bktheirregular (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
bktheirregular) wrote2006-09-04 03:27 pm
bktheirregular) wrote2006-09-04 03:27 pm
Entry tags:
On bullying and psychology
I was small when I was growing up.
OK, that didn't make much sense. I was smaller than my peers when I was growing up, and I was almost always a target for bullying - the psychological kind, that is. I didn't know how to conform, I didn't have the store of knowledge that most kids somehow had growing up - my authority figures were an absent-minded professor and a stranger in a strange land. Later, I would describe the sensation as akin to missing an essential course in school, or perhaps playing a game in which everyone but me knew the rules.
The bully tactics, though, cut deep. Psychological jabs and prods, daily, weekly.
And the advice I got constantly was to not react, to not let them know they'd had an effect. I couldn't react physically, anyway. One time I got pushed so far that I threw one punch, and got pummeled for my trouble. But even letting out my emotions was denied me.
No wonder I ended up so screwed up as a young adult.
But one other thing that happened: from those days forward, when I have seen people engage in pranks that are roughly equivalent to beating up weak kids on the playground, or psychological torture ... I take it personally. Schoolyard bully is an epithet in my lexicon, one roughly on par with rapist.
People who have preyed on the weak, and drawn pleasure from it ... from the dregs to the heights, to the halls of power that were once the province of men such as Washington, Jefferson, Madison ... those people, to me, are a cancer. Not knowing better isn't an excuse. Only in fun isn't an excuse.
If, today, I were to meet the people who'd tormented me as a child, I wouldn't forgive. Even if they'd fallen on their knees and begged forgiveness from whatever deity they hold sacred, that wouldn't be enough.
Maybe, if they were to go on their knees before the people - the human beings - that they had wronged, and beg forgiveness from them, and run the chance that forgiveness would be denied them - for in my case, I know it would never come - then, maybe, they might enter another category.
The one I term human beings.
Schoolyard bullies don't qualify.
OK, that didn't make much sense. I was smaller than my peers when I was growing up, and I was almost always a target for bullying - the psychological kind, that is. I didn't know how to conform, I didn't have the store of knowledge that most kids somehow had growing up - my authority figures were an absent-minded professor and a stranger in a strange land. Later, I would describe the sensation as akin to missing an essential course in school, or perhaps playing a game in which everyone but me knew the rules.
The bully tactics, though, cut deep. Psychological jabs and prods, daily, weekly.
And the advice I got constantly was to not react, to not let them know they'd had an effect. I couldn't react physically, anyway. One time I got pushed so far that I threw one punch, and got pummeled for my trouble. But even letting out my emotions was denied me.
No wonder I ended up so screwed up as a young adult.
But one other thing that happened: from those days forward, when I have seen people engage in pranks that are roughly equivalent to beating up weak kids on the playground, or psychological torture ... I take it personally. Schoolyard bully is an epithet in my lexicon, one roughly on par with rapist.
People who have preyed on the weak, and drawn pleasure from it ... from the dregs to the heights, to the halls of power that were once the province of men such as Washington, Jefferson, Madison ... those people, to me, are a cancer. Not knowing better isn't an excuse. Only in fun isn't an excuse.
If, today, I were to meet the people who'd tormented me as a child, I wouldn't forgive. Even if they'd fallen on their knees and begged forgiveness from whatever deity they hold sacred, that wouldn't be enough.
Maybe, if they were to go on their knees before the people - the human beings - that they had wronged, and beg forgiveness from them, and run the chance that forgiveness would be denied them - for in my case, I know it would never come - then, maybe, they might enter another category.
The one I term human beings.
Schoolyard bullies don't qualify.
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Years later, after college, when I was working for our local rec department, and had scored a directorship for a summer preschool program, one job applicant turned out to be one of those girls from high school. Oh, the satisfaction I had watching her having to suck up to me...even if I had no real say in the hiring process. But she didn't get a job at my site.
Okay, this is two weeks late, but I couldn't NOT comment.
I'm not bitter today for the following reasons:
1) The harassment kind of petered out. They laid off in seventh and eighth grade, and when I got to high school... nothing. (I now suspect that's due to the intervention of my stepsister, who was blonde and popular and two years ahead of me and told the first classmate she heard mocking me "Don't talk about my stepsister like that." I didn't know about it until recently, and was kind of touched - we weren't stepsisters YET at the time.)
Maybe I was teased behind my back in high school, I don't know, but there was nothing in-your-face. Even the one time I got some in-your-face harassment, the perpetrator ended up embarrassing herself in front of half the school, so that didn't stick.
2) By the eighth grade, two of my worst tormentors had apologized and then actually backed off. One of these people grew a spine the end of the year and stuck up for me, then continued to grow into an actual human being in high school.
3) It was all emotional abuse, they didn't add beating me up to it. Not to downplay the emotional abuse, but I think if they'd accompanied it with a beating, it would have stuck with me even more. I'm also pretty sure it never progressed to physical abuse because they were also terrified of our vice-principal. I remember jokes about incurring the wrath of Mrs. Canavan. (Never got on her bad side, but even then she was kind of scary.)
4) It lasted for two and a half years, and then *poof*. I didn't get a lot of flak in elementary school, despite being one-eyed and buck-toothed.
5) I had some friends to hang out with even in sixth grade, and no one bugged us much when we were in a group. (Part of me suspects that's because they knew Maria was a brown belt, but hey.)
6) Weird incident in eighth grade: I was in a group project and putting finishing touches on our poster when two girls started making fun of it. The others in my group came up and told them to back off, and I remember most of what Angela said: "Our entire group worked on that, and if you're going to make fun of it, come here and say that to all of us. Don't go off on one person who can't defend herself." I was kind of annoyed at the "can't defend herself" part, but it occurred to me that I really had to get with the program and stick up for myself somehow.
If the people who bugged me came up to me today (excluding the two who wised up early on) and begged for my forgiveness, I'd say, "Whatever," and walk away. I figure that holding a grudge, in a way, would be letting them win, letting them know that their behavior in middle school affected my entire life. I don't want to let them make that kind of impact on me.
Having said that - I have NO tolerance for schoolyard bullies, regardless of the type of abuse. If I ever have kids, and I discover that my child is encouraging or participating in that crap, I will NOT stand for it. I will go above and beyond even my Grandma Thelma's capabilities of getting on their case. They don't know better? Well, then I'll be sure to educate them thoroughly.