I wish the older bullies that once beat me up, or others I knew, had gone to jail.
If I lived near these now “men,” I’d have to work hard to not torment them.
“I wish the older bullies that once beat me up, or others I knew, had gone to jail.”
Dude the only reason they did not is because back then they did not have cell phones with cameras and would be as STUPID enough to record their crimes and post them online.
Mind you had they had this technology they would have done just that and yes they would be in jail.
An older kid tormented me every time I walked home from elementary school. I had to go down a sidewalk that was fenced in on both sides and he lived in one of the houses next to the path.
One day, I saw his little brother (my age). I pushed him up against the fence and told him I was tired of his brother picking on me. From on that day on, I would do everything to him that his brother did to me. I told him to let his parents know.
The older brother never bothered me again.
While not mentioning any names or school location, there was a kid who played the part of bully to a T in my old school. Last 5ime I heard about him he got arrested for pedo crimes.
“… If I lived near these now “men,” I’d have to work hard to not torment them...”
I have out lived most of my childhood tormentors. Those still around are in poor health. Best revenge is to live well and be happy.
When I was ten a 15 year old bully used to terrorize me and my 9 year old brother. Then one day when my brother was about 21, he made the mistake of trying to bully him again. By that time my brother was much bigger than the bully and he beat the stuffings out of the bully.
I was bullied pretty fiercely when I was a kid. I was gawky and thin, always wore those black plastic glasses, which I believe, were bully magnets.
When I reached the age of 11-12, I really began to fight back because I was getting bigger, and after that, I didn’t get bullied much any more.
It caused me a lot of stress. When I was around eight, I had a kid a year older than me who waited for me every day when I walked to school. I dreaded the walk to school, and he was always there. He also had an airedale named Toby that would attack me as I walked by his house. So I had one eye out for the dog, and one for him. And he was almost always there.
Waiting.
Sometimes, he would just knock my books and lunch pay out of my hands, or whack me on the side of the head or kick me in the butt as I walked by. I remember often putting my lunchbox back together after the contents had been spilled onto the ground.
I would pick up the plaid thermos which had those replaceable glass insulator inserts into it, and would agitate it gently to hear the sad sound of the slurry of broken glass shards mixed into whatever my mother had placed in there for me.
She used to buy those glass thermos inserts three at a time (I think) and she would always admonish me when it came home broken and needed replacing. I never told her or anyone it was that kid, whose parents were kind of friends with my parents.
One of my brothers, who was a year older than me and the same age as the kid who picked on me while we lived there, had characterized himself at my wedding as he gave me the Best Man Toast as “The Freddy Kruger of my childhood”, which is not far from the truth.
But one day, in my very own front yard, that kid was holding me down by kneeling on top of me, and was doing that thing where he would hock up a big lugie and let it drip from his lips as they hovered over my face.
As I was pinioned to the ground by his weight, squirming and screeching but unable to break free from him, the disgusting glob of spit would descend slowly towards my face, then he would suck it back in and repeat the process. (I don’t recall ever having it land on my face...I probably blocked that out if it did!)
Funny thing was, I never knew this was a “thing” that kids did to other kids until I saw in a movie decades later. I always thought it was some special ritual developed only for me.
Well, that one day, as he was performing this form of torture, the string of spit going up and down, all of a sudden where his face was had been was replaced by blue sky and the branches of the tree above us.
My brother, who was a regular torturer of me, had come up behind the kid and, as a savior, had pulled him off of me and was beating the snot out of him. The kid never bothered me after that.
Years later, when my Freddie Kruger became one of my closest friends and I asked him about this incident, he sheepishly said something like “You were for ME to pick on, not some other kid.” He regrets it, but...that is part of growing up. He learned from his actions, and I learned from mine.
I am somehow in the mindset of being grateful for being bullied like that. I had to learn to stick up for myself, and also, it developed a deep dislike of seeing people bully others.
I have always wondered if, absent that part of my life, instead of being a sheep who turned into a sheepdog, I might have turned into a wolf instead, predating on other more vulnerable people than myself.
All in all, I fully accept being bullied as a constructive force in my life, instead of feeling victimized by it.