I was a nerdy awkward kid. Also until I hit my sophomore growth spurt, I was smaller than everyone else.
You're gosh darn right I got picked on and bullied and got into a few fights. I wouldn't wish bullying on anyone.
That said, I don't go on a moral crusade against it either. It is human nature, an ugly part of human nature, but part of it.
Bullying taught me a few things.
I had to learn to triage my problems. One of the earliest things I realized was if I complained to adults about it constantly, I would soon be ignored. Nobody really gives a damn if he throws rocks at you after school every day if you complain about it every day. In the real world nobody gives a damn about you being a little uncomfortable or pushed around or intimidated, sooner you learn that the better.
I also learned you need proof. I was a chump of a kid, I didn't lie to adults and things like that. I thought, stupid me, the whole point of not being a liar was when you said something people knew they could believe you. Nope, world doesn't work like that.
I had to learn to deal with it myself. And that meant I had to learn when to hold 'em and when to fold 'em. There were times you just had to put up with it. And there were times you had to do something you'd get in trouble for if you got caught.
I'm not some big tough guy who threatens to beat people up, I hate fighting. I think a milk carton is scarier than I am. Yes martial arts and things like that are all very interesting but I've never known anyone who is into that kind of subject area expertise to actually relish hurting people with it. I hate it when people get hurt.
But damn it all if that's not the problem. The gentler, more peaceful you are by disposition, the more of these assholes you attract than you otherwise would if you were a more aggressive person.
It teaches you to leverage intelligence over brute force. There was a boy named Marcus who used to come to the bus stop and punch me in the stomach and run away so everyone else would laugh and call me gay. So after the second time this happened, I came to the bus stop with a hardcover book taped over my gut under my shirt. Marcus broke a fingernail (and I don't mean in a dainty way I mean in a he didn't have a nail on that thumb for a while way) and jammed two of his fingers and fell to the ground groaning in pain.
Of course Marcus and I became good friends for a long time after that. I was never a popular kid but I stopped being a punchline after that incident.
Another boy named Ken used to grab me and drag me into the pine straw and bury me in it face first so deep I couldn't breath and I had mud in my mouth afterward. He was much taller than I was too. I complained to the principle, who said they would "monitor". This happened twice more while they were "monitoring".
So one day I threw a pine cone at Ken. He came running to punish me and I pulled the string, and the branch under tension went over my head, but it was the perfect height to hit him right on the bridge of the nose... A half dozen stomps on his crotch afterward insured he never bothered me again.
But those were my only seriously physical bullies. The rest were more into flicking staples at you, pushing you over, name calling, intimidation, etc. Of course eventually I learned the rule is, never let them touch you or hurt you. They can say anything they want and it doesn't matter, but if someone touches you, you maul them right then and there.
It taught me some bad things too, like it taught me to be sneaky. I never fought my bullies at school. And it taught me to curse and be rude to these people.
Would I want anyone to go through this? No. But people are what they are. Bullying will never go away. And if you're the kind of person who gets bullied because you're different somehow, you are going to get picked on your entire life because you aren't going to get less different somehow. It's better to learn in junior high where the consequences don't really matter.
It makes you a better person when you realize you've just got to have a pair of balls sometimes, and you understand more than anyone when people deserve the crap they get and when they do not.
For all I know, I'm here today because I pulled a gun on a carjacker once ten years ago.
Years later, I would tell a very rude man if he didn't stop harassing my developmentally disabled coworker with crass sexual harassment, I was going to break my foot off in his ass, because by then, I not only knew how it felt, I knew how to deal with people like that.
Moral crusades against something you can never change will help no one unless you also change attitudes from zero tolerance polices and other such nonsense that just encourages the victim to put up with it. As a strong academic student, I was terrified of suspensions and expulsions, but my bullies weren't. It wasn't until I got into situations that were so bad I was willing to shove another boy into the pavement in the street than put up with it that I learned how to make it stop. And how dangerous is that? Also I was probably wrong in my thinking anyway, I bet the school could have done something to me because most schools have a policy that if it happened near campus or the bus it happened on campus.
I will agree some of the adults around me should have taken me more seriously, but the message needs to be fight back. Viciously.
