Inside

Bullies and Bitches

Bullying has become a major problem in this country and not just for children. In fact, recent studies indicate that adult bullying has become more prevalent than childhood bullying in the United States and many other countries. Nearly one-third of Americans have been bullied as an adult, and almost half know someone who has been (Weber, 2015). Bullying is a coping strategy used to assert control and gain power in a relationship when faced with intellectual, physical, or other types of personal limitations (Sophy, 2018). Adults are bullied by people they interact with everyday, including intimidating managers, jealous coworkers, controlling partners, and complaining neighbors. The most common place for an adult to experience bullying is the workplace, where coworkers and sometimes even bosses fail to provide help when needed, delay requests for necessary items, sabotage projects, and many other simple but subtle things that can undermine everything someone does and make their contributions to the workplace seem insignificant (Chan et al, 2019). Bullying, whether in the schoolyard or in the workplace, can cause long-term and even permanent emotional and psychological damage (Ni, 2016). I know first-hand how it feels to be bullied, both as child and as an adult. The bullying I experienced as a kid caused me to develop negative feelings about myself that I have carried with me throughout my entire life, negative feelings that still persist today. The bullying I've experienced as an adult, well, that just pisses me off.

How Bullying Begins

Children learn how to bully at an early age, from their family and other adults they look up to. The ability to imitate the behavior of others is essential to skill development in children because it enables us to learn new things quickly and efficiently simply by watching the people around us, and it is responsible for the development of a wide range of abilities, from the use of language to interpersonal behavior to social cognition and more (Kowakski et al, 2018). Children learn to imitate the behavior of their parents before they are even two years old. By imitating their parents, young children receive attention from them, which reinforces and encourages the behavior (Stiefel, 2017). So, at a very early age, children learn to associate imitating the behavior of others with the joy of receiving much desired attention. They eventually learn they can get this attention by imitating other adults, and when they start school, they learn to get the attention they crave by imitating the behavior of their new friends. Again, this is a skill that is essential for their development. There is nothing inherently bad about it. The problem is that children develop this skill when they are too young to distinguish good behavior from bad behavior, and very often when they look to adults for model good behavior, they see bad behavior instead. Too young to understand the do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do principal, children view the behaviors of adults as model good behavior, but adults tease and make fun of other people in front of children all the time. My parents did it, and they were very kind people. When children see this kind of behavior from an adult, they think it's ok for them to do as well, and that is how it starts. My point is that bullying is 100% preventable, and more importantly, like any other learned behavior, it can be unlearned.

My Childhood Bullies

The bullies started picking on me when I was very young. It started with teasing but got progressively worse as time went by and we all got older. I couldn't escape from them. At school, on the bus, all the way down our half mile long driveway, in the yard, and even in the house, my seven older brothers teased me relentlessly. Not only that but they were murderers as well. They killed all my childhood friends, one after the other. First, it was the Easter Bunny. When I was six, one of my brothers told me the Easter Bunny had just jumped in front of his car. "Apparently the life of a bunny isn't always so hippity hoppity happy", he said. On Christmas Eve that same year, another brother told me Santa Claus had just fallen off the roof. "He was drunk as a skunk and tried to mount Rudolph's nose." Apparently Rudolph was not in the mood to have his nose mounted. The Tooth Fairy met a less violent end than Bunny and Santa. I was told that Mr. Fairy caught her in the wrong bedroom with a fist full of something she shouldn't have had a fist full of and that she had to save all her dollars to pay for what would definitely be a bitter divorce. When they ran out of imaginary friends to kill, they found other ways to intimidate me, like the time two of my brothers told me they would crash the car we were in if I didn't smoke a joint with them. I did as they demanded, of course, because I didn't want to die at such a young age. They got what was coming to them that time, though. I took one puff and threw up all over the car, and I kept throwing up all the way home. They had to explain to our mom why it happened, and she didn't find it nearly as amusing as they did. The constant teasing from my older brothers eventually made me begin to dislike them, and as the years of my childhood passed, my dislike of them slowly turned into hatred.

The other kids at school started calling me a fag in middle school. I was called fag by both boys and girls, bullies and bitches. Eventually, they started calling me other names, whatever was insulting and hurtful. It didn't seem to matter to them how bad they made me feel. I don't think they ever even noticed. The bullying progressed as we all moved from grade to grade. They made fun of the way I talked, the way I walked, the way I carried my books, the way I did everything. The more aggressive kids enjoyed knocking my books out of my arms, laughing and calling me names as I scrambled to pick them up. In the seventh grade, one of them pulled my shorts and underwear down to my knees in the middle of the gym during PE class. His friends congratulated him as dozens of other kids laughed and pointed at the sad, humiliated creature with his pants down. That was the single most humiliating moment of my entire life. I've never felt more alone in the world than I did in that moment.

I knew many of these kids from elementary school. They weren't quite so mean back then. All they ever did in elementary school was call me stupid. In class under their breath so the teacher wouldn't hear, on the playground all loud and mean because the teacher couldn't hear, in the hallways two at time because no teachers were near, throughout elementary school I was constantly being told I was stupid.

Hey Stupid

When I started Kindergarten, I stuttered so badly my parents couldn't understand what I was saying most of the time. I stuttered every time I opened my mouth, on every word and every syllable. I remember this vividly. I was a very quiet kid, not because I was a quiet kid but because it was so difficult to say what I was thinking and I was frustrated and embarrassed by it. I was so shy when I started school that every time the teacher called on me to answer a question, I walked up to the front of the class and whispered the answer in her ear. I remember doing this. I also remember how bad it made me feel when the other kids laughed at me when I spoke, and walking to the front of the class to whisper into my teacher's ear allowed me to avoid feeling that way. Shortly after I started school, there was a meeting between the school principal and my parents. As my mom told me many years later, the principal explained to them that my shyness was the result of severe emotional problems that had caused me to become emotionally underdeveloped. He suggested that they seek help for me from a psychiatrist. My mom was a very kind woman, and under ordinary circumstances, it was impossible to make her angry. But every so often, someone would push one of her hot buttons. One of the hottest of those buttons, something she had absolutely no tolerance for, was when someone picked on her children, and although my elementary school principal didn't know it, he had just pushed this button. I barely remember that meeting, but I remember the look on my father's face as the principal uttered those fateful words. My father grabbed me by the shoulder, like he did my brothers when they pissed him off, and quickly led me out of the room, telling me to sit down and wait for them. By the time I turned around, the door was almost completely closed, but for a split second just before the door came to its final resting place snugged neatly inside the door frame, I saw the look on the principal's face. It was a look I had never seen before, a look I did not know the meaning of at the time. It wasn't until several years later that I understood what that look signified. It was a look of sheer terror. Think about the last horror movie you watched, about the look on the face of the characters when they realize they are only seconds away from being murdered. That was the look I saw on the face of my elementary school principal as I turned around and the door to his office closed.

It was the look of a man who had just realized he'd said something wrong, something horribly wrong, and it was about to cost him his life. Of course, my mother didn't murder the guy, but I'm sure there were moments during that conversation when he wished he were dead. I heard my mom start to yell. Everyone in the waiting room heard my mom start to yell. I wondered why my father had bothered to hurry me out of the room. I could hear every word my mom was yelling. Everyone could. It wasn't that he hadn't considered the possibility that my shyness might have resulted from my stuttering, that maybe I was quiet because it was difficult and embarrassing for me to speak, and that the other kids made fun of me whenever I tried to speak. Those were, after all, the reasons why I was so shy in kindergarten. My mom wasn't upset because my principal hadn't considered those things. What pissed her off that day was that he didn't even know I stuttered. He was so quick to indict me as being emotionally underdeveloped without doing even one thing to attempt to understand what was going on inside my head. That's what pissed her off. My mom tore my elementary school principal a new one that day, and I started speech therapy very soon afterwards.

I am very grateful for speech therapy. It's how I learned to speak like a normal person. But it wasn't a fast solution, not a quick fix. I was well into middle school before it was determined that I no longer needed it. Seven years, that's how long it took for a kid who couldn't utter one word withot repeating the first letter repeatedly, uncontrollably, very often until he simply broke down and cried. Many people think stuttering is a learning disability. It's not. It's a speech impediment. It impedes a person's speech, making it difficult for him to say the words he is thinking. It does not make it difficult for him to think of the words to say. I remember how the words would pile up in my mind, one after another as my mouth played its awful trick on me. I remember all of the taunting, the laughing, the pointing from other kids. I remember the tone in the voice of adults who were being very patient, very understanding, very comforting. I grew to hate hearing that tone of voice, not because the adults were being mean but because I knew what they were thinking. "The poor little stupid child can't get his words out" or "Oh you poor little stupid thing" or "Don't worry little idiot, take as long as you need to". It was the tone of pity. They pitied me and I hated them for it. This brings me to the most important point I want to make to you. The one thing that, if you remember nothing else about what you learn from me from this website, I want it to be this. Kids who stutter are not called stutterers. They're called stupid, over and over and over. And it makes them feel bad about themselves. I remember how it felt to be teased about my stuttering. I couldn't even defend myself because I would stutter every time I tried, and they would laugh even more. I came home crying more times than I can count when I was a kid, and I kept crying long after the stuttering stopped.

When a kid is called stupid over and over and over, he eventually begins to believe it. For much of my life, I believed I was stupid. I wasted so much time and energy trying to prove to myself that I wasn't. I am, in fact, a man of average intelligence, smarter than some, not as smart as others, just like almost everyone else in the world. Despite my average intelligence, I have always excelled academically. In the second grade, it was suggested that I could skip the third grade, but my parents decided against it. I was already one of the youngest students in my class because my birthday comes at the end of the year. Skipping a grade would make me the youngest kid in my class, and my parents felt it would have had a negative impact on my social skills. They were right. In the fourth grade, it was suggested that I should be placed in the school's gifted program. Once again, my parents decided against it. They felt the pressure of accelerated learning would negatively impact my social skills. They were right again. In middle and high school, I was always on the Dean's List (every time, without exception), and I was in the advanced placement classes with all the super smart kids. (They didn't care too much for me either, but at least they didn't make fun of me.) I graduated high school with Academic Honors, finishing with a final GPA of 3.76. I attained a Bachelor's degree in my thirties, graduating with a final GPA of 3.98, summa cum laude, and I did this while I worked fifty hours a week. I attained a Master's degree in my forties, graduating summa cum laude once again with a final GPA of 3.92. My academic success has always resulted from the effort I put into my studies. I went to class, paid attention, studied studied studied, and always did my best to give my teachers what they asked for. In other words, I applied myself. I was motivated by a force that, for most of my life, I couldn't see and didn't even know was there. I carried around the schoolyard taunts, the almost constant name calling and repeatedly being told I was stupid. No matter how high my grades were, no matter how many academic awards I earned, deep down in my subconscious, I believed I was a stupid person.

My Unsecret Weapon

I don't want to give you the wrong impression by making the bullying I experienced as a kid seem like more than it was. Lots of kids were bullied, and most of the time, they got it worse than me because I had a secret weapon that wasn't such a secret. I have seven older, trouble making brothers, and one of them was just one grade ahead of me. It would be great to be able to say that whenever the bullies bothered me, I would tell my older brother, and he'd valiantly defend me. I guess we can make it part of the official record, the grand narrative of my childhood, but the truth of the matter is my older brother liked to fight. He wasn't a bully per se, but he once told me that he wakes up everyday knowing he's probably going to hit somebody, and most days, he doesn't really care who it's going to be. Sometime in the sixth grade, I realized all I had to do was tell him that a certain someone said a certain something about him, and the next day wham-bam-thank-you-man a certain bully got it in the gut. I also learned to get even with the bitches by telling his girlfriend that a certain bitch called her a bitch, and the next day, wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am a certain bitch got it in the face. My brother and I could not have been less alike. We didn't look like one another. We didn't act like one another. We didn't do anything like one another. Most people didn't believe us when we told them we were brothers. And it's not like he'd make a speech detailing his grievances before teaching my bully a lesson. He'd just walk up and punch him in the gut. My bullies didn't immediately realize there was a connection between how they treated me one day and how their stomach hurt after my brother hit them in the gut the next day. The bitches were even slower to catch on. Even after they figured it out, they realized my brother wouldn't always intervene. From there, it was a simple calculation to figure out if it was worth the risk or not. By the time everyone had figured out who my older brother was and what might happen if they picked on me, my brother dropped out of school and left me all alone to defend myself.

Adults Bullying Kids

Bullying is bad no matter who is being bullied, but it is especially egregious when an adult bullies a kid, something that happens everywhere everyday. The worst place for this to happen is in a school, yet that is where it happens most often. I distinctly remember the first time an adult bullied me. I was twelve. He was well into his thirties, a big man picking on a little kid. I was in the seventh grade when it happened. In fact, I was in his seventh grade Social Studies class. Childhood bullying is bad enough. Adult bullying is bad enough. An adult bullying a child is despicable. A seventh grade teacher bullying his student is unforgivable.

It started with him making fun of my clothes. I am next-to-the-youngest of thirteen children, and I had seven older brothers. My parents could not afford to buy us new clothes all the time, and I wore hand-me-downs from my older brothers for most of my childhood. Clothes that were probably already out of style when they were new were patched and sewed here and there to make them wearable again. I don't think I owned a single piece of clothes that didn't have a patch or sewn cuff somewhere on it, and this was amusing to my teacher. Every time I'd get up from my desk during class, he'd make some comment about my patched knees or sewn elbows. He called me hoboboy, leading the way for the other kids in the class to call me names. He got especially delighted when I got upset, and the closer to tears I got, the more delighted he got. At some point, he realized he could make me stutter, which at that point only happened when I got angry or when I was nervous. Whenever he got me angry enough or nervous enough, he would just look at me, smiling from ear to ear as I struggled to get the words out of my mouth. I hated going to his class. I certainly hated him. I realized he was a bully I couldn't trick my older brother into punching him in the gut, but as it turned out, I didn't need my brother.

I was sitting in his class one day trying my hardest to be invisible when the door to the classroom suddenly opened, slowly at first until it was halfway open then springing fully open in an instant pulling the arm of the person opening it along for the ride. My mom's face appeared in the open doorway. I could see my father holding the door open behind her. I started putting my stuff into my backpack. I could tell by the look on my mom's face that she was upset. Something must have happened. Someone died. It must have been someone close to make my parents get me out of school like this, an aunt, uncle, my grandmother, one of my sisters, a brother. My mom looked at my teacher, and without stepping into the classroom, told him to come out into the hallway. He looked a little puzzled, but he complied. I saw my father let go of the door as my teacher exited the room. There was a moment of silence just after the door closed. It seemed to last forever. I had already realized my parents weren't there to pick me up, that nobody had died. Then, suddenly, all hell broke loose in the hallway. Not only did my entire class hear what was said, I think every class in the school heard. Keep in mind, the only person talking was my mother. The teacher couldn't get a word in edgewise. I'm not sure if he even tried, though. It was clear from the beginning that my mom was about to tear him a new one, and no matter what he said or did, there was no way of getting out of it. I was humiliated. I darted out of the classroom as fast as I could when the bell rang. My mom didn't mention what happened when I got home, and I was certainly not going to bring the subject up myself.

The moment I stepped into his classroom the next day, I knew something was different. He wouldn't even look at me, didn't comment on what I was wearing, and seemed to have forgotten the delight he felt when I stuttered. My mom had broken him, trampled on his spirit, and made him sad. I was delighted.

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Bullies Are Bad, Ya'll

Bullying is bad, and people who bully are bad people. Well, deep down I hold child bullies to a different standard than adult bullies. After all, it isn't their fault. It's also not their fault that they don't understand the broader implications of their behavior. Many children who bully other children eventually grow out of the behavior as they grow up. I've forgiven all the bullies and bitches from my childhood, even my older brothers. I've thought a lot about how much I hated them when I was a kid, but looking back on it, I now see a distinct difference between the bullying I experienced at home and the bullying I experienced at school. My brothers liked to get me upset, but they were never hurtful about it. They never made fun of my stuttering, and they never called me stupid. In fact, they never did any of the things the bullies at school did. My brothers teased me all the time, but they never made me feel bad about myself. They just did what brothers do. It's easier to forgive my childhood bullies than those who have attempted to bullly me as an adult. Yep, they are an entirely different piece of cake. Adults are old enough to understand the harm their bullying causes. Many of them don't, but they should and that's on them. know better, and I have no forgiveness for them. I know how to handle a bully as an adult. Deep down, all bullies are cowards. They pick on whoever doesn't fight back. I now fight back. And they never see it coming.

Works Cited

Chan, C., Wong, J., Yeap, L., Wee, L., Jamil, N., and Nantha, Y. (2019). Workplace bullying and psychological distress of employees across socioeconomic strata: a cross-sectional study. BMC Public Health, 19(608), 34-40, doi:10.1186/s12889-019-6859-1

Kowakski, R. M., Toth, A., & Morgan, M. (2018). Bullying and cyberbullying in adulthood and the workplace. The Journal of Social Psychology, 158(1), 64-81 doi:10.1080/00224545. 2017.1302402

Sophy, Charles. (2018). Adult Bullying. Journal of Osteopathic Medicine, 13(5), 23-24.

Stiefel, Chana. (2017). What Your Child Learns By Imitating You. Parents Magazine. Retrieved from https://www.parents.com/toddlers-preschoolers/development/behavioral/what-your-child-learns-by-imitating-you

Weber, M. R. (2015). Adult Bullying. Education Digest, 807(7), 32-29, doi:10.4324/ 9780203360255

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