I skipped my 10 year high school reunion, but the 20 is coming up.
I really just wanted to make this post because of something from school. There was a kid who got bullied really badly in junior high and high school, he was basically the pariah. I remember in junior high school sometimes he’d get bullied so badly that he would run crying to the bus.
While trying to invite everyone to the reunion, it turns out that he became a middle school principal. I really hope he did something about school bullying, since he saw the negative effects of it firsthand.
I never bullied him (while I became a total asshole for a period in my 20s, I was never a school bully), I just wonder what effects the behavior had on him. Did he become a really decent person who stands up against bullying and abuse, or did he become haunted by his demons, or did he not care and it have no effect on him?
How do people on both side of the issue (school bullies, victims of school bullies) feel about it decades after it happened?
Let’s put it this way. I just received an invitation to my elementary school’s 50th reunion. Those were not happy years for me, and I’m sincerely torn between going, to say “Fuck you all, I survived,” and not going, to say “Fuck you all, period.”
I have trained myself not to think about my school years in general, and grades seven through eight because of the relentless sexual harassment I was subjected to. Remembering specific incidents from that time can still cause seething anger which can ruin my day entirely.
The effects after all these decades? This happened in the mid '70’s. Since then, I have never had a relationship with a man. I know that there are other reasons for this fact. But the harassment I endured in school is a large part of my celibacy.
It has pretty severely fucked up my life in some not-so-obvious ways. There’s obviously the chronic depression for which I take daily medication. I went through periods where I was suicidal or recklessly hostile to everyone around me. I suspect that I might have come within a few inches of being a school shooter, if I didn’t have such positive role models in my life. I’ve never quite understood why it took mass murderers to make people notice that something was a problem. But in addition to those common problems, there are some more interesting ones:
I approach the world from the perspective that everyone in it is hostile and malicious. It colors my perception of the world and infects all of my relationships. Whenever something doesn’t go my way, I assume it is because someone hates me or is deliberately trying to harm me. This screws up my work relationships, causes unnecessary anger and depression, and I can recall a few occasions where otherwise friendly strangers were offended that I reacted to them with suspicion and hostility.
I’ve encountered something in child abuse forums called the “Grey Rock” strategy. Essentially, the victim adopts a completely neutral demeanor and refuses to show any emotional reaction to their abuser, in the hopes that the abuser will get bored and move on. This has become my default setting. People who meet me variously describe me as being stoic, a loner, antisocial, etc etc. I very often hear people say I “never talk.” To say that I am an extreme introvert would be an understatement. Although I was never abused by my parents, when I talk to victims of child abuse I find I have much in common (pathologically speaking) with people who had an abusive parent.
Low self-esteem manifests itself in unexpected ways. Obviously, I think I suck at life and don’t deserve to have nice things happen to me. But it’s curious how this appears in action. For example, I might refuse to ask for assistance in the belief that not only are the people around me hostile and uncaring, but that I don’t deserve help. If I go to McDonald’s and they give me the wrong burger, I might be so embarrassed that I don’t bother to point out the mistake; I assume that I don’t deserve to get the things I want and I should just be thankful for what I have. I’d rather eat food I didn’t ask for and don’t want than risk a confrontation. Even at work, I have run into times that I had a problem and the boss was perfectly willing to help me, but I just didn’t believe I was worth helping or that I had a right to ask for what I wanted.
My romantic relationships were 5-10 years behind the power curve. I did not seriously begin trying to date until I was 20, and even then I didn’t succeed at love until I was 23. I never had the chance to learn the “scripts” or “roles” that go with relationships, so even in my 20’s I was making mistakes that most people learn in their early teens. I often feel a great disappointment with my life in the belief that I missed out on the teenage and college years, which I am given to understand involved a great amount of sex for everyone but me. Even at 35, when I’m married with children, I feel a great dissatisfaction that my life didn’t turn out “right.”
So, yeah, it sucks. I feel like I was poisoned with a misanthropy and dissatisfaction that extended far beyond the actual school years.
I wasn’t bullied, but I observed it and the idea of going to a high school reunion makes me nauseated. I really don’t want to see how those @#%@# types turned out. I wonder if only former bullies go to school reunions?
I have recently reconnected with a few girls from my old school via farcebook, they’re organising a get-together for just a few of us in a couple of months. I’d like to go because I was fairly good friends with one of them (we were the odd ones out all the time) but I’m not particularly bothered about the rest of them. If they were to invite any of the real bullies, I wouldn’t hesitate to cancel on them.
Not for my school, generally the ones who attend are those who happen to live nearby. But in our case, bullying between the students was almost nonexistant, and short-lived when it happened: the ones to watch out for were several of the teachers. A few years ago, two of them were taken aside by the then-principal and told to stop trying to attend any class reunions after being explicitly barred from several of them. One of those two still teaches and apparently has been trying to amend her ways, but that doesn’t mean any of her now-grown up students want to see more of her than we strictly need to.
I must be an outlier. We were all kids back then and I really don’t hold grudges against them. What actually makes me feel better is going on facebook and looking at the profiles of the people who were assholes and bullies in school. To a T, every profile consisted of photos of the guy who was a bully as a kid taking tons of photos with their families (wives, kids, nieces, nephews, etc) as well as people saying nice things about them, and them saying nice things about others.
Granted, social media is idealized and people put forth an idealized impression of their lives. But for me, looking at the people who were assholes as kids who seem like they ended up as dedicated family men in adulthood is nice. Like I said, I hope we were all just insecure, mean kids and most/none of us are like that now.
Ah, bullying… I was in the receiving end of quite my share of it, especially in the early years of High School.
The “high point”, so to speak, happened when I was 13. Long story short, my classmates got hold of me during recess and hanged me with the rope of the set of curtains of a window. I was lucky enough not to die.
I had a purple mark in my neck for several weeks afterwards. It ended up being quite a scandal; there were direct disciplinary consequences (expulsion for several of those involved, to begin with) and a bunch more things.
As a result I became a completely antisocial being, basically saying “fuck you” to the entire world and its inhabitants. My social behavior began to become normal beginning at the age of 22 or thereabouts, and it was not until I was well into my 30s that I was more or less able to truly cope and be at peace with certain traumas.
Still working at it, and I still have issues, but at least I have been able to build a reasonably successful life for myself with trust in friends and relationships. Only, like, 10 to 15 years later than most “normal” people.
I never knew what became of my tormentors, and honestly I don’t particularly care to know. They went out of my life and I am rather OK with that, you know… I have never been to a high school reunion in my life, but that also has to do with my living away from my home town (most of the time abroad) for the last 25+ years.
I went to another school in grade 3 and was attacked as soon as I went down to lunch by everyone in the grade and I never even had talked to anyone, but they wanted to bash me real good, I don’t know why it was, maybe because I had a school uniform on or because I was white or it was just there way of dealing with who was the best fighter for the pecking order.
So everyday I would have to fight some moron who wanted to have a go, but by grade 5 no one would have a go, but for some white nut who was in grade 7 who kept ranting for the whole year he was going to get me but not at school, so I went with him 2 blocks up the road and smashed him with 3 punches and he went straight down and I never seen him again until grade 10 I was working 400 miles from home on the holidays and seen him in the pub having lunch, I went over to say howdy and he said he did not want to fight and ran off.
I had no hard feelings to wards him or any of the other rat bags today and they would mouth off threats of ganging up and big brothers.
After I left school years I had people come up drunk when I was in the pub saying remember back in grade 3 when you smashed me and then had a swing at me or then just runaway.
My brother and I hated that town and look back on it as just madness a town of morons, the bastards would swing out of the trees and have a go at you.
I have never had anyone pick a fight with me in any other town and on the two towns out side of this town I remember saying to people I met, to come down for a drink some time and they were like stunned and said no way I am not going down there at night, then I would remember oh your right, I forgot it’s a good chance some idiot would have a go at them.
I know a bloke just up the road who was going on about 3 blokes he would like to bash up from the schooldays he is 54yo and still holds a grudge:rolleyes: he may end up bighting off more then he can chew.
Two of my brothers mates still hold a grudge of some person back in the schooldays I just think how childish to hold a grudge about some crap like that, that was like 40 years ago, how stupid.
I remember reading in a book about police work about an incident where a man was attacked by some random stranger.
Turned out the attacker was no stranger, but someone that the victim had picked on in school and didn’t recognize. The attacker had been stewing about having been bullied for over twenty years. Lasting effects indeed.
I’m more or less like Chihuahua, with the addition that I don’t hold on to friendships (if I’ve ever actually had any.) High school taught me that “friend” means “someone who hasn’t yet stabbed you in the back.”
FYI - There was a bully at my high school who later became a car salesman! At the 10 year reunion, he had not changed a bit - he tried keeping certain people from requesting songs from the band playing there - said do play what those people want! Everybody else (who had grown up by then) just stared at him like he was some sort of jerk - well he was a jerk!
I was bullied horribly from 7th to 11th grade, to the point where I nearly murdered one of the kids that was a pack leader.
It’s probably the underlying reason that I got into martial arts and now teach bullying prevention to kids. If I can stop even one kid from going through what I went through, I will have done A Good Thing.
I’m 63, and my response to a h.s. reunion some years ago was “Only if the theme is Columbine.” All these years later, I would gladly shoot dozens of my former classmates in the head if I could get away with it (I do not possess any firearms, and my aim would doubtless be untrue), and probably 2/3 of these tormentors wouldn’t even recollect me. Hell, ditto half of the “educators.”
I’ve not lost anything in high school, my home town, or really anyone I knew then, including family. I don’t even get the announcements anymore because I’ve moved and changed my name. I was only not actively abused in high school because I put strenuous and continual effort into being unobtrusive and unimportant and inoffensive. I saw plenty of awful things happen to people less lucky than me. That ‘grey rock’ thing sounds awfully familiar.
Reunions would be pointless (I half purposefully and half trauma-forgotten everyone’s names) and I imagine needlessly frustrating, infuriating, or boring.
Since you’re willing to say that here, I’m going to tell you about the boy who tried to get me to kill myself. Guess what his dad did a few years after we graduated? I got a card and wrote in it, “Hi, Jeff! Remember when we were in 9th grade and you tried to get my to kill myself? HA! HA! HA!” I didn’t mail it because I knew I wouldn’t see his reaction when he opened it. Other people’s reactions have been pretty much evenly divided between “You are one sick puppy”, “You should have mailed that card”, and even “Why didn’t you just take it over to his house and not leave until he opened it?” He briefly showed up on the “People You May Know” column on Facebook, until I blocked him, and it turns out that despite a college degree, at that time he was working at a call center, and not in management, either.
There was also a girl (that’s right, a GIRL) who said she wanted her brothers to gang-rape me and get me pregnant so I would have to leave school. I once told a therapist, “I hope she gets raped someday and gets pregnant from it.” I then said, “No, not really. I wouldn’t wish that on anybody, and even if a woman did deserve it, the baby didn’t do anything wrong.” I found out recently that she is divorced with two adult children, which makes me wonder…:dubious:
There was another girl who constantly told me I was ugly, until there was a big story in the newspaper about her mother’s battle with morbid obesity (this was in the mid 1970s) and I told her, “I may be ugly, but your mom’s fat.” That shut her up - and several years after we graduated, she basically had her face torn off in a car accident. She’s on Facebook and she might seriously be a candidate for a face transplant. However, knowing what I do now, I strongly suspect that she was probably being sexually abused, whether in or out of the home, so I don’t gloat in this one quite so much.
Whenever I’ve seen the Columbine kids who are in wheelchairs (there are several), I have to change the channel because I can think of a few people to whom I would have liked to have done that. I understand that in some gangs, they shoot not to kill, but to leave the victim paralyzed with a colostomy. And whenever I hear about an episode of school violence that is one-on-one, I ALWAYS wonder if the “victim” may have had it coming.
(My parents’ attitude about all this? Whatever I did to those kids to make them want to do this to me, it was probably something I did on purpose to embarrass my parents. Really. :rolleyes: )
In 9th or 10th grade, a group of older kids cornered my brother in the boys room, picked him up, and were going to give him a swirly. They stopped before his head touched the water. However, that changed him, and he will be 50 this year, and has never held a good job, never been in a relationship, and lives alone on disability due to anxiety issues. He says that incident altered the course of his life, even with other factors. He never went to a reunion.
I was bullied in middle school by classmates and a teacher, and glad I don’t keep in touch. For high school I stay in touch with selected friends, and went to the 10 and 20 year reunions, and feel no need to go any more.
