By school, I mean anything up to and including high school, but nothing beyond.
Poll in a moment or four.
Victims of school bullying: if you met your bully now and were offered an apology, would you accept?
Probably, depending on who they were and how they phrased it.
Does it matter if your bully was male or female? (I’m assuming you’re a woman, but I’ve been wrong before.) How could it be phrased that would cause you to reject the apology?
If I felt it was sincere, probably indicated by “what an idiot I was back then!” or something similar, then yes, I’d accept it.
I know I’m certainly not the person I was back then, and now that I’ve raised a teenager, I really understand how their lack of frontal lobes really affects their behavior, so I’m prepared to believe that genuine regret and remorse is possible.
To withhold forgiveness in such a situation wouldn’t help me, it would just hurt them, which would make me a grown-up, rational and deliberate bully - worse than they were as a kid.
I am female and my bully situation was a freezeout lasting several years.
The bully’s mom and my mom are best friends and live a block apart, yet bully & I have not spoken nor seen each other in over 20 years. (we were inseparable BFFs in childhood).
If we crossed paths and for some reason she said, “wow, I was a huge bitch to you, wasn’t I? Sorry about that.” I would accept it – but I’m not looking for such an apology, we’re grown ups now, its water under the bridge.
By “bullying,” do you mean prolonged, steady harassment, or does occasionally being picked on by a jerk here or there count?
It’s really hard to say what I’d do without experiencing it, yanno? I might accept it, and I might not. It would depend on a lot of things. I don’t like speculative absolutes, so I choose “maybe”.
I left out a definition of bullying on purpose. For purposes of the poll, you were bullied if you believe yourself to have been so.
I was certainly bullied by a certain boy in junior high. He just made constant mean and hateful comments every day. At the 10-year high school reunion, he apologized and I realized that I had really grown past it–we were 13, life was horrible, it was a long time ago. So I had no trouble at all in forgiving him. (His date tried to make a light comment about how sometimes that happens when you secretly like each other–we eyed each other and said “Nah, it was plain hate.”)
Now, if the bullying had been physical/sexual as well, or had continued past the age of 15, it might have been more difficult.
No apology necessary, I put the blame entirely on their parents.
I chose ‘never offered, but maybe’.
I lost contact with most of my bullies after grade 8, when I entered high school, and bullying tapered off by the end of grade 9. This is not to say that I was popular, well-liked, or anything like that, but I was left alone.
I did have the viciously-pleasant experence of years later, at a party, meeting someone who’d known one of my bullies, and learning that he’d come to a bad end involving jail and drugs.
I look what I just wrote, and now I feel sad for him. He was probably screwed up as much as I was. If there was a way to make things so that people didn’t want to bully, and that people cound survive being bullied…
I’ve been offered an apology and accepted it. But for the most part, it has been “water under the bridge” not to be mentioned. I was far more easily traumatized as a teen than now (and I’m still very emotional), and I’ve come to realize that some of what was probably bullying was not meant by the givers to be taken as hard as I did. Most of them are surprised when they see me, happy that I seem to be doing OK, and invite me to school reunions and meetings, and treat me with more respect than they did then. I’ve forgiven them, it is no use for my current self to hold a grudge to their past selves, when they’re not currently like that. I mean, one of the skinny girls who taunted me and seemed very aloof was, at our last reunion, a happy, jolly, positive person.
That said, there is still one whom, for weird reasons, even though she did tease me, she hasn’t apologized OR acted towards me in a way that said “let’s put the past behind”. Basically, she ignores me (in front of others). I’m a figment of her imagination, it seems. And if I ever get an apology from her, it will be harder for me to accept, simply because the personality hasn’t changed between teenhood and adulthood.
I’m 36 years old, which means that high school ended half a lifetime ago. If I ever bumped into the kids who occasionally picked on me, I probably wouldn’t recognize them, or even remember them if they tried to remind me who they were. If they apologized, I’d probably shrug.
I still have some very good friends from that period. Them, I care about. Everyone else? It was another life.
I would accept it. As others have mentioned, it’s water under the bridge. These days, I never think of it except when the subject of bullying comes up. Even then, I sometimes forget about it.
That said, my bullying wasn’t as bad as some others have experiences. Mine was only one year with one group of nasty girls. There was one nasty incident when they tried to get me in trouble at school, but that failed, and I subsequently made other friends and moved on. Other than occasional nasty comments in the halls, they weren’t part of my life.
If it had been something that was more serious, I may feel differently.
When I was in middle school this kid said a lot of mean shit to/about me every day. He was the only one I remember doing something like that to me and I remember it making me miserable.
When I was in my 20s this guy showed up as the liason between my company and his. Basically he was our client.
There was no apology from him, but there was a hell of a lot of ‘praise’ of me between him and my business partner. My business partner was all “he’s a nice guy and speaks highly of you” but all I could say was that he was still a shit and it was all an Eddie Haskell act to impress my business partner.
The guy was let go by my client, to my relief. I still don’t forgive him, and am pretty sure he’s still a miserable twat.
I would accept an apology, but school was so long ago that there’s no need to even think about it.
(And FTR, I suspect those who chose the last option aren’t being 100% truthful…just sayin’.)
I was constantly harrassed by a boy all through my middle school years. I dreaded going to school every single day, and this guy never seemed to stay home sick. He never missed a single opportunity to say something hateful or try to humiliate me in front of as many people as possible
Then many years later, I wound up at the same bar with him. We spoke briefly then I wandered off to join the group I was with. My sister told me that he ended up being a loser with literally no one to call a friend. I can’t say I felt sorry for him.
One response was not offered in the poll.
No bully has ever offered an apology nor do I want to hear one. I would find it embarassing. I’d assume the ex-bully was pitying me. I don’t need that. I hid my pain then, and I’m not about to admit it now to to the bully.
In most cases the bullies and I sort of got past the bullying as we aged through school. I was happy enough that it was over when it was over. Nothing to forgive really, we were kids.
Huh?
The first three poll options include something like I have never been offered an apology. How is that different from what you just wrote? 
ETA: May I take it that you are distinguishing apologies offered to you as an adult from those offered as a child?
Also, as to the pity issue, I think one adult apolgoizing to another for something done when both are children is apologizing for the sake of his or her conscience, not any pity.
I’d like to think that I would consider accepting an apology but I doubt that I truly could. I was bullied hard, for such a long time, that I can’t help but wonder how different I might be if I had just had a chance to try instead of having my wings clipped at every opportunity.