My 6th grade teacher, Miss Mary McCarthy, gave our class a lesson on bullies and recounted how a student (grand father of a current class member) had tamed a bully with a suitable stick. She encouraged such activity.
It is good advice!
For me, I had to get to the point where any pain or blood that might be incurred in a potential ass-kicking of me was fully overcome by the anger and embarrassment at being picked on.
To just pick up the stick (or, as my mother would implore me, to “sit on him”) would have been a leap for me, but...it would have learned me that lesson quicker!