Junior high for kids in the us-generally grades 6, 7, and 8, although it used to be 7, 8, and 9 when my parents were growing up.
Luckily for me, I never internalized the bullying. Although I’m not particularly proud of it I snapped one day when one of the group of 7 boys who used to torment me regularly tried it alone. The only thing I remember of the incident is holding him over the second floor balcony, yelling “leave me the fuck alone”. Honestly, I think that scared me more than the bullying ever did.
I always want to take a swing at the person who says that (stopping just short of their face as you know they would have no trouble pressing charges) and ask them what they did that made me want to knock their lights out.
Because it is too much trouble for the administration. I am not being sarcastic.
Bureaucracies do whatever is least troublesome for them.
Regards,
Shodan
In the district where I attended all 12 years (k+11, I skipped one), the Jr. High Schools were grades 7 through 9. I think about 10 years ago they changed the names of all the JHSs to “Middle School” and now they’re grades 6 through 8.
Hmmm. I went to both a Middle School (5 and 6) and Junior High (7 and 8).
Never had much of a problem with bullying… though I later found out this was because I scare people. I engaged in a lot of talking shit with various people over the years, but not much in the way of physical violence. I can only think of two incidents outside of school, one of which resulted in police charges and “arbitration” at the Juvie Hall o’ Justice… the other probably could have been pretty bad, but the perpetrator’s courage faltered before anything happened.
I never bothered to involve the school admin, and they seemed happy enough to leave me to my own devices… so I don’t know how ineffective they would have been.
Maybe it’s the binary number of the beast on your forehead that scares them.
I have no “binary number of the beast on my forehead” and, even if I did now, I wouldn’t have had it then. So that’s not it, though thank you for your, no doubt well reasoned, suggestion.
And no sense of humor either, apparently. At least when it comes to this.
I’m surprised as I went to a private girls school (not Catholic) for my secondary education, years 7 - 12, and I have to say I did not notice any bullying at that school whatsoever. It wasn’t a particularly large school so I’m sure I would have heard about or seen it, if it was happening. Naturally there was some bitchiness from time to time, but no bullying.
I was horribly bullied both verbally and physically in my earlier grades though around years 2 - 5 at a small public school. I never did tell the teachers or the school, even though I was always in trouble for being late to class, books missing, or looking dishevelled and or dirty from beatings in the playground. I did tell my father one day, he said I should remember who I was and never let them see me cry. I never did give them the satisfaction of seeing me cry.
Luckily neither of my children have been victims of bullying at school.
I was at the birthday party of a relative last year, it was a pool party. My aunt’s foster daughter was about 8 at the time and reminded me so much of myself at that age, it was painful. Shy and akward would be a nice way to describe her. This little bitch was being nasty to her and before I even realized what I was doing, I gave her a death glare that could’ve bent steel. The girl looked like she was about to cry. Needless to say, she didn’t give Lisa any more shit that day.
Oh man. I’m 26 and I do the same thing. Even if it’s a bunch of 12 year olds. Some wounds just never fully heal I guess. 
Once this guy I liked asked me out (in 8th grade), and when I said yes, it turned out he was just kidding.
OUCH, that was fucking humiliating. I wanted to crawl into a hole and die.
See, situations like this are why people like me, who work training service dogs, would love to train service Rottweilers (also certified for protection work) to work with kids with Cerebral Palsy.
Betcha that if this girl had a service Rottie, no one would really bully her anymore… 
What a MESS. I really hope the family sues - or at least brings up charges of assault against the offender(s), and the school for NOT contacting the authorities. As a teacher, I would have had a shit fit if something like that happened to one of my “kids” - administration or no, I would have called the cops myself.
I must admit it’s a relief not to be alone here, but it sure does help to tell the thought to fuck off. I hope to someday crowd that one out completely, but I’ve only just started really fighting it.
And for me it’s ESPECIALLY if it’s a bunch of 12-year-olds. Doesn’t help that I’m very very short, either, they tend to be bigger than I am. I must practice using my death glare on other people besides my little brother.
That being said, I’ve had enough. I actually went so far as to go back to the school a few weeks ago (I was on a trip to the same town by coincidence) and told the place to fuck off, get out of my head, I’m not letting what happened here run my life anymore. I feel a distinct weight off my shoulders. It’s weird, but it’s good. (The evil part of me wanted to torch the place.)
I always felt blamed for the abuse I took – my parents felt helpless, the school didn’t do shit. Hell, I’d have been HAPPY to be kicked out of there, though my mom would then have gone entertainingly ballistic on them. I too don’t understand why behavior that I would be able to get somebody fired or even arrested for is acceptable when “it’s just kids.”
As I’ve noted before, I’m a teacher. One of the main reasons I became a teacher - in middle school, yet - is because I wanted to do my best to make sure what happened to me didn’t happen to other kids.
My classroom is a safe place. The students figure that out in the first couple of weeks of school. Forget your pencil? I’ll give you an annoyed look. Talking too much, you’ll get a little talk after class. Call your neighbor a slut? I will come down on you like a ton of bricks.
The best thing, though, is that I have a principal who backs me up. If I send a student to the office for being mean to someone else, they come back wide-eyed and pale. G, my principal, knows where bodies are buried and who to call. Parents don’t care? Not a problem. He’ll call your grandfather and tell her that you were beating up on a sixth grader.
Even so, it’s tough. The kids know they can’t get away with it in my class, so they wait until I’m not around. There’s always passing periods, nutrition break, and lunch. They know that other teachers don’t like it but won’t get in their face the way I do. Even my sainted principal missed one the year before I started. An seventh grader who’d been bullied wrote a “hit list”. One of the other students found it, their parents made a fuss, it went to the superintendent and the school board, and the kid was expelled. Fair? Hardly. I don’t know what the boy went through, but when my kids started ragging on him when he wasn’t even there, I told them to cut it out.
Grrrrrr. There are times when I wish I had a little button to push that would summon two Marine drill sergeants to drag each bully out into the quad and make their lives miserable.
I have a few positive experiences to share!
I got it bad in middle school. Details don’t matter. Point is, two different teachers took it upon themselves to intervene. Of course, it was very close to the end of grade 8 (school was 7-8), but it must have taken them that long to notice a pattern.
First incident was when the 7th grade was on their excursion to Philadelphia. (8th graders went to D.C. Two separate excursions, I mean.) So the atmosphere was very loose, with half the teachers and the principal away. I was headed to social studies, about ten feet behind three guys. They went in the classroom, and the last one decided to close the door on me.
Not anything to get so upset about, one might say? But it was the backbreaking straw for me. I flung my books down, charged into the room, and started whaling on him. I could hardly see straight, but I was aware of his shirt riding up, so I took hold of his big, sloshy gut and started twisting the skin.
The teacher broke it up…and sent him to the vice-principal, saying “And this time, I really hope they throw the book at you.” Most of the class period was given over to discussion about what we didn’t at the time, call “bullying”. What I clearly remember is her saying, “Everybody has something about them that can be made fun of.” Which is true. The guy I went off on could easily have been a target because of his weight, so I guess he decided to avoid that fate by being an aggressor.
Second incident was in music. I have a beautiful singing voice. I do. (Well, I did when I didn’t smoke so much.) This is the kind of thing that, in movies, causes stigma to fall away and the former target to gain respect. Ha. All I got was a lot of catcalling and so forth while I was singing. Finally, the teacher stopped the class and had us put our desks in a circle. It wasn’t like a trial or anything: she just wanted to know why the school sport was Picking on Rilchie. What I remember about that was this exchange:
Me: Well, what about “Jimmy”? All I do is walk past him and he goes ‘Ew’!
Girl: Oh, he does that to everybody.
Teach: Yeah, but see? You gotta think about how that’s gonna affect somebody!
Then there was an incident in high school when one of the deans intervened on my behalf…but I’d rather not get into it too much. Suffice to say, he believed me when I told him how bad it was, and (I wasn’t there) held up the school handbook, where he’d highlighted the passage that said it was a suspension-worthy offense to “Intimidate or threaten any individual”.
I don’t expect this advice to be heeded, but here’s what I’d do. Check the rates for kids at that school who commit suicide or suffer severe mental health issues. Check with people who specialize in working with teenagers and young adults to find out what the school’s reputation is.
My old junior high school and high school were in this school’s league. My hair was never set on fire, but I did wear it short in those days. A kid did pull a knife on me, though, in 11th grade. My property was also vandalized. I could be pushed or shoved at any times. I was knocked unconscious for a moment when I was hit in the head by an iceball which someone threw at me while I was waiting for the school bus. I was routinely insulted to the point where one of the odder things about college for me was no one was insulting me. After I confessed to a suicided attempt in social studies in 11th grade, nothing was done. My best friend had had a nervous breakdown the summer before. Twenty years later, my school was sued by a couple of girls who were getting similar treatment, only this time, one girl’s hair was set on fire. The principal of the junior high school this happened in was a special education teacher when I attended it. I actually called him, reminded him of who I was and asked why he hadn’t done something during the twenty years this had been going on. He told me he didn’t know I had it that bad. I wish I could believe him.
I’m sorry, but as far as I’m concerned, this sort of behaviour has lethal consquences. As I said, it’s been over 20 years since I graduated, but up until a few years ago, I had a tendency to flinch when people spoke to me. It’s only since I started hanging around here that I realized people won’t dislike or insult me on sight. Do I need to say I suffered from clinical depression and low-to-non-existent self esteem for years? I recently bought my home. During that long, stressful process, I routinely expected to be yelled at and insulted. I feel a bit like Cassandra, but the scars are real. I could go into more, but I have company staying with me, and I’d rather not leave to much of the aftermath of this for him to deal with. As it is, he’s one of the people who helped undo the damage.
One other thing. This is a dangerous situation, for all students involved, not just the victims of bullying. I’d bet my first mortgage payment that the school has already lost kid who was bullied too much to suicide. I remember how furious my situation made me when I realized I’d never see my best friend again after her nervous breakdown and I was next on the list. I was convinced my peers wanted me to get out of town and it didn’t matter how, even if it meant I died. I wanted revolution and violence. I wanted my tormentors to feel the pain they’d inflicted on my best friend, a good, kind, gentle human being who’s greatest crime was being born handicapped. I wanted them to stop hurting me and others, and I was desperate. That’s why I admitted the suicide attempt in 11th grade, but that only made things worse and I had a year and a half to go. I survived, I suspect because I was too stubborn to die. If I’m in wholesale confession mode, I suppose I should add that there have been times in the intervening years when I regretted my survival. Thanks to good friends and therapy, those times are now very few and far between.
There is one other avenue which might be worth looking into. If the school won’t do anything, could someone talk to the churches in that town? My own church was the one place I could go and not be insulted when I was growing up, and when I moved back to town, I reminded people of that and they still make it clear that bullying isn’t acceptable. It’s worth a shot.
If you’ll excuse me, now, I think I’ll go collect a hug from that houseguest. As Meatloaf (OK, Jim Steinman) once sang, “And though the nightmares should be over/Somehow the terrors are still intact.”
CJ
<hijack> A Karma story to share here…
When I was in middle school, I also had the bullying problem. I was a year younger than the rest of the group (the school was JK-8, so these kids had mostly been together since junior kindergarten…) AND I was deeeeeep into piano and singing, so I was by default rather weird.
There was one boy who relentlessly picked on me and others of the “weird” type. His locker was right beside mine (yay for the alphabetical system of locker assignment?)… and he kept pushing me into it, whacking my door on my books and such… and being an ass in and out of class.
The principal had talked to his parents, who didn’t care really, but who told the principal that the “wussy kids he was pickin’ on” should just get even with him.
Anyway, one day in spring, grade 7, little wee Elly got pretty sick and tired of El Asshole and actually reached a breaking point. We were at our lockers, and he was calling me all sorts of nasty things, pushing me around and such.
As he was putting his shit away in his locker, he called me something nasty (old age - can’t remember what it was now…) and I just reached over and SLAMMED his locker door on his head.
There was a teacher right behind me when this happened.
We made eye contact.
The teacher looked away and walked off without saying a word.
The bully cried a little - it was amusing - but certainly didn’t have the nerve to report the incident… what WOULD his friends think?!
On the upside, he never bothered me AGAIN. I was the hero of the geeks for quite a while…
</hijack>
Un fucking believable. I don’t even want to imagine how I’d react if someone pulled a knife on my kid. I would be rolling so many heads in this situation, they would mistake me for a bowling alley.
I love to hear stuff like this. Thank you for sharing this.
And thank you to Rilchiam and Elenfair and whoever else I might have missed for sharing their karma stories.
I have a second-hand karma story. Pretty weak, but here it is.
One of my friends was picked on in elementary school. (I think it was elementary, though it might have been middle school. I get a little vague on the details.) A few girls would follow her on the walk home and bully her.
Fast forward a few years (I think in middle school/junior high or else early high school). These same girls had, of course, forgotten about what shits they were to my friend, forgotten it all. But now, a few years later, they were the targets of bullying. My friend happened to be nearby when one of these girls was being bullied, and somehow (the details are fuzzy again) the girl (my friend’s former tormentor) was talking to my friend about how awful this bullying was. She (the former tormentor) said, “I would never do that to someone else! Never!”
I think my friend’s eyes were in danger of rolling out of her head. Though she didn’t say anything to the girl, what with her having selective amnesia and all.
Changing the subject completely, I have to say that I think some parents are living in a dream world, and hopefully they’re getting a wake-up call. Years ago, I remember trying to convince the parent of a high schooler that yes high school was that bad. This guy (the father) had this memory of high school in beautiful, bucolic Iowa. Beautiful Iowa in the 1950s, where everyone was sweet to each other. He couldn’t get it through his head that his son was in 1990s California, and things were reaaaallllly different now. This dad looked at me with wonderment when I told him that his son was not exaggerating when he was trying to tell his dad how awful things were. “Believe it.” I said. Over and over, I told this man, “believe it.” I hope I helped. The dad was basically a decent fellow, so I have to hope that I made a dent.