Ask a Bystander

"Bullied? No, can't really say that I was. At least, it didn't really feel chronic enough, you know? If someone says something about your mom or your complexion once or twice, I'd generally assume that person's just being facetious. That's about the extent of what I got. I'd get hit with a little instigation, sometimes a stray remark, but then I'd fire back and that would be the end of it. Most of the time it was just harmless teasing from friends. It's kind of funny, actually. Anyone eavesdropping or who caught anything out of context would think our round-table talks would come to blows. But we rarely meant anything by anything."

"Though, I do remember a few times when things got violent. But each of those times I was really young, as were the other kids involved. Nobody's a born pacifist. Good thing too."


"My high school days were anything but memorable. Just hearing the words brings back maybe...six or seven real memories? Don't get me wrong; overall, I enjoyed it. I wouldn't say I made a ton of friends, but then, my definition of "friend" might be a bit more exclusive than others. If I never saw someone outside of school or work, then I didn't consider them a friend. It's the people you go out of your way to be with and do the same for you. That's a true friend. Makes me look back and wonder...but I digress."


"The severity? Well, I think calling it "rampant" like the news and the activists liked to would be an exaggeration. But, then again, you know how most people tend to suffer in silence. It wasn't like people were wearing shirts saying, "I get bullied, please help." Jeez, that would be like chumming the water. And that's actually a moot point: Anyone who would need to go and ask for help really wound up painting the biggest targets on their backs. A real, "damned if you do, damned if you don't" type of situation."

"I think I made that sound a lot worse then I meant to. I guess I'm really not sure."


"An average day for me was about the most mundane and uninspiring routine imaginable. I'd get up six, eat, walk to school, get there early, have class, eat, more classes, and went home. Easy in, easy out. Too easy, unless you want to talk about math. I got into a few clubs in my later years; one involved larping and the other was about Minecraft - back when it was socially acceptable to play Minecraft. Weird, because now that I think about it, both of those groups were probably packed with kids being hounded during school hours."


"I think it might have been the hair. I'm not sure what it signaled to everyone else, but high school with long hair seemed to make me off-limits somehow. I eventually reasoned that the general student body thought I was drug dealer, someone dangerous. An assumption I was perfectly fine with, until I started getting some strange questions from some even stranger people. Take the good with the bad, right? Believe it or not, it never ended badly. Hey, if it had, I might have even had an eighth memory."

"Or maybe none."


"Well, I didn't really know anyone who had those kinds of problems. That is, I wasn't particularly close to anyone who did. The best example I can think of was this guy named Jace. Jace Waters, I think his name was. We had a few classes together, had a few group projects. Over the course of that one semester I heard some stories from him. He was gay, and if he meant to hide the fact then he did a terrible job at it. Now that I think about it, he probably got the worst of it out of anyone else I knew. He got picked on pretty relentlessly. Got called every name in the book. I remember him saying that the drawing class the he, my friend Tom, and I had was his only respite all day. Even his mom gave him trouble at home. I'd like to think Tom and I did him some good. He wasn't a bad kid, he just seemed pretty messed about the bullying and not feeling like it would stop."

"Unfortunately, in the following semester, Jace decided to press his luck and confess his feelings for Tom. I remember getting the call after school. Tom was in a frenzy, telling me about the note he got and asking me what to do. So, I told him to do what I thought was the most appropriate thing to do at the time, 'tell him off'. Tom wasn't gay, neither was I, and Jace knew that. I thought it was pretty sad. After he gathered himself, I knew Tom was going to lay into Jace. Hard. Thankfully, things never got physical, but Jace was dead to Tom. He wanted to save face, protect his reputation. I never heard from Jace after that."


"No. Actually, Jace wasn't the only one. There was this other guy, I think his name was Geno. Thing is, I don't think he ever felt chastised a day in his life. He wasn't like Jace at all: Geno wore colors, was always smiling, and had a sizable entourage of friends at his side at all times. I think that was the thing. Messing with him would have meant kicking a nest of hornets with giant left-wings. There was another guy, Davis, same thing - friends and a friendly domineer to keep them around. Sounds simple, but then I guess nobody said it needed to be complicated."

"See, I tend to look at people the same way I look at any other animal. The ones that get eaten are typically those that stray from the group, can't find one, or get ejected from the group. "Safety in numbers" is a proverb for a reason, it's completely true. I may not have had a thousand friends, not guarded by a phalanx of stern faces like Geno or Davis, but I had enough. That, and hair that made me look like I had cartel connections."


"No, it wasn't just that. I admit that the anti-gay sentiment at my school was probably in dead-heat with the more inclusive rhetoric, but there were plenty of others that caught flack for different reasons. Kids with weight issues were a big one, no pun intended. But I recall most incidences involved girls spreading rumors about other girls. Who screwed who, who caught what from who, who said what about someone who said someone caught something from who, those kinds of things. Every time I heard about a fight, in defiance of all expectations, it was between two girls. Rumors were like bad smells in high school, you could try and change, but they would still linger."


"Me? I sure hope not. I wasn't one to start anything, but I'd call you out if I had to."
"But nobody's blameless, I guess. I'm sure there were plenty of times where I saw something and did nothing. Even when that poor kid thought I would."


"Oh no, no, no, you don't stop it. You can never stop it. Kids have been picked on since there were kids to pick on. Putting it in the limelight now, pulling out soapboxes and condemning bullying outright won't fix things. It's a matter of kids adapting accordingly and overcoming it. Social connections, assertion, stress management. These are the kind of things that should be taught and valued."
"If some kid's parents keep moving them from school to school, what is that teaching them? Keep running? Same goes for the mob mentality against bullying some people have. Some bullies are just kids tackling the top of the social pecking order, and the rest have real issues of their own. Blasting them just creates new victims."


"I think it's important to accept bullying as an inevitability. As a kind of 'trial by fire' that everyone is bound to go through to some degree. Some, sad as it is, burn. But others come out of it with this foundry-fresh armor, knowing how to take insults in stride and even differentiate between scathing remarks and constructive criticism. The best we can do for them is make sure they get support, but not hold them up without teaching them to stand. When you only have one chance at life, giving up isn't an option."