I’m not the same person I was in junior high. If an ex-bully offered a seemingly sincere apology, I would assume that he has changed a bit in the last 20 years too. It would be like meeting someone for the first time who just happened to have gone to the same school or church as me.
Mr. May and Mr. Dodd, as long as you aren’t assholes as adults, I forgive you for being sadistic asshole kids.
Well, so EVERYBODY could participate, of course. 
That’s blaming the victim. People can’t just reach inside their own heads and erase trauma.
Hey, I didn’t say I was over it - not by a long shot. I can’t even begin to tell you how bad middle school sucked for me. But continuing to hate people hardly helps.
One girl tried to bully me briefly in seventh grade, but in a weird way - she wanted very badly to be friends with me, but when we hung out she would say horrible things and put me down almost constantly. She was smart, confused, unhappy, struggling with a variety of stuff. It upset me for a while, but then my other friends made sure I got my sense of perspective back, and I stopped getting sucked into her messes. If she showed up and apologised now, I’d absolutely say ‘We’re fine, everyone does stupid stuff at twelve, it’s OK.’ I think that would be easy because a) she did me no lasting damage, and b) I don’t think she was a bad person - just confused, like I said.
The other time was in summer camp, when I was fourteen. These three girls decided to be really nasty to me for reasons known only to themselves (although I’d been going to school in another country, and the culture gap did show - some kids feel the need to attack anyone who’s different). I’m not sure exactly what I’d do about an apology from any of them. My main inclination would be to walk away - or to tell her, ‘Shoo. Go away.’ Again, no lasting damage was done and I don’t have any bad feelings about them now - I was making good friends at camp, so the nasty three weren’t my main focus - but I just don’t feel like I would ever have anything to say to them, even ‘It’s OK’ or ‘No, it’s not OK.’ I don’t think they were particularly nice people, they weren’t interesting people at all, and I’m still not interested in anything they might do or say, including apologising.
That seems counter to the OP. Why would someone who has essentially not changed offer an appology? Sure, some people NEVER change I’ll give you that. But most do.
Sure, I’d accept an apology. We were KIDS, for chrissakes, people DO change and life’s too short to hold grudges.
One girl, in 6th grade (Karen Blank…I still remember her last name but won’t use it for obvious reasons) tormented me for MONTHS…stupid shit like stepping on the backs of my shoes as I walked down the hall, knocking my books out of my arms, shoving me into the wall, taunts, etc…I ignored her.
It culminated in her jumping me at the bus stop after school and pummeling on me while her little gang of girls cheered her on and I lay there in the gravel thinking, WTFUCK! :eek::mad:
She got expelled and I got an exasperated look from the Principle (as if to say, “Geez, THIS little goody-two shoes? As IF she had anything to do with it.”:rolleyes:) But I also had to go get my arm x-rayed since she banged it up pretty badly.
After she came back, she was sweet as sugar to me, trying to be friends, and actually DID apologize…I said, “whatever, forget it” and ignored her for the rest of the year.
I remain convinced that she had a lesbian crush on me; her tactics were no different from a little boy pulling the pigtails of the girl he likes. (and/or pelting her with rocks, beating her up even…male/female relations at that age are amazingly primitive IME).
In 7th grade, I had a stalker (we’ll call him Brian, 'cause that was his name;)). Total horn-dog who tried to get me in dark alleys, behind dumpsters, force his way into my house and made obscene phone calls to me for months (got my number from my cousin…I still have not forgiven HER :mad:) and generally made my life a misery.
Years later, when I was 18, I went back to the old neighborhood and ran into him in the corner store. I recognized him immediately, despite the changes (he actually looked pretty good) and he obviously knew me on sight as well.
I said, “Oh, hey Brian! How’s it going?” 
He literally turned PURPLE, I shit you not! Fumbled with his stuff and stammered a greeting and fled. Was WAY better than any apology he could have offered. 
Hell, I’d even forgive/have forgiven the punks who stole my kite when I was 10 or the 6 pre-teen and teen punks who surrounded my cousin and I in the woods behind the school one weekend when we were 12, hit us with rocks and were working up the nerve to rape us (to this day, I know that they WOULD have, or at least tried, and likely beaten us badly or killed us in the process) when my 16 yr old male cousin came to our rescue, scaring the shit out of them and driving them off.
To this DAY, I despise bullies and will stand up to them at every chance, be they kids picking on other kids or adults picking on someone. But I don’t hold any personal grudges against any of the bullies/stalkers from my childhood…that’s old news and I long ago let those resentments go.
In my experience, and those of others, some bullies will cheerfully offer an apology and carry right on with the behavior. I have a bunch of letters on my desk from the little bitches who spent that last six months bullying my child - they’re very much like the ‘apologies’ I’ve received from other bullies who had no regrets and no intention of changing. They don’t bother me or my kid, but we don’t buy into your absolute view of who’s a colossal prick and who isn’t.
Just because you’re happy to assume the best, doesn’t mean everyone else has to stop protecting themselves. It was the name calling more than the naivety.
I’m not talking about little kids, I’m talking about adolescents who know they are causing harm. There’s enough examples in this thread to make the distinction clear.
I can hold onto grudges a long time. People who know me find this surprising, since I tend to be very optimistic, and can get along well with difficult people. I have had instances where I bumped into past enemies (to include bullies) and readily made friends with them. I think a past enemy being respectful and polite can be like a tacit apology, especially among guys raised to not share feelings easily.
There are exceptions though. One junior-high nemesis was a serious juvenile delinquent who terrorized a lot of us for lunch money. My adult self could sort of understand that sort of thing if he’d been poorer, but he was equally annoying in bragging about the bikes and guns he owned. He was just basic trash, and I have to be honest that when I learned that he died a drug/alcohol-addled death at 30, I wasn’t especially broken up. It’s probably for the best that I never saw him as an adult: with the age advantage gone (he was two years older than the rest of us), the toll of his addictions, and me by then a pretty serious weightlifter, I might have found it difficult not to ‘remind’ him of the good old days.
I think holding onto grudges a long time should be accompanied by having an equally long memory for positive deeds. I often thank or commend people for things they did for me long ago that they don’t remember. So I don’t think it’s necessarily a character disorder if I remember the real shits from long ago as well.
Well, if you still know the person, and have evidence to believe that they haven’t changed, then you aren’t really “assuming” anything, are you?
Unfortunately I had multiple bullies; I never really stood up for myself as a kid (despite being the tallest in my year).
And my behaviour now would depend on the bully.
In most cases I would see it as ancient history; I’d wave away an apology, and ask how they’ve been blah blah.
In other cases it would be difficult for me to believe they could be good people now, and also I would feel quite angry. So I don’t think we could even talk long enough for an apology to be said.
So you are saying that at some point in everyone’s school career they were bullied?
I was rather large and athletic for my age ( as were a lot of my friends) and I can tell you quite honestly that I was never bullied. I always thought that the number of people that were bullied at school was quite small compared to the number of students in the school.
There was some bullying at my high school and I regret that I didn’t help the guy out, but fortunately I was never on the receiving end and I never bullied anyone. Never saw the point and it didn’t seem like a fun thing to do. Besides there were girls around and why not hang around with them?
I don’t want or need an apology. What I want is atonement…evidence that a wrongdoer has changed his/her ways, and is not bullying others (or whatever s/he did) even today. Most apologies are offered under pressure. If the behavior isn’t changing, apologies are worse than worthless.
That’s exactly what I’m getting at.
Apologies are worth nothing without remorse. I’d rather wait and check a person’s credibility than just assume they’ve grown up to have the same values that I do.
With the letters I have (due for the dump), they’re meaningless now and any apology from those girls will have the same value now or in 20 years unless they’ve really grown up and not just superficially changed their methods. I wouldn’t expect my kid to take the former on faith.
Funnily enough, the only apology I’ve had from a high school kid wasn’t a bully, more just a bit of a jerk. His apology was genuine enough but he’s still a bit of a jerk. I’ve had a non-apology gift from an actual bully and that was enough for me to let what little bitterness remained go completely.
There were two people that caused me long term harm (however you want to define that), one gave a false apology, the other has never made contact. I don’t live my life seething with hate at them, neither would I assume they’re both angelic human beings now.
Any other contacts with old enemies and old friends have had the same result - after nearly 30 years, there’s not enough common ground to care.
nm
If I came across one of those children, maybe during a class reunion or something, and they said, “Yah know, we treated you guys like slime. We were too stupid at that age to understand that ‘special ed’ is not a synonym for ‘target practice’. As an adult/near-adult, I really regret being part of it”- I probably would forgive them. I realize that being a mainstream kid exposed to the ‘special class’ from early age is bound to be tricky. Kindergarteners generally have trouble with the concepts of tact and sensitivity, and once you’ve formed an impression it’s difficult to change even when you’ve grown older and more mature. I understand the difficulties of casting off an outlook you’ve had since second grade.
Intellectually, I understand that they were a bunch of stupid kids being stupid kids, and they’ve likely grown up to be mature and responsible people. They probably don’t even remember the cruel things they did in grade school. I’m sure I’ve done stupid things when I was a kid, too. But I- well, I guess I wish I could simply hear them apologize. Just acknowledging what they did. I feel like I need to know that they’re sorry.
But I don’t remember who most of them are. I’ve never been good with faces or names. I can’t point to a specific person and say “You- when I was in second grade, you asked me if I was in special ed. When I asked how you knew, you said that I was acting weird.” Or “You- I remember you casually using the name of our program as a synonym for crazy. When you realized that I had heard you, you quickly substituted ‘crazy kids’, but I understood. I knew how you guys thought of us.”
I guess… I’m just bitter, and I have lingering self-esteem issues. I can be mad at an abstract, amorphous Student Body. I can still be angry at a few exceptional tormentors, and I don’t know what I’d say if I came across them now. But for the most part, I’ve never really been able to hold a grudge against the person in front of me. If an individual came and asked me for forgiveness, I’m almost certain I would oblige.
The girl who bullied me ended up marrying a guy who went to prison for burglary, leaving her with four little kids to support on her own. The last information I had, she was working for the USPS. After I had moved away out of state, when she would see my sister, she would say “Tell Cheez I said 'hello”". She has never offered me an apology, but acts like we were friends. We are not friends. We were never friends. If she offered a sincere apology, I would take it. But I could never be her friend.
I was 6’1" in the 6th grade. 6’$ now.
I was too big to be bullied by individual kids. We won’t talk about the Nuns, it was their job to teach me and I am very hard headed.
As to the group that ganged up on me. Last day of the 7th grade. They got together and mobbed me and drove me against a fence. One of them will get hurt if I ever see him again. He was behind the fence and attacking where I could not get to him. The others were were successful as long as I was unwilling to really hurt them back. After is was obvious that the Nun’s were not going to interfere, I started hurting people and they had to back off. I got my licks in and they quit so I was OK with it. The ass hat behind the fence was still trying to egg them on and when I went for a gap in the fence he ran to mommies car and left.
I have been told that he as seen me a few times on the street and ducks away. He is still an asshat and I still will hurt him. I do not think of it much, that is an old plan I have ready in my pocket for anytime I see him. Hope to see him before one of us dies of old age. 54+years … I guess for him, I’m not willing to accept anything but him hurting. Apparently he is too smart to get within sight of me. I moved away in 98 so he is safe except for occasional trips back.
Never claimed to be nice or reasonable, just enduring. < veg >
I was bullied through most of grade school and high school.
I was at my 25-year high school reunion a few years back, and had two separate former classmates come up to me and apologize (fairly emotionally, at that) for picking on me back then. It was a little uncomfortable for me, but I accepted their apologies.
It’s clear to me now that, in most of the cases, the bullies had less-than-idea home lives, and probably had abusive parents. From that standpoint, even though they hurt me terribly back then, I really couldn’t not accept their apologies.
I haven’t decided. I think that there might be a couple people i’d accept it from but there are a lot of these people that I don’t need around. Telling them where to shove it has been something i’ve wanted for awhille.