Growing up on a farm for the first twelve years of my life on one hand helped me to be responsible, but on the other hand kept me fairly naïve to the harshness of the outside world, and totally un-streetwise. When we left the farm and moved down to Clear Lake Highlands, California little did I know that I was going to be given a lesson in what it was like to be humiliated by my peers and beaten up on a weekly basis. And then on top of it all, having the teachers at the school look the other way, condoning the actions of the children that were the bullies. There were six of these boys in this little gang of thugs and they were inseparable. If you got into it with one, the other five would quickly jump in, leaving whoever it was that had tried to stick up for themselves lying on the ground writhing in pain.
My first week in school I pretty much kept to myself, having heard that you didn’t want to cross these kids or say anything to them that would make you a target. It wasn’t long, though, before I came across all six of them beating up one of the smaller children in our class. Trying to get them to stop beating my classmate up was easy; trying to get them to stop beating me up was a whole different problem.
I was constantly told by teachers, the principal, and (what hurt most) my mother, that I needed to “get along” with these kids. What was it that I had done, to make these boys react to me the way that they were? I had one teacher in particular tell me that these boys were good boys and if they were beating me up, I must have had it coming.
Now every child needs to have a hero and mine was my older brother. One day while these boys were chasing me home, my brother saw what was going on, and what had been happening throughout the school year, firsthand. Without even saying a word to me, he went down and bought two sets of boxing gloves and started showing me how to box every day after school. After a short time I learned to quit blocking his punches with my face and got to where I was gaining more confidence in myself and my abilities.
The last day of school came and I couldn’t have been happier. We were going to be moving from this town, down to the San Francisco Bay Area, and I wouldn’t have to put up with these kids anymore. As I was leaving the school to go out to get my bike, two of them had been waiting for me. I was able to get out the gate with them chasing close behind me. I headed off of the main road onto a gravel road trying to ditch them when I quickly discovered that the road department had put down more gravel making it hard to pedal. The two boys caught up to me, kicking me off of my bike face first into the gravel.
I felt the blood pouring out of the scrapes on my face, and heard the laughter and the taunting. I had put up with this all year and this was the last straw. I came up off of the gravel swinging for all I was worth. The training that my brother had given me in the short time that we had trained was now coming to fruition as both of these boys were lying on the gravel in tears.
I remember wanting to continue beating on these kids, when a soft but stern woman’s voice told me that I needed to stop, they had had enough. She told them to get on their bikes and skedaddle on home. She looked down at me and I will never forget her words. “ I have watched you being chased, hit, run off of the road for the entire school year, and I was wondering when you were going to stand up for yourself. Come on over and we’ll take care of your battle scars and I might even have some cookies and milk hanging around.”
She went on to say, “We all need to stand up for ourselves, and when someone can’t, the strong need to protect those that are weaker.” I truly believe that if the stronger were taught to stand up for those that can’t stand up for themselves, bullying would be an exception to the rule. Bullying will continue until those that are protectors are permitted do something about it.
We read stories all the time about children that commit suicide, take guns to school, shoot other children and teachers, only to have the common denominator turn out to be that they were bullied and feeling trapped and felt something needed to be done. When these children take their lives or the lives of others, it leaves a huge gaping hole in all of us, individually and as a society. The senseless harming of a child creates in most of us a feeling of sorrow. Society continues to look for answers, trying to find something or someone to blame so that we can understand, or at least try to understand what happened.
Bullying can’t be stopped by creating more rules, laws, or empty conversation with those who bully about why they shouldn’t be bullying. Rules, laws and conversation only work for those who respond and abide by rules, laws and conversation. The people that abide by these parameters for the most part aren’t the ones that are the bullies.
There has always been and always will be those who pick on and abuse others that are vulnerable and easy targets. I have been raising children for over thirty six years, four of my own and over fourteen foster children, and the difference now as compared to when I first started is the children of today aren’t taught to defend themselves. They are taught to go tell an adult that somebody is picking on them. This only works when the person being told on is one of those people who, for the most part, follows the rules—this incident being the exception to their usual behavior. The person that doesn’t follow the rules could care less about being tattled on, and will continue to abuse.
Children have to be taught to defend themselves and others. They need to be taught to verbalize their feelings, telling those that are bullying them to knock it off and be willing to back it up. Those that see a wrong being committed against a weaker person should be able to feel free to stand up for that person and have the support of those in authority, without the fear of being punished themselves. With these sorts of standards in place, maybe we can finally see bullying behavior become the exception to the rule.
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