Your bullies

Did Linderman look suspiciously like Adam Baldwin?

And there is a tribute to that movie in Drillbit Taylor ...

 

That's a lot better than my story, about my friend who used to punch me in the head and have sex with my girlfriend so a bunch of us all teamed up together and beat him to death at the beach.

 

There was this kid on my street who was a couple of years older than me, but a couple of years younger than my older brother. He portrayed himself as this big badass - but a badass from a town of 1,500 people where the ratio of cows to people was 50-to-1.

He tormented my older brother, who was big into computers and robots and stuff (this was in the mid-to-late 1980s). Threw eggs at him during Halloween. Would yell at him at the bus stop in the morning. This was also the same kid who got into a fight with his father, hopped on their big lawn tractor and drove down the street, taking out a few mailboxes. Mensa candidate, this one was.

But the capper was one time when I was in eighth grade. In the middle of the night, he spray painted "Asshole lives here" with an arrow pointing to our driveway. Imagine finding that when you're walking to your bus stop. I ran back to my garage to get my blue Thumper aluminum bat, and it's a good thing my father hadn't left for work yet because I might have had to get my high school diploma from Attica.

My father painted over that, and then a week or two later they re-oiled the road, so I didn't have to look at that when I got off the bus. But I never forgot that. Ever. And that was 19 years ago.

That kid is now in his mid-30s and during Halloween, he'll come back to my parents' house during Halloween with his kids. And he seems all nice and whatever. But I tell you, if I ever caught him alone, there'd be a lot of pent-up frustration released that day.

 

Renfro weeps.

 

Also, I'm surprised there are no adult/professional stories. Come on, not one of you has been picked on since turning 18?

 

Never had to worry about being bullied. I hit 5'10 at 12 years old. Was always being called upon to protect shorter friends, though.

I wasn't bullied, but I always stuck out because I was female. I was the only girl in a neighborhood full of kids. I was the only girl on the team. I was the only girl who would watch sports. You get the idea. And it spawned a complex that still exists.

 

You could always volunteer to pull Halloween duty at your parents' house and slip a razorblade into his kids' candy. Or just keep an eye out for him, and when he rings the bell just open the door and spring on him like a mountain lion.

 

There was an incident that happened on the first day of school in the fourth grade that I was thinking about recently.
I was riding my bike home from school. I was excited about that because the fourth grade was the first time kids were allowed to do that.
Anyway, I was kind of on the heavy side and subjected to a lot of teasing. On this day, three kids, one of whom was my brother, were giving me a hard time on the way home. They knocked me off my bike and bent the handlebars. I grabbed the weakest one of the three, who wasn't my brother, pinned him to the ground and began choking him.
Eventually the woman who lived across the street came out and broke it up. All she saw was me choking the kid, so she assumed I started it, that I just choked the kid for no good reason. I tried to tell her that the other people started it, I didn't, but she wouldn't listen.
I was called into the principal's office the next day. I told my side of the story and nothing more came of it.
I know that was all she saw, but I still think that woman had no right thinking I just attacked the kid without provocation. Perhaps I should have choked her. All I wanted to do was go home without anyone bothering me, but three people couldn't let that happen. Isn't it common sense that if those kids didn't bother me, nobody would have been choked? Why couldn't she understand that?
That incident changed me in a lot of ways. It took a long time for me to be able to defend myself or stand up for myself after that.

 

Only on here. I cry a little bit, dust myself off and come back for more.

 

The athletic guys being left alone wasn't the case in my neck of the woods.

I'm not exactly sure how to categorize myself, but all others seemed to take their turn coming up with plenty of groups to put me in. I was a jock (I did play three sports all throughout high school). I was a nerd (I was always reading two or three books on the side). I was a teacher's pet (my dad taught at my school for 30+ years, so I knew many of the teachers from outside of the classroom). I was a prep (I usually tucked in my shirt?). I was arrogant (I'm a pretty quiet person until you get to know me typically).

So, suffice to say, I had plenty of enemies...and one of them in particular knew that I would never fight back...in all honesty because I never wanted to get suspended and miss games/practices. So throughout junior high, although we were about the same size, he would get in my face during every passing period and taunt me. I had too much pride to run to a teacher and report the hazing, and on more than once I ended up late to a class because he would plant himself in front of my locker and not let me get any books.

Things worsened near the end of junior high when my bully was walking in the hallway and decided to try to have a little fun with my father (who was a 6-4, 250 pound football coach). My dad was standing watch during a pass period when my bully grabbed at his tie. In a split second, my dad had gripped the bully's wrist tightly and politely informed him that he needed to keep his hands to himself. I'm glad I didn't wear ties to school, because the bully surely would have gone after them from that point forward.

Things worsened in high school when by some amazing coincidence, our lockers ended up side by side even though our last names (used to determine locker location) didn't begin with anywhere near the same letter. I took to carrying all of my books for the day with me at once so I didn't have to stop at my locker.

His behavior led to suspensions, which led to even more truancy, which led to him finally dropping out sometime during our sophomore or junior years. I got an empty locker next to me for the duration of high school.

I never ran into him again until after my freshman year in college. I was home for the summer and, along with a friend, I decided to go play basketball in our town's park. Well, for whatever reason, there wasn't a game going that night, as the only person sitting on the court was my old bully, just puffing away at a cigarette. Without hesitation, I reversed course and drove home, explaining to my dumbfounded friend that I wasn't going anywhere near him. A couple weeks later, we found out he was headed to jail for beating the living piss out of some guy with a metal pipe.

On the other end of the spectrum, I did stick up against a couple of bullying guys in sophomore gym class who would always go after one pudgy kid, who ended up being our valedictorian, repeatedly during dodge ball. They used to bring the balls in with them to the shower and pelt him over and over. Of course, that valedictorian ended up being the president of his university's Republican group...and considers W to be a great American leader.

Maybe I should have intervened a bit earlier so he wouldn't have been hit in the head so much...or maybe I should go after him now with dodge balls.

 

I debated whether to post on this thread, I don't feel the world needs to know every detail of my life, but reading what Babyjay had to say made me think maybe people who've come through stuff should step forward, so others know they aren't alone.
I wasn't picked on until I joined a Boy Scout Troop in junior high. The kids who were the two or three "leaders" were incredible sadists, who thought up really inventive, sick "initiations" for new kids, which continued on and on for kids they didn't like. I was tall and skinny and wore glasses, plus I could be a smartass, so they took a special dislike to me.
At summer scout camp, one of them actually made up a derisive song about me. More than three decades later, I still remember most of the words. This guy was big and tough and most of the group went along with him, even my friends, who were all just relieved they weren't the No. 1 target.
Eventually, I left and joined another troop, with some other guys who also were tired of the "Lord of the Flies" group. I was the leader of that bunch, and I made sure everybody was treated decently.

The really interesting part came just a few years ago. My mom e-mailed me to tell me the leader of the torturers, the kid who wrote the song, had died suddenly on a business trip, in his mid 40s. I felt really weird; I realized that in some corner of my soul, I'd hoped to encounter him again, not to kick his ass, but to show him I'd grown up to be a normal person, a husband and a father, despite his best efforts.
So my mom went to the funeral -- the family had a long history with our family, despite what had happened -- and there, she sat next to another mom of a guy in that troop, one who had been a top assistant to the torturer. By this time, my mom had pretty much forgotten all of the scout stuff. But the woman brought it up, said her son and the guy who died had been talking about it, about me, just recently, and that they both felt it might be the biggest regret of their lives.
I don't know what the point of that story is, except, we all grow up eventually, I guess. And I've made damn sure that whatever else my two boys might be, they aren't bullies. Ever.

 

This thread reminds me of Tom Junod's story in Esquire about the movement to legislate bullies "out of existence."

http://www.mywire.com/pubs/Esquire/2002/10/01/139526