:

[ropi]

147. yeah...

you're right..

i think her silence and help was a way of protecting. going back to those memories are difficult.

thank you for pointing out how her help was indeed kindness.

----

ironically, i am not away from those people. after a bit of a crack up because of this i had no where to go and i 'went back home' to my parents--same town--same people. i keep to myself, but after having written this i see it's time to get out.

[orleans]

187. i am so sorry all this happened to you.

it never ceases to amaze me that adults can put up with/allow/condone this type of behavior especially when it is directed at kids (even when the behavior is from other kids).

i'm afraid if i had been that teacher my response would not have been so calm. (maybe she was a young teacher, new, old, too aware of the indifference of the administration, a victim of domestic violence, or quickly assessing the situation decided it was best to handle it this way, who knows?) but i imagine my initial reaction would have been a bit more hysterical: i would have turned on the kids standing around laughing and demanded to know who had done it, taken everyone's name, sent them all to the dean's office, and made a big deal out of it--parents would have been called, suspensions handed out, appointments to the school social worker would have been made.

i don't understand how this is tolerated or overlooked by school authorities. i've never understood that.

(my best friend decided, years ago, he had had enough of the suburban mentality--the "looks", the remarks, the whispers, the attitude, the fact that everyone is so "tight-assed"--and moved to the city where he is surrounded by a different mindset.)

and btw--you wrote your "narrative" very well. (but i have to ask...green, grey, pink, yellow, dark grey...and what? what was the senior color? see, that's how involved i was with the detail of your story...i'm missing that last color)

and how is everything going for you now? is it ok? i sincerely hope so.

[EnviroBat]

144. I hope I don't come across as offensinve...

but your parents sound like some real fuckers. Holistic coaching has shown me the way out of the crap that my folks layered on me. I'm still trying to do the music thing, but as far as I'm concerned, they never supported it when I was young, and it was the only thing I was good at. I struggle to keep an original rock band working now, and from time to time, my mother asks me about it, fains interest or whatever. My biological father loves the fact that I still play, but he never seems to get around to attempting a relationship with me. I've been fortunate to hook up with a Holistic Guru here in town, and he really puts things in perspective for me. I'm not trying to parent my parents anymore, and huge weight has been lifted from my shoulders.

[EnviroBat]

140. Every day for a period of time a kid named Chuck...

Would chase me home from school, tackle me in some yard, rip my boots off of my feet and run down the street with them. I'd have to chase after him through the snow in my socks. He'd eventually throw them in the street and I would get them back, but this went on for weeks. I would come in from the cold, crying and cussing like a miniature sailor. Man I was pissed! I even solicited the help of this really big kid to keep Chuck away from me, but that didn't work for very long. Chuck would run up the street and hide between some houses. The big kid, (I can't remember his name) and I would have to walk different paths at a certain point in the journey, and we would part ways. After he was gone, well, that's when Chuck would attack me from outta nowhere, and the penalty would be worse.

I always was a little kid, I was scrawny back then, and I weighed all of 60 pounds. A childhood illness kept me small back then, but I'm bigger now, sometimes a little too big. One day, I'd had enough of Chuck, so I loaded up the book-bag with as many hard-cover text books as it would carry, and I waited... With the prowess of a Native American hunter I waited and listened. I listened for the tell-tail crunching of footsteps through the deep snow as Chuck closed in on me for his daily attack. When I felt he was close enough I swung the book bag with all of the strength I could gather, and with surgical precision, connected with Chuck's dumbfounded face. An explosion of crimson droplets dotted the blinding white snow where he fell, and man did he fall. Like Tyson himself had delivered the deathblow, Chuck fell to the ground screaming and gripping at his face in a desperate attempt to hold the pieces together. Two days later the damage assessment could be made. In one heroic "David vs Goliath" swing, I had managed to bust his lips open, knock 1 tooth completely out while loosening some others, bloody his nose, and blacken his left eye. As you can imagine some questions were asked, but Chuck admitted to picking on me! Not long after that Chuck became one of my best friends, and we remained friends until I moved away.

Maybe there's a moral to this tale, or maybe I was just lucky...

[Little Wing]

142. Alec Baldwin called me a thoughtless pig

[nolabels]

148. Depends what time of the day you ask me

Life is a challenge and most everybody knows it was never going to be easy.

Every and any institution of society had failed that kid. I am only surprised people found it shocking what had happened. The idea of 'what don't kill you will make you stronger' has played out the proverb here. Grow up people, we only have ourselves to blame

[mdmc]

151. A kid that was on a ski trip with me killed himself due to bullying

:kick:

[Samurai_Writer]

152. I was constantly bullied from Kindergarten to 10th grade

I was very tall for my age (a head taller than everyone in my class). I also was very dark-skinned (even though I come from a 'white' family) and went to an all-white school and lived in an all-white neighborhood. Then, in 5th grade, I developed scoliosis and had to wear a Milwaukee brace for five years, like this one:



I reached puberty in 4th grade, so that didn't help matters, either.

One of my earliest memories is being called the "N" word by some neighborhood kids, and going home and crying to my dad about it. Everyone thought I was adopted, because all my siblings were fair-skinned and I was very dark-skinned, especially in the summer.

When I started school, I got constantly teased and bullied because I looked different from everyone else, and I was shy. Then when I hit puberty so young, it made it even worse. My nickname from 5th grade and onwards was 'Hips' because I had a 24 inch waist and 37 inch hips at 5'10". I weighed 120 pounds at the time, so it wasn't fat... just genetics. All the women in my family have wide hips.

Also in 5th grade, I had to wear this monstrous back brace. I couldn't do a lot of things in it (no PE, but I hated PE anyway). I got teased a lot because of it.

The worst year was probably 9th grade. I was in a new town and in a new school. For some reason, the kids at that school just hated me. Every day I tried to get out of school, it was so hellish. I skipped a lot, I didn't care if I got in trouble with my parents because of it. Luckily, the next year we moved and from 10th grade on, the teasing wasn't as bad.

There were only two times I fought back. Once was when I first got my back brace. It was dark outside, and these guys from the neighborhood came up, harrassing me. I told them if they wanted to beat me up, just hit me in the stomach as hard as they could. They couldn't see the brace I had on, which had a steel plate on top of the leather part that covered the abdomen. The one guy hit me and almost broke his hand. I can still remember him, saying in disbelief, "She's got something on under there!" and the other guys not believing him.

The second time was in 10th grade. I was riding the bus, and these guys always called me "Hips". As a tall, awkward, shy girl with low self esteem, it really got to me. Especially the way they said it, making sure everyone heard, of course. Well, one of the guys did it one time too many, and I went to the back of the bus and decked him. They didn't call me anything after that.

It took me a long time to get over the low self esteem and lack of self confidence that occurred because of the years of bullying.

[nicknameless]

153. The largest resource regarding bullying:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x715933

[meldroc]

155. Slashdot has quite a few horror stories.

Voices From The Hellmouth
More Stories From The Hellmouth

That's just to start. Search Slashdot and you'll see quite a few more.

[noonwitch]

156. I was bullied, but I witnessed someone else being bullied much worse

I probably posted this before, but when I was in 8th grade, I joined the track team to get some exercise. As a group, me and my friends and the boys from our neighborhood walked home together afterwards. There was a high school guy who waited every day for us to walk by so he could pick on one kid in our group-a popular, good-looking kid, no less. The bully was a burn-out. The kid never fought back-he was a devout christian even in 8th grade and said that Jesus taught us to turn the other cheek. Trust me, the burn-out could have been in trouble had his target let his friends handle the matter-2 of the guys who played hockey also walked home with us, and would beg their friend to let them take care of the situation. He would tell them that if they did, they would sink to the same level as the bully. When you think about it, it is kind of amazing that a 13 or 14 year old had that kind of moral clarity.

Every day for a week, the burn-out would beat the crap out of this kid while we all stood and watched, because he asked us not to interfere. It was awful to watch, but eventually the school found out what was happening and it stopped.

I ended up really respecting the bullied kid for the example he set. Prior to this, I had always thought he was handsome and conceited. I was wrong about the second part.

[dsc]

160. tough and gutsy kid I wish I had had his courage back when I was his age.

[nonconformist]

157. Jr High was hell. I was jumped one day by a group of girls that had been tormenting me

They pushed me down on the ice and broke my left arm.

NOTHING was done about it. NOTHING. The school blew it off, as did the police (my mother called them).

That was definitely the worst bullying I ever experienced. There was some minor stuff in elementary school, but nothing too awful bad and nothing physical. I used to get shit then because I lived with my grandparents and my father wasn't in my life then. I remember being called "illegitimate" once, and I didn't understand what it meant... I had to go home and ask. Clearly, a kid was just repeating what they heard their parents saying. I was also called some Italian slurs - again, I chalk this up to repeating because we were young.

Thankfully for me, after Jr. High everything was fine. I never had any more problems.

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

163. Shot At With Dartguns, Loaded Guns Put In My Face, Grenades In My Mouth, Military Knives Against My

throat, held down with my nose held so they could shove or spit whatever they wanted into my mouth, spontaneous merciless beatings, piss on my pillow, fish killed from my fish tank and put on my pillow, head held underwater repeatedly thinking I was about to drown, attempted murder through use of the cyanide in peach pits and quite a few other things I'm too impatient to remember right now. Gotta love having two torturous older brothers.

Made me a total psychotic for quite some time. I'm much better now though. :evilgrin:

But if anyone wants to know why I can be such a prick sometimes, you can start there LOL

[dsc]

166. damn I thought my brother was a bastard

I just can't imagine have your own brothers doing that kind of crap to you. I am glad you survived.

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

168. Me Too. Thanfully Though, No Sexual Abuse. But The Same Can't Be Said For My Sister,

who did suffer such fate at their hands. I'd say I got off easy.

[dsc]

169. I wouldn't go that far

but I do hope those people are in a jail somewhere.

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

170. Nope.

One has the cleanest record one could have and is now a Chiropractor in Florida. The other has spent a few days here and there for being caught driving while with a suspended license, but that's it.

But this was a longggggggg time ago. They're in their mid to upper thirties now. The abuse on me took place between the time I was 7 or so to 16 and my sister when she was between 8 and 10 I think. They are 1 1/2 and 3 years older than I am and 4 - 5 years older than my sis. We've all long put the past behind us, though the effects of the past will undoubtedly linger within us in certain ways forever; especially my sis. But we had a really weird and dysfunctional childhood. So different than can be classified by stereotype. Just a weird psychologically fucked up family. (For instance, closest they came to getting in trouble was when I was 12 and went to a friend with deep concerns about what they did to my sis. My friend reported them to DYFS. DYFS came and everyone lied, and my mother proceed to yell at me and ground me for ever opening my mouth to somebody)

[dsc]

171. wow simply wow

I hope you are OK. I feel so badly for you. I hope your sister is OK too.

[Johnny Appleseed]

164. too many to count

I was real tall but extremely thin and couldn't really fight back. That was then this is now... now I'd kick their asses, but I'm all grown up so can't. I think I've gained seriously about 60 pounds since high school, and none of it is fat.

[happydreams]

173. Creative ways of dealing with bullies.

For some reason me and some buds who were bullied in this rough suburb of DC got back at them with some pretty creative tactics: Planting rumors, and graffiti about them so that their girlfriends would see it, etc. I remember one time sitting in the woods near a "lovers lane" hotspot and a notorious bully ended up there with his date. We sat there in the dark a good ways off were he couldn't see uscalling him names: "who have you fucked lately!" "Can we watch you now you fucking asshole!!?". That speal blew his top, he started rampaging through the woods after us, but we had a big lead on him as well as being more nimble and having our escape route planned out. He was stumbling around screaming like a madman and ended up falling in a creek. I'll never forget the rush me and my buds had from this, fucking laughing for years. We then started doing it in broad daylight from a distance where the bully or thug couldn't see us.

The first bully I mentioned was never seen with that girl again. :bounce:

[july302001]

176. my experiences

Every day during 7th and 8th grade, and especially constantly in the class of a history teacher who did not care at all about challenging the class or discussing the subject matter.

There was one very special teacher named Ms. Silberman who took me aside and told me that she understood what was going on in my life. It's really a shame, but she was killed in a motorcycle accident the following summer.

Frequently (every day, mainly between classes) during high school.

I was a good student and I deliberately graduated high school a year early to get away from this atmosphere.

The schools involved were in California and are in the lower percentile ranks for academic standards.

I had a very tough time trying to pass calculus and chemistry in college because I did not have the proper study habits, which weren't needed in the mickey-mouse schools in my hometown.

I left the state where I grew up and have absolutely zero loyalty to my hometown, largely because of the bullying.

[RayOfHope]

177. Guy that sat behind me in 9th grade history abused me every day

He regularly put me in choke holds and a couple of times singed my (big 80s hair) with a lighter. When he wasn't physically abusing me, he was verbally abusing me. He did it while the teacher was out of the room.

When I tried to tell the teacher about it, she told me that if I wouldn't keep talking and flirting with him (I was doing NO such thing) he would leave me alone. She was insinuating I was bringing it on myself. She wouldn't even change my seating assignment. When I started spending lunch in the bathroom to avoid this boy, she gave me a detention.

I was sexually harassed plenty of times during high school. Every day I would get groped in the hallways while changing classes. The girls in my class were dating these boys, and when I started avoiding those girls because of it, I was labeled a bitch and pretty much shunned.

High school was miserable and I wouldn't re-live it again for all the money in the world.

[Deja Q]

178. Revenge is pointless.

Especially these days; killing people has always been an abhorrence, but these days ignoring them and letting them live is far worse a form of revenge.

Besides, with offshoring, maybe Cho did those 32 people a favor. :cry:

[nolies32fouettes]

180. I won't share my full story, or even the worst... its just a bit painful...

I've had a varied education. Public elementary school, homeschool through middle school, charter high school.

I was ruitinely beaten. I got my first death threat when I was i think 7 or 8. A number of times, the boys who hated me so much actually tried to make good on that threat. I still have nightmares and wake up with my throat muscles closing, and the feeling of being strangled. This kept right up until I was removed for homeschooling, though my parents never knew the extent of what i went through.. My best friend through this time(well, my ONLY friend...) was a somewhat overweight girl who thought herself a great deal more hip than me, but was teased for her weight. She fought so hard to fit in though, half the time she wasn't my friend, and would chase me around with a dirty sock dipped in a mud puddle and filled with gravel from the playground, until the boys caught me..

homeschooling was calm, did classes with groups, to be "socialized" But i never really made any true friends, because i knew none of them could understand, and i still had my survival mechanism in place-namely dissociation, and an inability to even TRY to talk to people.

High school, I was ridden with depression and anxiety, though no diagnosed disorders in that area. Official diagnosis was bipolar. Had a couple of bad episodes, that convinced everyone in my school that i was dangerous, and these children refused to say a single word to me through my entire four years. That didn't stop them from talking about me behind my back. In the end, such disgusting rumors were being said about me, my sexuality/sexual life, etc. that my mom complained to the Dean, and i believe at least one of the ringleaders was threatened with expulsion. Still did't help make me ANY more comfortable around people, and i got my first REAL friends in my senior year of high school, and they were older. I still talk with one.


nowadays, no teacher wants to use discipline when a student is bullied. The standard excuses I heard were to "ignore them and they'll go away" or to excuse the other students behavior as being "from a bad background" or to say "kids will be kids"


We're now seeing that this DOESN'T CUT IT.

[RFKHumphreyObama]

181. I am an Asian with a disability and a speech impediment

The last year of primary school and the first two years of high school were not the best yearsof my life. I was ostracized by a considerable proportion of kids in my year who made fun of me and even my best friend was reluctant to be seen with me or to be seen being friendly to me and made fun of me behind my back. When confronted, the bullies lied to the deputy headmaster and threatened to go to the school counsellor and tell them lies about me

The last two years of high school were much better though -most of the bullies had left high school and the one remaining became nice to me. Two years later we even enjoyed lunch and a beer at university together

[KoKo]

185. I had bullies...but SOME became my friends.........what does that say?

I don't know.......