Allyourbase
Allison Kapitein
- Joined
- Jun 26, 2010
- Posts
- 1,283
Fair enough. Also, everybody smokes pot here. (Except me.) Just so you know.
Bullies
- Thread starter Keroin
- Start date
Fair enough. Also, everybody smokes pot here. (Except me.) Just so you know.
CandiCame
Rocket Grunt
- Joined
- Apr 12, 2011
- Posts
- 26,765
*screams in frustration*
Aren't you also all blond? And giant? I'd be all kinds of exotic...
graceanne
iteroticalay urugay
- Joined
- Jun 22, 2004
- Posts
- 27,585
That said, I am very happy now, even if I always feel I should preface this stuff by saying that to avoid sounding whiny
Me, too. However, when people refer to those years as the golden years, I gag. I wouldn't be a kid again if you paid me, because even if I could do things differently, I probably wouldn't because my life circumstances would be the same.
I skipped a lot, too. However, my teachers didn't care, they knew why I was skipping, and they knew I wasn't causing trouble or smoking or anything like that. Once me and my best friend were skipping and the security guard came up to us and asked what we were doing, and we told her we were skipping and she said 'ok, just don't get caught' and wandered off. I think the teachers were just happy that I wasn't hiding under my coat pretending not to be there.
CandiCame
Rocket Grunt
- Joined
- Apr 12, 2011
- Posts
- 26,765
If you go through the door, they got paid for you. I would never make it to school at all.
ownedsubgal
lost little girl
- Joined
- Mar 21, 2003
- Posts
- 2,996
yeah, being bullied sucks. i always wondered why certain kids are just targets for life, while others get to casually live out their childhoods and play and go to school without anyone giving a d*mn.
i was a really unfortunate combination of nerdy/bookish, physically small and ungainly, painfully shy and excruciatingly submissive. the first few years of school a separate teacher was always sent in for me because i was so verbally advanced...yeah, that helps make friends. then they finally skipped me a grade and that REALLY made things awesome. so i was even tinier in comparison to my peers, and just as weird and nerdy. kids also picked up fast that i would do whatever i was told, so i did boatloads of homework for bullies. many times my own work suffered because i would place that dead last in my list of priorities.
in 3rd grade i won the school spelling bee and then on the bus ride home got jumped by two girls for apparently thinking i was white. there was a whooole lot of that from the poorer black kids. the white kids just beat me up for being generally weird and goofy. middle/upper middle black kids (usually my neighbors) beat me up for being ugly. teachers/bus drivers never did a thing, they feel it's just kids being kids and all a part of growing up. i remember one girl, RENATA, giving me a firm kick as i was walking down the steps of the school bus in front of my grandmother's house. my little body flew down the steps and i landed face down on the gravel driveway. hands and face all scraped and bloody, and of course the entire bus of kids looking out the window and laughing their heads off. the driver asked if i was okay then drove off before i could spit the rocks out and respond. good times.
it got worse, exponentially worse, in middle school. don't even really want to revisit those experiences.
how do you get through it? what got me through was this firm conviction i had, from reading a bit about karm and dharm and such, that the more suffering one experienced at a certain time in life, the happier one's future life would be. as the daily horrors continued, i would think, "when i'm grown up life will be beautiful, i will be pretty and happy and loved." you see there had to be a reason for it. because if there was no reason, if life was cruel and miserable just because life is for some people cruel and miserable, that would not have been tolerable. so i sold myself a story.
in the summer between 8th and 9th grade (for that area the difference between middle school and high school), three of my fellow bullied nerds committed suicide. all with guns. i couldn't help thinking that they were dreading high school and 500 brand new kids to make life hell. one of them, Justin, was my daily lunch companion. he was an overweight nerd and that's all it takes. he was also one of the few people to sign my 8th grade yearbook, and he wrote, "Always remember one thing, no matter where you are or when, you are always unique. Bi-cycle, Justin." bicycle was a play on my name and the way he always said goodbye to me. he shot himself the day after 8th grade commencement. i felt really grateful that he did say goodbye.
i was a really unfortunate combination of nerdy/bookish, physically small and ungainly, painfully shy and excruciatingly submissive. the first few years of school a separate teacher was always sent in for me because i was so verbally advanced...yeah, that helps make friends. then they finally skipped me a grade and that REALLY made things awesome. so i was even tinier in comparison to my peers, and just as weird and nerdy. kids also picked up fast that i would do whatever i was told, so i did boatloads of homework for bullies. many times my own work suffered because i would place that dead last in my list of priorities.
in 3rd grade i won the school spelling bee and then on the bus ride home got jumped by two girls for apparently thinking i was white. there was a whooole lot of that from the poorer black kids. the white kids just beat me up for being generally weird and goofy. middle/upper middle black kids (usually my neighbors) beat me up for being ugly. teachers/bus drivers never did a thing, they feel it's just kids being kids and all a part of growing up. i remember one girl, RENATA, giving me a firm kick as i was walking down the steps of the school bus in front of my grandmother's house. my little body flew down the steps and i landed face down on the gravel driveway. hands and face all scraped and bloody, and of course the entire bus of kids looking out the window and laughing their heads off. the driver asked if i was okay then drove off before i could spit the rocks out and respond. good times.
it got worse, exponentially worse, in middle school. don't even really want to revisit those experiences.
how do you get through it? what got me through was this firm conviction i had, from reading a bit about karm and dharm and such, that the more suffering one experienced at a certain time in life, the happier one's future life would be. as the daily horrors continued, i would think, "when i'm grown up life will be beautiful, i will be pretty and happy and loved." you see there had to be a reason for it. because if there was no reason, if life was cruel and miserable just because life is for some people cruel and miserable, that would not have been tolerable. so i sold myself a story.
in the summer between 8th and 9th grade (for that area the difference between middle school and high school), three of my fellow bullied nerds committed suicide. all with guns. i couldn't help thinking that they were dreading high school and 500 brand new kids to make life hell. one of them, Justin, was my daily lunch companion. he was an overweight nerd and that's all it takes. he was also one of the few people to sign my 8th grade yearbook, and he wrote, "Always remember one thing, no matter where you are or when, you are always unique. Bi-cycle, Justin." bicycle was a play on my name and the way he always said goodbye to me. he shot himself the day after 8th grade commencement. i felt really grateful that he did say goodbye.
BiBunny
Moon Queen & Wanderer
- Joined
- Dec 7, 2005
- Posts
- 12,433
Reading OSG's post made me think of something.
I went to a tiny public school in the middle of nowhere. The place was K-12 and still only had about 800 people in it. My graduating class had 50 people in it and was the largest class that had ever graduated from it at that time. So, naturally, everybody knew everybody.
I was without question the smartest person in the whole school, including most of the teachers. I don't say this to brag because it wasn't like being smarter than a bunch of half-literate rednecks was really anything to write home about. I'd have been just average in a private school specifically for smart kids (not that there were any of those within an hour of where we lived).
Anyhow, I wouldn't call this "bullying," but it always pissed me off something fierce. In most of my classes, we got the chance to work on our homework while we were still in class because the teachers didn't give a shit. And in others, of course, we had in-class work to do as well.
Well, since roughly 75% of the people I went to school with were lazy fucks who never amounted to anything, you can imagine that they never did their schoolwork, either--and this includes most of the "smart" kids. But most of them were the kids of what passed for "rich" people in the area, so, naturally, they had to make good grades.
You can see where this is going. If I was working on homework or classwork, they'd all hover around my desk to get all the answers from me. I wouldn't tell them the answers when they asked, but when you're surrounded by them on all sides, it's not like it's hard for them to get them, anyway. If I tried to hide my homework/schoolwork/sometimes even freaking tests from them, they'd snatch it away from me and pass it all over the room until they were finished with it.
I was disliked by most of the teachers there and despised by the principal--the poor man's kid is not supposed to be the brightest kid in the school AND have better sense than the faculty, see--so I didn't have much of a recourse. If I'd told the teachers, I'd have gotten in trouble for "letting them cheat" because both the cheaters and the people whose work they were appropriating were punished equally. I'd seen it happen plenty of times before to other people.
If I stood up and forcibly took my shit back like they took it from me, I'd be in trouble for that as well and probably accused of stealing *their* shit, instead of vice-versa. If I'd have punched them in the face like they needed someone to do, I'd have been suspended and probably skinned alive at home for starting a fight. If I just didn't do the work until I could get somewhere that the bastards wouldn't take it from me, I got yelled at by the teachers for not working.
There wasn't much I could do about it, so I mostly had to sit there and pray the teachers never caught them with my work because I knew it'd be my ass and not the rich kids' asses. I don't know if they never figured it out (yeah, right) or if they just looked the other way, but I never got in trouble for it.
In the senior class superlatives, I was "thanked" by being voted Most Dependable. Hell, yeah, you depend on me to not flunk out of Special Ed High School, you bunch of blithering idiots.
I heard a couple of years ago that the worst of my schoolwork thieves had been arrested while running from a police helicopter on a 4-wheeler after being busted for--what else--running a meth lab. Christ, you'd think the "rich" kid would've at least been dealing cocaine or something, but no. The local trash never really rose above the dumpster, as it were.
I went to a tiny public school in the middle of nowhere. The place was K-12 and still only had about 800 people in it. My graduating class had 50 people in it and was the largest class that had ever graduated from it at that time. So, naturally, everybody knew everybody.
I was without question the smartest person in the whole school, including most of the teachers. I don't say this to brag because it wasn't like being smarter than a bunch of half-literate rednecks was really anything to write home about. I'd have been just average in a private school specifically for smart kids (not that there were any of those within an hour of where we lived).
Anyhow, I wouldn't call this "bullying," but it always pissed me off something fierce. In most of my classes, we got the chance to work on our homework while we were still in class because the teachers didn't give a shit. And in others, of course, we had in-class work to do as well.
Well, since roughly 75% of the people I went to school with were lazy fucks who never amounted to anything, you can imagine that they never did their schoolwork, either--and this includes most of the "smart" kids. But most of them were the kids of what passed for "rich" people in the area, so, naturally, they had to make good grades.
You can see where this is going. If I was working on homework or classwork, they'd all hover around my desk to get all the answers from me. I wouldn't tell them the answers when they asked, but when you're surrounded by them on all sides, it's not like it's hard for them to get them, anyway. If I tried to hide my homework/schoolwork/sometimes even freaking tests from them, they'd snatch it away from me and pass it all over the room until they were finished with it.
I was disliked by most of the teachers there and despised by the principal--the poor man's kid is not supposed to be the brightest kid in the school AND have better sense than the faculty, see--so I didn't have much of a recourse. If I'd told the teachers, I'd have gotten in trouble for "letting them cheat" because both the cheaters and the people whose work they were appropriating were punished equally. I'd seen it happen plenty of times before to other people.
If I stood up and forcibly took my shit back like they took it from me, I'd be in trouble for that as well and probably accused of stealing *their* shit, instead of vice-versa. If I'd have punched them in the face like they needed someone to do, I'd have been suspended and probably skinned alive at home for starting a fight. If I just didn't do the work until I could get somewhere that the bastards wouldn't take it from me, I got yelled at by the teachers for not working.
There wasn't much I could do about it, so I mostly had to sit there and pray the teachers never caught them with my work because I knew it'd be my ass and not the rich kids' asses. I don't know if they never figured it out (yeah, right) or if they just looked the other way, but I never got in trouble for it.
In the senior class superlatives, I was "thanked" by being voted Most Dependable. Hell, yeah, you depend on me to not flunk out of Special Ed High School, you bunch of blithering idiots.
I heard a couple of years ago that the worst of my schoolwork thieves had been arrested while running from a police helicopter on a 4-wheeler after being busted for--what else--running a meth lab. Christ, you'd think the "rich" kid would've at least been dealing cocaine or something, but no. The local trash never really rose above the dumpster, as it were.
Kurokami
An Erotic A.I
- Joined
- Jan 19, 2011
- Posts
- 1,296
Blimey, Bunny, that feeling of being surrounded by fools sounds familiar! 
But even if you'd been in a more enriching school, there'd have only been a chance things would have been better. I met my first high school bully, the one that hounded me the most while I was there, in an advanced placement scholarship, 'cause I was a smart cookie.
But then again, when I was in primary school I got into another "brainy kids" program- the only one in the entire school to do so, if that helps complete the picture- where I got to leave on certain days and go hang out with a collection of students from all the other schools in the area and deal with awesome stuff, and the contrast between that group of smart mofos and the kids at my usual school was so sharp. I really loved those AP replacement classes, they were the highlight of my week. So pleasant and quiet.
My best memory from that time was being able to walk out of class just as everyone else was beginning a test, to go on a field trip to a museum. Course, then they just bully you for that, but it was totally worth it.
But even if you'd been in a more enriching school, there'd have only been a chance things would have been better. I met my first high school bully, the one that hounded me the most while I was there, in an advanced placement scholarship, 'cause I was a smart cookie.
But then again, when I was in primary school I got into another "brainy kids" program- the only one in the entire school to do so, if that helps complete the picture- where I got to leave on certain days and go hang out with a collection of students from all the other schools in the area and deal with awesome stuff, and the contrast between that group of smart mofos and the kids at my usual school was so sharp. I really loved those AP replacement classes, they were the highlight of my week. So pleasant and quiet.
My best memory from that time was being able to walk out of class just as everyone else was beginning a test, to go on a field trip to a museum. Course, then they just bully you for that, but it was totally worth it.
ownedsubgal
lost little girl
- Joined
- Mar 21, 2003
- Posts
- 2,996
But then again, when I was in primary school I got into another "brainy kids" program- the only one in the entire school to do so, if that helps complete the picture- where I got to leave on certain days and go hang out with a collection of students from all the other schools in the area and deal with awesome stuff, and the contrast between that group of smart mofos and the kids at my usual school was so sharp. I really loved those AP replacement classes, they were the highlight of my week. So pleasant and quiet.
My best memory from that time was being able to walk out of class just as everyone else was beginning a test, to go on a field trip to a museum. Course, then they just bully you for that, but it was totally worth it.
eh, maybe in the long run, but at the time it's hard to see it that way. we had "TAG," as in talented and gifted, as in unpopular nerd program. the special classes and the field trips truly were awesome...it definitely opened up worlds of opportunity. at 8 or 9 i actually got to participate on a serious archaeological dig and help uncover a whale fossil. i still have the t-shirt which reads, "i helped discover a 14,000,000 year old whale!" lots of fun for sure. but the down times...when there wasn't any active learning/seeing/doing, were tough because those kids didn't like me much more than the "normal" kids. they had the cliques as well: rich privileged and groomed smart, boys who love obscure comics and anime smart, etc. everyone just generally ignored me. there was a visit to the Kennedy Center in my early high school years to see Phantom of the Opera, what should have been an awesome experience. they gave us the freedom to practically wander all over D.C. and do whatever as long as we made showtime. i just walked around Union Station aimlessly because no one wanted to hang out with me. then for the show i had to sit beside the facilitator because no one wanted to be near me. kind of ruined the moment. and i guess being the only black kid, ever, didn't help either.
found a pic of that whale tho:
http://media.hamptonroads.com/cache/files/images/341541000.jpg
Saucyminx
High heels and attitude
- Joined
- Jan 23, 2005
- Posts
- 6,251
I put up with a lot of it in grade school, to the point I would request to stay in and act as a secretary to the teachers rather than brave the play ground. By mid-Jr high after some rather traumatic events, I developed a bit of a self-destructive streak and an "I really don't give a fuck what you think" attitude to go with. That was when I finally stopped being a victim--and it was really nothing I did, just people saw the change I guess, and left me alone.
What is harder for me, is watching my daughter go through it now. She's brilliant, in the band, and at age 15, almost 6 feet tall, so she may as well just have a big red bullseye painted on her chest. She developed her armor way sooner than I did, and I've watched her handle it with grace, dignity and wit--and I've stepped in more than once when necessary. I'm not so graceful, or dignified. I've considered the baseball bat approach on more than one occasion.
What is harder for me, is watching my daughter go through it now. She's brilliant, in the band, and at age 15, almost 6 feet tall, so she may as well just have a big red bullseye painted on her chest. She developed her armor way sooner than I did, and I've watched her handle it with grace, dignity and wit--and I've stepped in more than once when necessary. I'm not so graceful, or dignified. I've considered the baseball bat approach on more than one occasion.
CandiCame
Rocket Grunt
- Joined
- Apr 12, 2011
- Posts
- 26,765
Blimey, Bunny, that feeling of being surrounded by fools sounds familiar!
But even if you'd been in a more enriching school, there'd have only been a chance things would have been better. I met my first high school bully, the one that hounded me the most while I was there, in an advanced placement scholarship, 'cause I was a smart cookie.
But then again, when I was in primary school I got into another "brainy kids" program- the only one in the entire school to do so, if that helps complete the picture- where I got to leave on certain days and go hang out with a collection of students from all the other schools in the area and deal with awesome stuff, and the contrast between that group of smart mofos and the kids at my usual school was so sharp. I really loved those AP replacement classes, they were the highlight of my week. So pleasant and quiet.
My best memory from that time was being able to walk out of class just as everyone else was beginning a test, to go on a field trip to a museum. Course, then they just bully you for that, but it was totally worth it.
OMG, I did that too! I was the only one in my school to be in TAG, and they would come and get you out of your normal classes and shit. I didn't really know anybody in there, but for some reason, it was made up of the most socially awkward people on the planet so I made my only grade school friend in that thing. We did a lot of creative shit because my district was too poor to take us to cool shit like museums and whatnot; we would learn about different art styles and paint for the park I remember that, we did this giant holiday display... I'm sure we did a bunch of other cool shit too- we had some kind of math workshop thing that we got candybars for, I remember that...
Anyway, my point is that it was awesome to be able to walk out on those fuckers. Especially since I rarely got things like recess because I "got in so many fights". I had this 5th grade teacher who hated my parents- especially my grandpa, and when I moved up there (I didn't do 4th grade) he HATED me, and he would take my art and PE classes like they were recess, and I cried to my mom about it because I LOVE art, and he wouldn't even give me anything to do, he just made me sit there while the other kids had art class, and my mom threw a bitch fit and the principal told him he couldn't actually take my other classes away. That was pretty cool. I was like, "In your face, bitch."
I remember in 8th grade my mom asked me if I wanted to switch schools- MY MOM- who never paid attention to her kids- because I was being bullied so bad, and I always got punished for it. The teachers always just told her I had gotten into a fight. At that point I was just like, "Fuck it, you don't have to get up and drive me somewhere else every morning. It's just one more year and I suck anyway. I don't forsee me 'making friends' anywhere."
But yeah, TAG was pretty cool... It didn't actually teach you anything but it was nice not being in normal class...
BiBunny
Moon Queen & Wanderer
- Joined
- Dec 7, 2005
- Posts
- 12,433
In 4th-6th grades, our school had a "gifted" program that met once a week. We had to stay in the class for most of the day. The teacher despised me, and the only other kids in there were the rich kids, most of whom weren't gifted at all. (Small town politics.)
I used to hide in the bathroom on Wednesday mornings when I knew they were coming around to get us for the stupid gifted class, in hopes that no one would notice I was missing.
I used to hide in the bathroom on Wednesday mornings when I knew they were coming around to get us for the stupid gifted class, in hopes that no one would notice I was missing.
