Is There Any Getting The Best of Bullies?

I read a lot these days about bullies in schools. It is not heartening news. Many of the stories have tragic endings. It saddens me.

When I was growing up I had many encounters with bullies. Since I changed schools often in my childhood I became a target of bullies.

I think I was generally a target because I was new, but also because I grew rapidly as a child and usually was taller than anybody else in my classes. It didn’t matter that I was match thin, I still was perceived as bigger, so to speak.

So bullies came after me.

Over the years, for me there are three particular encounters with bullies that stand out.

The first was when I was in the second grade in Long Beach – about 7-years-old at the time.

A girl and I had befriended each other in the school playground.

Now, you have to understand, that young boys and girls at that age generally are not friends or companions. Young boys seem to have an innate hatred, scorn or just plain contempt of young girls. Sounds like "eyew" or "yuch" come to mind.

Nonetheless, I didn’t have a problem playing with girls at that age. It probably was because my closest companion in general at the time was my sister, who was a year younger than me.

I remember the girl, Sharon, and I met daily during recess and we’d talk and laugh together. We even made make believe homes in the sand and pretended we were married. Call us precocious. Maybe we just wanted to feel the affection neither of us felt at home.

There was a third grader in the school yard who seemed to think of himself as lord of all the kids in his grade and below.

One day he came over and kicked at the sand of our make-believe home. I remember him standing with his hands on his hips and calling out that I was as sissy. When I didn’t respond he kicked sand in my face. What a comic-book cliché that was.

I reacted by standing and telling him to leave us alone. He charged at me, his fist cocked and tried to hit me in the face. As I recall, I ducked and hit him in the gut. He grabbed me as he fell and we wrestled around on the ground.

We both landed a few blows on each other before some teachers broke up the fight. The word around the playground was that I had beaten up a bully older than me. At least that is how it appeared to many classmates. From my point of view, the best outcome was that he never confronted me again.

Many other bullies through the years came after me and I always stood up for myself. But none were like Brian whom I confronted while in the 5th grade.

We had moved from Mt. Baldy Village to Ontario and Brian was our next door neighbor. We were the same age and about the same height but he had a few more pounds on me. He seemed to rule over not only all of the kids in our neighborhood but kids older and younger in our school.

Brian took an instant dislike to me when we moved into the house next door. Of course, he immediately challenged me. His idea of a challenge was a quick punch in the face, followed by him standing over me, hands on his hips, and laughing.

He didn’t expect what happened next.

I got up quickly and punched him in the face. He didn’t go down like I did from his punch but I nonetheless stunned him. I stunned him more because I had stood up and punched him, not because I had particularly hurt him.

Still, he shook it off and laid me out again with another punch.

I got up and punched him back.

I can still remember the look on his face. It was pure surprise and astonishment. No one had ever gotten back up to challenge him before. Having it happen a second time in one encounter completely bewildered him.

I remember him reaching back to hit me again, and I told him “go ahead, you know what will happen next.” He stopped and, despite his oafishness, pondered that and finally relaxed his arm. He just told me to go away at that point. But I think some of that was because my dog Rusty by this time had come to my rescue snapping and growling at him.

This encounter happened without any witnesses. I never talked about it and neither did he. But he never ever tried to bully me again.

This seemed to baffle other kids at school because he had a reputation. Still, we maintained a truce because he did not want his standing challenged. He knew that to challenge me in front of the other school kids would only undermine his reputation.

The next bully really has always baffled me.

There was this kid named Carlos. We were in the seventh grade together and for whatever reason he just decided that he did not like me.

I truly do not understand to this day why Carlos decided that I was his enemy and had to be brutalized. There was never any encounter I remember that would engender his attitude.

The thing that really worked in my favor overall was that Carlos was a coward. So he never tried to fight me directly. What did not work in my favor was that he belonged to a neighborhood gang. So he sicced them on me.

It was fortunate that I avoided a couple of close encounters with his gang that probably would have left me severely injured. One was a chase on bicycles with about 20 of them on my tail. Fortunately I managed to elude them, probably because adrenaline helped me out pedal them and get home safely.

But I remember one night I walked through my neighborhood with a friend and suddenly there was Carlos and the leader of his gang.

The result was a fist fight between me and the gang leader. What I remember most was how much my face hurt from the blows he landed. I wasn't big or strong or particular quick but I landed a few blows of my own.

Unexpectedly, the gang leader suddenly dropped his hands, turned to Carlos and said: “Leave him alone. He’s all right.”

I still got dagger stares from Carlos in school and on the street. But neither he nor anyone else in his gang ever gave me any trouble again.

Don't ask me why I stood up to bullies. I don't have an easy answer. I just did. What I learned is that bullies don't like anyone to stand up to them.

That doesn’t mean that today I would counsel anyone to act as I did. When I was a kid in the 1950s and 1960s my kind of response might have been the best course of action.

Things really seem different today. The level of violence is unimaginable compared to when I grew up. I have read some very disturbing stories about bullies recently in the news. Unfortunately, some of those stories have ended quite tragically.

I am sorry to see that bullying continues in our society. I don’t think that today the way I responded would be the right way to go. I think it takes more today than a victim standing back up.

It takes a system, it takes parents, it takes peers as a group to stand up and let bullies know that their power is limited.

Most of all, it takes identifying potential bullies and intervening before another tragedy happens.

This is not a no-brainer. I think it is easy for teachers, administrators, and school peers – especially peers because the also are potential victims – to identify bullies before things turn tragic.

I hate to say it, but our society shuns intervention and waits until something tragic happens before acting.

How unfortunate – especially for the next victim of a bully that might become another fatality.