Quote:
Originally Posted by Clodfobble
Kids can be crafty, but that's not the kind of bully that wears a kid down enough to make them bring a gun--that only happens over years of abuse. My bully once raised her leg up and kicked the shit out of my ribs, in class, right in front of the teacher, and the teacher did nothing.
If I had only known I could fight back, things would have been different. Adult intervention is critical, and that includes teaching kids that they don't have to put up with being bullied, a message that was lacking when I was a kid. I'm glad your mom stood up for you. If she hadn't, what would you have done?
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That sucks Clod. And I'm glad teachers and kids have become more aware of the problem and how to deal with it than everyone was back in the day when we were in school.
My parents were mistrustful of regular schools after sending me to schools on army bases for grades K thru 7. When we bought a house off base and I would have had to attend a regular public school, they baulked at the idea and sent me to a private school run by the Luthern Church instead.
I'd have been better off with the gang bangers my parents imagined infesting civilian schools. The culture shock was awful. I went from attending class with a group of my fellow vagabonds to being in a classroom with a group of kids who'd gone to school together since the first grade. And if being the new kid wasn't bad enough, I'd hadn't been raised Luthern. As a matter of fact, I was already an agnostic by the ripe old age of 13.
That pack of 8th grade fundamentalists made my life miserable in every way they could think of. I used to cry myself to sleep. The teachers not only knew about it and didn't intervene, they actually joined in. One time another kid asked me if I was "saved" during lunch-break in the school cafeteria. I hated that little bitch who asked and I had no trouble telling her the truth which was "Hell, no!"
Naturally word spread like wild-fire among the shocked faithful and I was called into the office of the pastor who treated us 8th graders to an hour's worth of fundamentalist brain washing each day. That man told me that I was going to hell. He damned me to eternal flames at age 13. I was pretty stunned for a few days. Then I decided that if the Lutherns were right, a bunch of unbaptized babies were going to hell with me and SOMEONE needed to take care of those poor children since god wouldn't.
This thought bouyed me up considerably and when my Dad came home after a year-long tour of duty in Vietnam, I convinced him to let me go to the local public high school where I found a group of fellow nerds to hang out with and was spared further bullying. I can easily imagine a teenage boy being pushed over the edge and doing bad to those kids at my old junior high.
