[MaJor LeAguE]

This topic came to mind when a friend from school mentioned it to me on FB.
Q: Have you ever been on the receiving end of being bullied, have done the bullying? or may have felt pressured to? What did you do? Did you identify any major turning points?

My Answer:
I am an extremely social person..even at school, I played sports, always out..and was friends with pretty much everyone regardless of what clique they were in.
GRADE 4 I remember this incident like it was yesterday..I had a science project and was paired with this girl that was very quiet and shy I went to her house a couple of times to work on the project and we started being friends, played nintendo etc.. well one day at recess my friend jackie said "e
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she can't play with us, she's a loser...and you are cool...or don't you want to be cool anymore?" (The other girl started crying and ran away) It was then just me, cool friends and Jackie in my face, I was torn, these were my friends but it didn't feel right...so screw it, I didn't care.....I said, "Ya, I am so cool that I can be friends with anyone I want..You're not the boss of me!! You're the loser!" She punched me, and I fought back, rather hard.. and also got suspended...(I am not condoning violence here, but she threw first punch) after that...the whole group left and followed me, and everyone said they didn't like when she bossed them around. This was all at the age of 10.
Highshool I maintained being friends with my crowd...and also friends with almost everyone in different cliques, from the skaters, goths, nerds, as I got to know people all individually and didn't care for if they were popular or not.. I continued my stance like I did when I was 10 of "ya, I'm so cool that I can be friends with everyone..and not care what anyone says.." Which I think overall because of my confidence, just made me more popular without even trying, just by standing my ground on what I thought was right and wrong...I wasn't made fun of that I was in things like cheerleading, soccer, volley but also things like the mock trial team, band, student council..and actually got people of different groups to get to know each other through me. I've also ended up being a mediator at times between people of different cliques, and couldn't stand anyone being bullied or picked on..

Now at 28, it's still the same thing, I talk to everyone, put out ideas, and even question statements in our executive meetings at work..... but I realized that grade 4 recess was a major turning point, and indicative of how a choice I made at 10yrs old can influence who I would become as an adult ..

[Vagrant]

Never really had a problem with being bullied.

Every time somebody has bullied me, it triggers some kind of conniving and devious part of me. Basically, it makes it extremely unpleasant to bully me. Most of the time I end up friends with people who bully. But I never have and never will bully myself, and I don't approve of it.

Any "friend" who tries to socially pressure me to abandon a friend immediately gains my disregard.

[xwalka]

When I was in kindergarten I was convinced I was practically invincible. One time I fell off a big toy and plummeted toward the ground head first. I felt no fear but rather a sense of contempt; after all, I was Peter Spicer and it was just the ground. How could it possibly hope to stand against me? In my pride I put out, not two, but one hand to halt my progress. Needless to say, Terra risked my wrath and won the match with both an injured wrist and a rather audible thud. The earth taught me a fine lesson that day, but it wasn't until second grade when a fellow homo sapien pushed me down at recess that I fully realized the virtue of ingratiation.

By the by, refusing to take part in bullying despite peer pressure is a very attractive trait. Cheers to you for that.

[Fanowene]

Starts in kindergarten...

I was best friends with this girl M and with a boy C. I actually switched kindergartens to be with M (I remember our parents discussing it in our back yard.). M would go back and forth between me and C, playing best friend and running away from the other, encouraging whoever she was with at the moment to be mean to the one who was left out. Occasionally all three would actually hang out together. M gave me a lot of bad ideas... Like drawing all over the basement table with crayons (and then I had to do all the scrubbing after she left...).

1st grade or so. I'm in school with M. School system is different from the U.S. Basically you're stuck with the same ~20 people for 6 years of Primary School, until you go on to some form of Secondary School for 2-3 years (also stuck with the same ~20 people, but luckily a new ~20 people, some maybe from the former class). And so on...
Anyway, around 1st grade I start to notice that I don't like M. One memory I have is of me telling her the birthdate of another classmate who would actually like to keep it a secret, and then M being totally slimy about "now I'll be your best friend!". I remember feeling disgusted.

There also was this scene were a friend of mine got chocked or something by somebody, so we formed a little revenge group or something. I think I sort of was the leader. I have no idea what exactly our goal was. We just didn't want anybody to bully my friend. The teacher heard about it, talked to us about it during PE, and then that incident was over.

I don't know what happened after that exactly. I know there was some bullying going on, and I actually ran after another classmate L and asked her how she was doing after it was mentioned in class that people were bullying her. We became best friends.

I guess eventually things turned and M and her gang (whenever that formed? I can't remember. It was just the "cool group" that was around her) started picking on me. A later member of M's "gang" actually ran me over on our way to school and kissed me (I hated it). I told the teacher, but she handled it in a not so good way: Putting me (why me?) and the guy on the spot, thus informing the whole class... They made fun of me for that until 6th grade...
Pretty soon they pulled L over to their side. Weird, M and L used to be my best friends... Another best friend of mine moved away, but then best friend V showed up in 3rd or 4th grade (I know it was a Tuesday and I can remember the door to the classroom opening with her standing there with her mother and her mother's current boyfriend), and we've been good friend's ever since. But Bullying continued, targeting mainly me (top of the class of the ~20 people, by far...). Though some kids switched to a different class to avoid the bullying in our class. It really was bad. I actually started crying in class once just because I had forgotten to put something away, just because I knew how they were going to make fun of me for it... It was suggested that I skip 5th grade to switch to a new class, but I declined. 5th grade was when we started French, and I didn't want to take shortcuts.

5th grade. It wasn't getting better. Worse even.
6th grade: Our 5th/6th grade teacher finally caught onto the idea that something bad was going on. He hadn't believed the 3rd/4th grade teacher. Now he was shocked by the extent of it. Meetings followed with a social worker, my parents, etc. Letters were written to parents, along with a note of in which group their kid was (super trouble maker, borderline, good kid). Finally he started talking to the whole class about it. Things started to get better. I actually had a diary entry read "Today they left me alone entirely!!!" (well, written in German).

And at the end of 6th grade: Freedome! I moved on to a higher level, the bullies moved to a lower school (there's a split after 6th grade, based on the grades you got). The class I was in for those 2 years was a lot better. I heard that M sort of played the same game at her new school again. Apparently she organized it in a guys against girls manner, and of course she was on the side of the guys... At least that's what I heard. Another former classmate of mine was thrown out of school for threatening to blow up the school (he probably thought of it as a joke).

Then, moved on to the Kantonsschule. 4 years. (Interestingly, C was in my class again. He moved away after the first year of kindergarten.) I was an outsider after a while, especially because the ones of my ~20 people class that I made friends with dropped out pretty soon. I was in a class with a Math concentration, so there were only three other girls in that class and I was never really comfortable around them. Making friends with guys wasn't really acceptable. I ended up making friends with the only other Christian in that class, after he moved to my school, that is. Being Christian/believer probably was what made me an outsider in the first place. I had fun/heated debates with some of my classmates about evolution and stuff... Especially towards the end it got very fun, since they were trying to find some kind of connection between what we were discussing and what was taught in class all the time (no matter the topic). They were pretty nice about it, though, considering how they could have been. The other Christian was an extremely anti-social guy (even now he says he doesn't like interact with peers, he prefers "adults"), so he didn't provide much of a backup. He was more of an outcast than I was, I guess. Outside of class I did have several Christian friends, though. That helped a lot.

Then, after the four years: Moving to the U.S. People are so much nicer/open/tolerant here... I've met a ton of people and haven't really encountered anybody who went out of his/her way to make my life miserable. Everybody just wants to get along and have fun... I'm so happy I live here....





Fanowene added to this post, 58 minutes and 5 seconds later...

I forgot to mention:
Our 5th/6th grade teacher had a breakdown after he was through with us. I think it took him a while to recover, too.

My little sister went to school with M's little brother. When that class started going sour, my mom made my little sister change schools. A wise decision. Apparently that class really went bad eventually... They might have dissolved the class (in part also because too many moms were taking their kids out of there?).
My little sister is an ESFJ, so she was suffering simply by knowing what I was going through anyway... Though she ended up in the same class as M's little brother again when she entered Secondary School. But apparently that wasn't too bad anymore.

[Monte314]

Yes, I was bullied. I don't want to talk about it.

[Undead Bonzi]

I don't think any child really gets through early life without suffering some kind of indignity at the hands of their peers.

On the whole I never really had any problems. From an early age I understood that bullies latch onto the people they can get the greatest reaction out of. I had one friend who would explode into a fight if the bullies picked on him long enough and beacause of that the bullies made sure to pick on him often (and he ended up being branded the trouble maker while the bullies hid behind the rules and the teachers). I had another friend who would nearly break into tears when people made fun of him, again the bullies singled him out because of it. I always projected an aura of indifference to what they said or thought about me and because of that they left me alone (its not fun nearly as fun to pick on someone you can't get a reaction out of). By highschool I was one of those people who had friends in most of the cliques and the bullying sort of dried up for lack of targets in our class (those who had been bullies in elementary/middleschool were already on the fast track to nowhere and the rest of us were going to college.

I also can't really say as I ever took part in being a bully either although I am sure that I probably did at some point in time. My mother had always told me that if I didn't like or get along with someone I should just leave the alone and the could go their way and I could go mine. I remember there was one guy who moved into our area about 5th or 6th grade (which in a small town and a class of about 35 automatically makes you an outsider). On top of that he had some mental issues (sever ADHD, his mother was reccently divorced from a drug addict, and his medications caused mood swings and made him violent sometimes). This made him the target of some of the most sever bullying I'd ever seen because he always exploded in some form or another. I didn't really like him myself but I saw no need to make fun of him and left him alone (along the lines of what my mother had always told me). Years later I learned through the grapevine that he had considered me one of the best friends he had in the school and he really thought I was a great guy. In reflection I thought about how sad it must be to have so few friends in the world that the kid who leaves you alone and never picks on you ranks as a 'great guy'.

[MaleVolentworld]

I unfortunately, along with my friends, did bully a boy in secondary school for many years.

The most awful thing was that he was considered our friend too and I remember one incident which was really upsetting.

He lived in the same road as my two other friends, so they knew each other all of their life, they used to play out in the road together. While I had not known him very long.

One day he came along to the park on his bike, the other 2 friends also came along. One of them decided to play a prank, he took his bike and rode off. The victim was in hysterics, we were all about 14 at the time and he was so upset, crying his eyes out. I looked at my other friend who did it, and his eyes were full of glee at this bullying, it was sickening really.

We never physically hurt him, I think he was the most bullied kid in the whole school, and that was because he had ginger hair with an afro, so he stood out a mile. But the thing was his behaviour, he was smiley quite a lot, but he always seemed like an old man from the 50's in the way he used to act.

For instance, when some kids were calling him names, that is what went on most of the time, everyone called him names because of his hair, he used to reply "I will not tolerate this behaviour". Which is very strange coming from a 14 year old kid, sounding like a teacher disciplining unruly children.

I used to sit next to him in some classes and he was a nice kid, a little odd but he did not deserve to be bullied, nobody does.

I guess the hardest thing for him was that his friends were sometimes nice and other times not, I think the latter ocurred when outside people began to belittle him, so we joined in to protect ourselves in a way.

I've also been bullied myself at school, for what reason I have no idea, but some of the group of kids who always got into fights, for some reason began tripping me up, kicking me and pushing me from behind. Probably trying to provoke me so that I would fight. The hardest thing was being bewildered, why on earth are they doing this to me?

School was bewildering to me, being around so many noisey children, and some violent, where there was no chance in hell to actually learn a thing. You just had to stick to different kinds of people to protect yourself, I was very athletic at school so that won me a diverse group of friends. Of course I had no proper friends, I just hung around with lots of different types of people, so I could never be labelled as a nerd and targetted. I hung around with the nerds sometimes too, they were probably the most fun to be around.

[Hatsumomo1]

In Kindergarten I had enough friends to play with. It seemed innocent enough to the point of where no social groups were formed that I'm aware of.

1st grade I mostly hung out with the guys. I had a few friends that were girls, too.

2nd grade is when it all went downhill. I had a birthday party in September, and I had a lot of friends over, too. My mother decided that it would be alright to get drunk during my birthday party. Since then I was officially the social outcast (apparently 2nd grade kids aren't that dumb.)

And that extended into 3rd grade. In the second half of the year I had one friend. And for some reason the teacher just loved me. I guess you can say I was a bit of a teacher's pet. I remember that she'd often make some of the other kids play with me. It also didn't help that my parents were going through a divorce back then.

4th grade I went to a new school. It was still pretty rough because I was trying to get used to the fact that people weren't automatically going to shun me here. I adjusted though.

5th-8th grade our class was split into two groups, the "cool" people (a.k.a. The Package...I think that's what they called themselves. Man if I had as much of a perverted mind as I do know I bet I could've ruined that for them) and the "uncool" people. And of course, I didn't hang out with the right people, wear the right clothes, wear enough makeup, etc... to be in the "cool" group. Often it got pretty nasty between the two warring groups. By 8th grade I was ready to ditch the shallowness that was my class of 19.

High school, especially freshman year, was so much better. I lost tons of weight (yeah I was a bit of a chubber in grade school) and I started buying better clothes and actually caring about how my hair looked. So I guess you could say that was yet another turning point for me. I was a bit of a social butterfly, too. I hung out with all the groups (except for those really snobby ones.) Every day of the week I'd eat lunch with a different group. One of my best friends from middle school kind of fell into the goth crowd (many of which were actually bullies,) and I hung out with them, too. It definitely had it's perks, because they came to like me so much that a few of them would say, "If anyone gives you trouble, let me know. I'll take care of them for ya." So yes, I had my own mafia. I had many acquaintances and friends, and the same few close friends I had since middle school.

It wasn't until later on did I actually gravitate towards one group, which I would soon regret, in a way. They were really mean to one of my friends I had before I met them. I remember us talking about going to a dance in the halls before class, and my friend had overheard us and asked if she could go with us. I said sure, but I was quickly pulled aside and told, "We don't like So-and-So, remember?" Before I could protest, my friend had heard it all, mumbled sorry, and walked away. I had never got the chance to reconcile with her until college. I think the reason our group was like this was because our two "leaders" were the cattiest of the bunch. We'd cast out people for no reason (as far as I'm concerned.) If any of us would try to talk with that person we'd get the cold shoulder.

And the group BS continued through college. We were down to one "leader" now, because our two leaders got in a fight and one left. God forbid we remained friends with her, but by now I was pretty close with everyone. Whoever our "leader" didn't like, we were shepherded away from them. And the crazy thing is that we didn't even know it. I was so focused on being loyal that I couldn't see the injustice. Well two summers ago, our boy-crazy "leader" started talking and flirting with a bunch of guys online. She was really two-faced with this particular one. She'd complain and bitch about him to me, telling me he's "desperate," "icky-looking," etc... Soon they got in a fight and stopped talking to each other. That fall I took a vacation and went to the same city he lived in (I wasn't on a mission to find him or anything. I was just following a friends suggestion.) And as fate would have it, I met this guy. We really hit it off, and by the end of my vacation we were dating. The group "leader" acted completely fine with it, until she surprised me two months later. She threw a tantrum and whined to both the guy I was dating and me, saying that we were flirting behind her back or whatever, even though I was very upfront with her about our relationship in the first place. I also let her know that if she would've told me earlier that it upset her so much that I would've ended the relationship, but now it was too late. For the time being we swept the matters under the rug.

Later on this past spring, she had a run-in with an ex-boyfriend. She had to file a police report, get a restraining order, etc... I went over to her apartment as soon as I heard about it. A month later her black eye healed, and none of us heard any more news about it, so we just assumed that whatever was going on now wasn't significant enough to know. One day, she flipped out on all of us. She made sure to write very rude messages on all of our Facebook pages telling us how we're all such crappy friends for not asking her about how the legal situation was with her ex that punched her and "only caring about ourselves." Needless to say that really pissed me off and I was the only one to let her know that it wasn't our responsibility to ask her about her problems that we didn't even know existed any more. I mean, don't normal people tell you if something's bothering them, and if they don't they don't usually wanna talk about it anyway, right? I also mentioned that it was pretty childish to post these messages on our Walls so everyone could read them. She didn't like that one bit. She kept bothering me with facebook messages saying that I only care about myself, blah blah blah, and she even had the nerve to bring up the issues she had with my current boyfriend. I finally told her that I had enough of her BS and to stop bothering me. The day after, I was officially kicked out of the group, and I had no regrets. I was particularly proud of finally standing up for myself when this girl wrote a letter that addressed my father, telling him that I'm such a liar. Mature, ain't it? Even though the whole fight did, in a way, cost me a lot of time with my other friends, I could care less, because now I'm finally free of our "leader's" leash.

I get a clean slate in a couple weeks anyway :D Lucky for me I was able to refine my social skills in high school, and even more so in college, so I don't have to worry about screwing this second chance up. My more E side is going crazy from being a hermit since this summer.

[rewhu]

I’ve always loved learning but I hated school and part of that hatred stemmed from getting picked on. As a kid I made friends when I could, stuck up for myself when pushed and basically did the best I could. As I got older it got a bit harder because not only did I have to combat my idiot classmates but I also had to deal with puberty. Then one day a magical thing happened. I stopped caring.

I was walking down the hall between 5th and 6th period, feeling miserable and awkward, and all of a sudden I thought to myself, “F*ck it. I’m sick of letting other people make me unhappy. I’m going to do and say and wear whatever I want, and if anybody has a problem with that they can suck it.”

All along I had been a confident, funny, happy person on the inside and one day I decided to open the flood gates and let it all come pouring out. What a great day. Thinking about it now makes me smile.

[Sean O]

I was bullied quite a bit in grade 6. Then I started learning martial arts, and in grade 7 and 8 I bullied the bullies (which was awesome
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). After that I mellowed out, though.

[BlackOp]

My father had the foresight to get me into boxing pretty early (4th grade) which I did for three years (3 nights a week). I was smaller so he must of thought I might need it. Silver Mittens..youth version of Golden Gloves. I had the same coach as Tommy Morrison (Tomahawk Boxing Club KC). Somebody tried it once (high school) but I made quick work of it. I probably hit him 20 times in about 5 seconds. Amazing how quickly it came back...like a switch. Cool headed and focused. Word traveled fast....so no I wasnt. Bullies dont like getting their ass kicked by someone smaller.
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One of the finest moments of my youth.
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* note* I actually ran into the guy about 10 years later...He brought it up like it happened yesterday. Lesson learned.

[rara avis]

In elementary school I was never a bully, per se- but I could be very controlling. In my thick sense of superiority, I vacillated between a) trying to make people do as I thought they should and b) protecting them from people who I thought were unjust or mean.

There were two times I recall losing my temper with other girls in school and getting really incisively, verbally mean. My mother made me walk all the way to one particularly cloying girl's house after school and apologize to both her and to her mother. :embarassed: That was bad.

Every once in a while I wonder if Montel's going to call to have me come on one of those shows where people confront an old schoolmate who did something scarring to them in childhood. I don't think I ever did anything that bad... but time has shown that I'm not always aware of my impact on others. I hope I never really hurt anyone.

I don't think I ever saw an example of real physical bullying.

I never had trouble with anyone really bullying me, just normal everyday kid to kid conflicts. No one ever physically confronted me, that I recall, and I've always been kind of nonreactive to verbal insults. Either what they've said about me is true, or they're a moron so I don't care anyway.

I squeamishly admit I still do have an irritating urge to cull or control the herd from time to time, but happily since my teen years I've been disinclined to get involved, overall.

[psuedoluminary]

Mostly, I was a loner- bullied a few times in middle school- developed a dislike for it, decided it was immoral to do to someone, but I moved on and just kept to myself thereafter. I had a hard time relating to people my own age*

[Fanowene]

Thanks to Facebook I'm slowly realizing how many nice Swiss people I actually do know. They just weren't the people I hung around with every day (because they didn't go to my school, we weren't neighbors, or whatever). I'm so glad Switzerland is slowly catching on to the Facebook idea...

[Autoptic]

I was the anti-bully, at least physically. There literally were none in my class as a result. This was only about 10 people and there was almost no chance of it in the first place. We even lined up single files in a boy's and a girl's line to go to the lavatory.

There was one small group at the church, but I only had a minor incident with them before I reach 13 and full height(6'3"). I did once threw/shoved one of a pair of them at the other one allowing a certain girl's brother to get away, not that he'd have had to run at that point. Obviously, "peers" weren't much of an issue. I was more obsessed with the girls from a distance and mostly ignored the male. Size, strength, and toughness won't help you there, and it's a whole other type of pain tolerance.

Truthfully, my real bullies were the adults. Mother, all my life to permanent loss or failure to even have of a lot of it, her siblings which was primarily one overbearing aunt directly though the males in a physically threatening backup role, and a number of teachers but mostly a principal who was finally dismissed two years after I dropped out. Good luck dealing with people destroying your life when no higher power will oppose them but might oppose you if you resist.

[Cesare Borgia]

i learned in school that it's better to give than to receive, eventually the bullies became the bullied, there was nothing more satisfying than the reaction you get when your former bully realizes that he is now on the receiving end, it's a moment of utter confusion mixed with fear for him as he tries to decide if he should push his luck, it's even sweeter that i made him look like a punk in front of his large group of friends.

after that day, i focused on being the most heartless person in school and sticking up for the others who couldn't do it themselves, i had others who came to me to handle situations, now and then i run into people from my past who talk about how "scary" i was.

funny thing was that i never had to put my hands on anybody.

[SShack]

Now that I'm much older and really take a look back, I realize that the "bullies" were actually never really the "cool" kids. They tended to be the losers who weren't going anywhere in life and everybody knew it, including them, and their bullying was lashing out in their attempt to get some sort of control over their failing lives.

Despite the whole nerds vs. jocks view of school, I came to realize that I actually never had any problems with any jocks. Real jocks actually worked pretty damned hard in school, in their own way. They didn't have time to be bullies.

[auriga vega]

I was bullied by this boy in first grade for the longest time. He would push me around and make fun of me for being tiny. But he eventually stopped after I punched him in the face and broke his nose. Luckily, I didn't get in trouble. I guess he didn't tell the truth on why he was injured, because he'd get in trouble too.
Then later in life, people just leave me alone, because I can put on my evil mask whenever I want to.

[OrrDavey]

Nope, not really. I always had my group of friends - people who are very similar to me. And I was a lot bigger/taller than most of the other kids growing up, so nobody really tried to start a fight. Except once in the 5th grade. I won, go me!