These are the thoughts of a Texas transplant in West Michigan who makes his living as a newspaper reporter by evening, and a struggling novelist by day.

Monday, April 24, 2006

bully, bully

a classmate and friend of mine from back home has been having problems with kids bullying one of her children adn the school administration not paying attention to the situation.

i feel for her. i am not a parent and don't know what it's like to have a child bullied. it must be hard, wanting to go and bash their heads in yourself or the heads of school officials. but i was bullied as a teenager and being on that end of the bullying is no fun.

as a freshman, in particular, i had to endure some pretty tough shit from the juniors and seniors at my school. they were rough and didn't really give a shit. at the time (before the old high school went through its renovations), there was this hallway that ran north to south. it was narrow and windowless with lockers on the east side and a wooden wall (on the other side was the auditorium).

this was the senior hall. unless you wanted to go around the bilding, through the outside, you pretty much had to go through this freaking length of hall. the seniors and juniors would line up on either side and we freshmen (at least the dorky ones) would travel through there and get pushed back and forth from one side to the side, back and forth. it was rough shit. humiliating? not really. but after awhile, i really wanted to kick their asses.

i really couldn't go anywhere, though, because if i'd see a senior, especially the really fucked up ones, they'd call me names or walk up to me and push me.

these idiots also had a nickname for me. they'd call me robert ross. then they'd say, "oh no. sorry." they'd laugh and walk off. ross was a fellow senior...except he was considered a nerd. i was considered a nerd. therefore, why not?

many of them were football players, usually guys with little brain capacity. i remember one of them in particular. he was really giving me shit. i wished he'd break a leg or something. i'd had enough of it. what do you know, the next week, he was waling around with a cast around a leg. i know i had nothing to do with it, but it gave me some satisfaction.

i was never physically attacked or beat up with punches thrown, but i did endure a lot of crap. i thought a lot of those upperclassmen were the biggest bunch of sonsofbitches there were. one of the worst teasers even went on to work in the public school system. can you believe that? funny how things work out.

the way i figure, they were losers, having to pick on younger, weaker students. but in reality, they were weak, having to assert their hispanic, macho bullshit all around the school.

there's a great rap/rock lyric that's sorta appropriate: "fight the power."

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