Thank
goodness I am out of school. According a
review in the Wall Street Journal of Sticks
and Stones by Emily Bazelton, bullying is at about the same level as it has been
in the past, except that a good deal of
it carries over into online forms—Facebook,
Twitter, and social media platforms only the eleven-year-old in my house knows
about.
I say this because I have intimate knowledge about bullying. I was the victim of a class bully in the seventh grade, and for a few weeks into the eighth grade.
It was horrible. I dreaded going to school. What’s worse, the bully’s mean-spiritedness overflowed into other members of the class. Several years ago I heard a total stranger call someone else the name my bully reserved for me. Talk about post-traumatic stress syndrome. I was unnerved for days, and that experience was decades ago.
But as bad as that experience was, I look upon the current crop of bullying-prevention efforts with a raised eyebrow. My seventh grade tormentor was not the first bully I encountered, and he was not the last one. As an adult I encounter bullies all the time, especially in the workplace, and sometimes they are even your boss. Because of my bully, I was prepared for what was ahead. A true bully will find ways to sidestep the teachers, supervisors and the system and continue his torture. I tell kids they might as well get used to it now and learn how to deal with these idiots.
In a weird sort of way, I am thankful to my bully, or bullies, because now they have become such a rich source of literary inspiration.
How did I solve the problem of my seventh-grade bully? I have a novel planned that will explain it, and will also pay homage to the teacher that helped me through it.
See ya’ later.
WhatIfYouCouldNotFail.com by Tim Sunderland is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
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