Imagine making your way from place to
place always afraid.
You must peer over your shoulders as
you navigate the halls. Never doubting that someone will shout an insult or
slur directed at you. All the other children will giggle. Somehow due to your
poor luck, these slights are timed to where no teacher or administrator seems
to hear them.
I should tell someone, a teacher, my mom, a voice inside pleads with you, but another
voice reminds you; No one likes a tattle tale…
On
the particularly bad days, you may even get punched or kicked simply because
you are different. Needlessly, you try make sense of why you incite such
behavior in others. Maybe your clothes were purchased at, not the mall, but (GASP!)
a second hand store. You wear glasses. You have little to no interest in
football. You actually like to read and do it quite often. Maybe you aren’t attracted
to the opposite sex (yet), or you’re attracted to those that are the same sex. The
reasons are endless, and it isn’t worth exploring why, because in the end
making sense of the abuse won’t make it stop.
You
often feel that at any moment during your most defenseless moment, a bystander,
a hero will spring into action just in the nick of time to save you. Unfortunately, it seems that even movies and
television have deceived you, because no one helps.
***
Bullying rates (includes physical, emotional and cyber)
have seemingly been on the rise in the United States in recent years. The
problem has gotten so bad, that it’s caused several resources for children and
parents alike, to spring up. Various groups have made a significant impact in
increasing awareness, which has in turn led to increased reporting at least as
far as most statistics seem to indicate.
All these groups have abundant advice to stop bullying,
however even according to stopbullying.org, “Many prevention programs have been
tested in schools with modest results. Others have failed to make a difference.
Researchers are still working on solutions to this complex problem.”
I’m going to pose what will likely be a controversial or
even unpopular question: When did it become outmoded to encourage a kid to
stand up for themselves?
I ask this simply because a majority of the material I have
accessed online instruct parents to tell children to “walk away”, “find an
adult” or other ideas that may temporarily take care of the problem, but will
not solve it altogether.
In my (albeit humble and limited) experience, if a bully
latches onto you as a victim, they tend to remain so if they know that a child will
not speak up or stand up.
As a husky pants-wearing child (and teen) and one that
had cerebral palsy (and still has as an adult), I often found myself the target
of some bully with an axe to grind. Although, after dealing with a few of these
types, I found in each case, with a bit of bravado, self confidence and
(usually) without a punch landed or thrown, I was able to show that the bully
was really not the imposing monster he had made himself out to be.
***
For you sadly, the worse part about
all of this is the helplessness that comes along knowing that it’s only Monday,
and you’ve still got four more days to deal with this before you even get a break-
and that’s if you don’t onto any websites once you get home.
For a split second, as you get slammed
up against a locker you think, I could fight back! But this has gone on for so
long, and the kids conducting these behaviors are so gigantic, cruel, the odds
seem stacked against you to the point that fighting back would only invite more pain.
Cool tears run down your cheeks, not
because of the hurt, or the gawking, or the inaction of those watching, but
because you realize that, I’m a victim and this is just the way
things are.
But then again…you might be a child,
but you’re still human. And after all this torture day in and day out,
something’s got to give. So after your spine rebounds off the locker, you do
something you’ve imagined yourself doing 1,000 times. You’ve seen every
outcome; you miss, get pummeled even worse, or you connect knocking the bully
to the floor –and every scenario in between.
So this time, instead of using your
hand to wipe away those tears, you do something drastically different.
The thing you’ve managed to talk
yourself out of for so long.
You pull back make a fist. Anger might’ve
started it, sadness may have propelled it, but justice will land it – or so you
hope…
***
…What comes next?
You may or may not “win” – but that’s not the point is
it?
