Bullies.

Second through 8th grades were one long scream for me. It began when I moved into what became my permanent school district, and for some reason they started me in a learning disability classroom, then transferred me to a "normal" one and the rest of the kids commenced bullying me for being "retarded", even though I read on a much higher level than eny of them. My mother used to believe the bullies over me, and got mad when she could not get my father to beat me some more, to punish me for, for example, my new coat getting torn by bullies. Whenever I got beat up, the question at home was, "What did you do to make them hit you?"

The culmination was in 8th grade when I got beaten to a pulp by three bullies, and suspended from school for "fighting" (the bullies were not suspended), and further punished by my parents. The teacher who directed the school play had to intervene and explain to my mother that punishing me by pulling me out of the play would harm the other kids who needed me in the play. Out of respect for the rest of the cast, not for me, my parents allowed me to continue in the play.

That was the most horrible part: My own parents taking the side of the bullies over me. I had no safe place to turn. Not home, not school, not anywhere. The last few weeks of 8th grade, I pretty much hid as much as possible, blew off class, blew off assignments, put a shell over myself and didn’t come out, was rude to teachers. I was on a path that could have led me to suicide or murder and prison, or just dropping out and becoming discarded human litter. I know more knew why they didn’t try and make me repeat 8th grade than I knew why they had first put me in that special needs class all those years earlier. But I just moved on.

And also, there were times when I, desperate to win approval from somebody, sought out someone less popular than myself, and teased or bullied them, trying to be part of the gang that dished it out, so I wouldn’t have to be the one who took it. And that’s something I’m terribly ashamed of. Maybe there’s a bullying forum somewhere, where someone I picked on is going on about something I said or did to him that left a huge scar.

High school, the bullies ended up in different classes from mine, and I was left alone. For two years, other than plays, I pretty much did my schoolwork quietly and didn’t talk to people and looked forward to the arts camp in the summer when I wasn’t alienated.

Starting Junior year, the incoming Freshmen had never seen me except for admiring me in plays, and they thought it was great that an upperclassman would talk to them, and so I had friends. Joining the choir with them, and a couple of other clubs, had a lot to do with it.

One year when I was home from college, I read that one of the three bullies had shot and killed himself.

A couple of years later, one of the others—the biggest of them—shot and killed his father, who apparently had molested him all his life. There was a question whether he was mentally fit to stand trial for it. I never learned how the case came up.

The third one is still around. He’s on FaceBook, and is friends with some of my other friends from back then. Works in a service station or something. I shuddered a bit the first time I saw his name, but haven’t talked to the mutual friends about him. It’s just not something I feel like talking about with people who knew us then. Part of me maybe wonders if they might take his side today, or say, “Oh, that’s right—you were that retarded kid”, and unfriend me. (And thank you, Seanan, for talking about that absent library card: It kinda made me realize that I’m not pathetic for having these thoughts of mine).

My mother was odd. She took an interest in my school activities, became involved in the arts booster group for parents, even applied our stage make up in the shows. And she gave me expensive presents, so I knew she cared. But for most of my childhood and teenage years, she did things but never said words of praise or love. When I became an adult, we reached a sort of peace. And then she got dementia, and became helpless, and when my father died I took her under my wing and cared for her the best I could, dutifully, but always with some mixed feelings.

Seems to me, kids who bully do a lot of harm without knowing what they’re doing. Nether they nor their victims are done baking yet. I feel sorrow and solidarity for Phoebe, and yet I’m uncomfortable with the calls for manslaughter charges and prison sentences for the kids who participated in driving her to her death. I want those kids to learn from this, to grow, and to be accountable in a way that gives causes them real remorse and thought and the resolution to be better people. Put them in the criminal justice system now, and they’ll come out criminals for life.

The ones I want to see on trial are the teachers and administrators and maybe some parents, who knew what was happening, and who looked the other way or enabled the bullying. Because they are old enough to know better. Because their duty was to act in loco parentis. They were supposed to be protecting the children as if they were their own. They were supposed to supervise. They were supposed to make the school a smaller, more civilized, more perfect model society than the less perfect adult world on the outside. And they failed with, it seems to me, a criminal negligence.

These kids were more than average bullies. They threatened Phoebe's life. They slammed a girl's head into a locker for daring to talk to the press. They went to Phoebe's Facebook page after she killed herself and made fun of her, after they knew she was dead. They had no shame, no humanity. These kids absolutely deserve punishment for this - this is dangerous behavior that goes beyond "not old enough to know better". They were all in high school. That's damn well old enough.

I agree, parents and teachers are also cuplable, but these kids knew better and did it all anyway.

Every time I read stories like yours and Phoebe's, I count myself lucky that, though growing up the weird, frizzy kid with straight A's and no real friends, the kid who hid in the library as often as possible, I was spared a lot of the bullying I could've gotten. I've got my share of neuroses from the schoolyard, but they're relatively mild—mostly I won't wear skirts and I make sure everyone knows it's "not my fault". I'm pretty sure most of my anti-sports sentiments come from bullying or just lack of acceptance as well. I could tell stories….

Sometime at the start of high school I concluded that if everyone who harassed me was getting low grades, they weren't worth listening to. Not a perfect fix, but it got me through.

We do need to stop this culture. It's gone on too long, and most of the talk doesn't turn into effective action. We need to stop giving kids pat answers like, "Oh, ignore them. They'll go away", and come up with good answers instead.

And this is why I loved graduating from secondary school so much. Everybody was free to concentrate on things other than their studies... and of course some concentrated on bullying me. Thankfully no one ever had the stones to get further than extreme verbal abuse.

But destroying someone else's possessions- or loans- is just going too far. *BIG GROUP HUG AND ALSO ROCK CANDY*

Have any of you ever worked for a supervisor who was a bully?

I have. Twice. No physical violence, but lots and lots of borderline psychosis.

I will spare the details. The good news is I have 77 days of actual work before I'm retired, so it's almost over, and that knowledge makes me powerful.

I also have, and I didn't know my rights when the bad sh!te really started ramping up.

Hooray for T-minus 77 days of actual work!

AngelVixen :-)

I learned pretty early on that while my parents had my back, no one else did. I changed bus routes twice to avoid being beaten every day, and it didn't stop until I broke a 5th grader's nose. I was in 2nd grade.

My nose didn't get broken until high school - a group of girls around the water fountain. The one who hit me broke two knuckles on my jaw. Then I came back from the hospital and taught a tap-dance class.

And people wonder why I'm not terribly trusting and why I took up swordplay.

This is also why "Fractal Butterfly" always makes me weep.

*hug*

I'm so sorry, hon. I had a book or two wind up destroyed by class cut-ups and bullies, but..I had more resources than you did, both to make them answer for it and to get the books replaced. And at least they weren't library books.

Those girls were scum. And if you ever do decide to get a library card and I'm in town, I'd be happy to play moral support.

Emphatically seconded! Hell, we could probably arrange quite the entourage for you, if you want that library card again. Not that an entourage is likely to make you less nervous...

--Ember--

One of my friends put is very bluntly, ten years ago:

Bullying KILLS PEOPLE. Sometimes the victims kill themselves. And sometimes, they take out the entire class with them.

Columbine will happen again. Because we ARE NOT LISTENING.

word.

If I had known that Columbine was possible? That you could bring a gun to school and kill the bullies? I SO would have.

I still think there are some Jennifers, Amys, Jays and Jeffs that this world could do very well without.

Oh Seanan! *hugs and more hugs*

My ironic blessing was being held back a year, so I was bigger than all the kids expected me to BE the bully, and that set natural limits on what they would do to me.

I spent most of elementary school in the school library because I didn't have real friends, and, well, BOOKS. That was plenty bad enough.

I'm in tears just thinking about what you describe of your own experiences, much less what Phoebe Prince went through.

MAOW!

--Ember--

Going to university was wonderful - absolutely none of the kids who had been in any of my previous schools went to the same one as me and I could start again. And the bullying that I endured was depressing but on the scale of things not bad - something that it took me until I was quite a bit older and finding what some people had to endure to realise.

The long term effects on me fortunately stop at finding it hard to make enduring friends and a lack of internal confidence, taking criticism too easily to heart. So yeah, I got off easy but it's still there, still a part of me, still affecting the ways that I react today.

I have to wonder where all the adults are during this? Why isn't the school being held responsible for knowing about it and doing nothing? Why don't the other kids intervene? Adults and other children need to feel/be empowered to stop it.

It's infuriating that that poor kid thought (and maybe it was, which is even sadder) her only way to escape was to kill herself. Not only are the bullies themselves responsible, but so is the school, and so is everyone who stood by and watched it happen. "And then they came for me and by that time no one was left to speak up."

*hugs* to you and all of us who were and are tortured for being different.

Part of the reason we have my daughter in the school she attends is because we wanted to minimize her chances of facing the kind of bullying my husband and I faced as kids. Mine was mostly emotional, though his was the mixed emotional and physical. Between uniforms, higher behavioral expectations, a high percentage of gifted kids, and a very bullying-intolerant culture at her school, our bet seems to be paying off. I'm sure things won't be quite as rosy there in the middle school years (starting next year), but they will undoubtedly be better than at the other local schools. We really hope we can get our toddler into the same school when she hits first grade.

I was the weirdo growing up who was always reading (gee, there's a lot of us on Seanan's flist *chuckle*). I got my glasses in 5th grade, but they were never really an issue.

The middle school years were the worst for me, between the boys on the buses and the girls' social cliques. I don't think I would have survived high school if it weren't for being accepted to and attending a magnet high school. Between the bullying, general social atmosphere, and untreated bipolar disorder, I really doubt I would have managed at my base high school.

There was a girl in 6th grade who teased me because I wasn't wearing a bra yet. I had absolutely no need to, so of course I wasn't. Joke's on her. I'm an F cup now ;-)

Thank you for this! I'm sick beyond belief at all the people who say we're being "too politically correct," and "we're protecting children too much." Damnit, it's the JOB of adults to protect children.

I was going to say "great post" but this really should be called a "great essay" in my opinion. I also was bullied, not physically, but verbally bullied, had items stolen, defaced and destroyed. I was excluded socially and people took every opportunity to tell me that they were doing this. Being the fat, geeky kid sucks, and I still have nearly zero self-esteem because of it.

Delurking here, you struck a nerve with this post. Hi, I'm Alex.

I got teased mercilessly all through elementary school because I was the awkward kid who didn't care about having cool clothes and because I was smart (and a girl, but that's another rant). I can think of at least one teacher who could have stopped the bullying and didn't, instead blaming me for disrupting the class.

Fortunately, I was removed from that class shortly after by skipping grade 7 and finishing elementary school early. Reading through the comments here, I feel very very lucky that the teasing never advanced to physical violence, and I also feel horrible that there are so many people who've been affected so severely. Reading the link you posted nearly made me cry.

After high school I ended up studying engineering, which oddly enough was probably the best thing possible for me - suddenly there was no shame in being the geeky kid who liked math or science. Someday, I know I'm going to run into the girl who made my life a living hell, and I don't want to gloat, but I want to run into her JUST ONCE, and tell her how freakin' awesome my life got as soon as I moved far far away from her. And then I'm going to smile quietly and walk away, and go back to ignoring her existence completely.

Thank you for this, and I sincerely hope that you get your library card someday. :)

I was that kid too. Know how I won? I became a Librarian. If you were here I would take your hand and walk you to the library myself.

I do still hear their voices inside my nead, especially when I am overtired or depressed.

Things like this is why I want to clone myself - I was the one who protected the other kids from the bullies, and there aren't enough of us.

I know a five year old who protected the other kindergarteners from the 2nd grade bullies who were beating them up. Her grandparents (who raise her) got called into school because she was "fighting."

She did it again and again. The 2nd grade boys finally backed down.

I can't read most of the comments here because I'll start crying, but Jesus I can relate. When I tell people about dropping out of high school, I give them the easy answer. I was sick a lot and my mother needed someone to take care of her. What I don't tell them is that I don't regret it in the slightest, because escaping that hell-pit of bullying was one of the best things I've ever done for my sanity.

In some ways I was better off, because I I grew tall early on and was large enough that I wasn't physically threatened very often. In other ways, though, I got the short fucking end of the stick. I had two abusive stepfathers, one that almost killed me before I turned eight, and one for about a year when I was fifteen. No matter what time during my schooling I look back on, I was either recovering from severe physical and mental abuse, living with it every day, or being stalked by the person who did it. Add in chemical disorders in my brain, shake well.

And then I got to go to school, where the teachers didn't know and the students didn't care that I dressed differently because my only sense of self-worth at the time came from a subculture that accepted me for exactly who I was.

I can remember my English teacher almost crying when she told me to only raise my hand in her class a few times each day, and not to answer when someone else got it wrong. She could see all the hateful glances sent my way, and there was only so much she could do when the administration was convinced that I was a shooting waiting to happen. (I still remember you, Mrs. Norris, and I'm grateful for everything you did for me.)


The upshot to all this is that my experiences only served to make me even nicer to everyone I meet, because I know what it's like to have a hard life that doesn't show on your face, and I know just how much a few kind words can do.

I won't write you the story of my own experience with bullies; I know firsthand how tiring it is to read everyone else's accounts while trying to process personal stuff too. It's on offer here for anyone who wants to read it.

I just wanted to say that I am sorry those people did that to you, and so terribly sad for Phoebe, and she is not alone. Not alone. I've been stewing about this for days now. It hurts, you know? To know that these children are driven by such awful pain to take their own lives.

There's an absolutely hideous tendency of many adults to just assume that very young people don't feel that sort of pain, don't feel pain that acutely. It's horrible. It leads the people with power to ignore the suffering of those who rely upon them. And while I am not one of those people, while I KNOW how painful it is, I still feel guilty. As though I have failed. Even though I did not know these children, I feel that I have failed.

I am not by nature a person who says things like "things are so much worse now than when I was a child" and "these kids today" and so on, but this I wonder about. Is it just that we didn't hear these stories as kids, as younger adults? That the internet wasn't there to spread the knowledge past the victims' hometown? Is this more visibility, or are bullies getting worse?