Thursday, November 18, 2010

10 minutes on Bullying

In the schoolyards of my youth we had bullies. They had different prejudices but it amounted to the same thing. I don't understand you, therefore I will beat the living crud out of you. Pretty simple philosophy when you think of it, but probably ends up taking up a lot of your time because you probably don't understand a lot.
        It was a simpler time too. You got bullied for being different. That's it. Just be different and sooner than later somebody will show up that doesn't like you. Lord knows I had my share. I was different in so many ways.
        I was fat. I was in choir. I had long hair (despite the fact that it was the 60's it hadn't caught on everywhere yet) and I was thought to be a wuss. The latter was a mistaken assumption. I could be called every name in the book, and there was some beauties, but I wouldn't react. Get physical and that was a different matter. I would make it a matter of finishing what had been started.  It happened maybe twice while I was in grade school, and then never again... Change anything? Nope. They just changed tactics.

And they don't go away. They follow you to Middle and High School. They adapt, and you adapt. One thing that I've observed, though, is that they really don't like creative types much, and that's straight up jealousy.
             It feels like it will never stop and, yeah, the scars run really deep. But you're smarter than they are. You have avenues of escape. There're always people and paper and blogs and most of all there's You. And you are supremely powerful. That's what I hear, anyway.

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