This started out as a plain, direct talk about bullies. It came about when a student asked a simple question, “What do you do when a bully threatens you?” I told them that although there is no simple answer the most important thing is to keep yourself safe. Do what you have to do to keep yourself safe.
But nothing more. Don’t make the situation worse. There may be repercussions already but remember you are safe. It may not even seem fair. That’s not important, being safe is.
You don’t want to become a bully yourself.
And that got me thinking about something that had happened a long time ago.
I was no older than ten years old when I was terrorized by a bully. And I don’t think terrorized is too harsh a word. There was one instant where I was sitting in the back of our cramped school bus. The bus was overloaded and I had to sit where I could find enough room just to barely fit. Unfortunately this time I was directly opposite this bully. He was a year ahead of me in school but seemed much older, and likely was.
He was mean. There were no two ways about it and everybody knew it. What he was doing on the bus was beyond me, he rarely went to school.
I sat across from him, he was on one side of the aisle and I on the other. He spent the entire bus ride hitting me on the knee, hard. I can still see the grin on his face as he hit me, time after time.
“What you gonna do? Cry?” he would ask, laughing. I didn’t know what to do, I was trapped in the back of a bus full of screaming kids. I wasn’t popular, or very strong. I wouldn’t be in the place I was if I had been.
I took it. And yes, I was on the verge of tears. My stop came and I ran off the bus, the driver completely oblivious to what had happened. Welcome to the world of a picked-on ten year old.
Some time after that, when I was a bit older a friend and I were taking the activity bus home. It was for people who participated in sports and the like. The bus didn’t go to all stops so we had quite a ways to go after we got off. We decided to cut through a camp that was near our houses and cut the walk in half. We were walking down a path when he came on us. I don’t even remember where he came from. Just that this time was different, he had a knife.
What do you do?
My friend and I just tried to keep walking, We said some stuff, asking him what he wanted. All he did was grin and threaten us. We continued to walk and all of a sudden he left, cursing and calling as wimps.
To this day I have no idea what really happened. I truly believe that it could have gone any number of ways that day, none of them as good as what did happen.
What do you do when you are confronted by a bully? Am I telling you to take it? To do nothing?
No, in this case something very important had happened over time. He had gone from being just a bully to something worse - a violent, dangerous person.
I don’t know what happened to this person and a part of me is sorry that I don’t care. I’ve heard many possible things that had happened and don’t know what to believe. I just know none of them involved redemption.
What bothers me most about this whole thing isn’t the pain I went through, it isn’t the trauma I had as that defenseless kid, none of that. What bothers me is that I don’t care what happened to that person.
I don’t think we should feel that way about anyone and I resent being put in that position.
Lesson learned – don’t become the bully.
