To Andris,
My words may not weigh much in your experience, but I too have had a lot of problems with bullies (who doesn't?)
Growing up, I was always the weirdo, the geek, the momma's boy, the queer. It doesn't matter what any of them said to me. I am the youngest of six kids, and by far the tallest. All of my brothers told me, when I was in middle school, when my bullies (arch-nemesis') start to gawk or laugh at me, to just walk over to them and ask them what was so funny. Most of the time, they just called me stupid. It got the the point that every time I walked down the hall and saw any of my previous bullies, I would go over to the nearest person and point and laugh at them and laugh, just so they could see how it felt.
When I was finally confronted with being a bully myself, (by some new kids) I responded and told them that even though it looks like I am begin a bully, I am in fact standing up for the people who do not have the strength to do so themselves.
In 8th grade, I was the tallest kid in school (there is only about 150-200 kids in the middle school). I was still taunted and laughed at, and there were times where some bullies would knock books out of my hands and when I went down to pick them up, they would put duct tape in my hair. I would get mocked a lot, kids would say stuff like, "My name is Tyler, yessirry, I have to sit down while I pee." I then laughed at them and said, "That is a really good rhyme, did your two year old sister tell you that one?" or "Oh, I wasn't aware you were so scared of me." Most of the time people would get more confused than embarrassed, but I made do.
I played a lot of basketball and baseball in middle school, and played baseball up until my junior year in high school. I had a handful of friends that will always be my best friends, and they were always there for me. I lost one of my brothers to suicide when I was 13 (8th grade), and the difference between getting bullied before and getting bullied after was like comparing night and darker night. You would think people would have toned down the bullying? Hell no, How else were they going to show that they were superior?
My freshman year of high school is where things started to get better for me. My favorite baseball coach is the high school science teacher, and he has taught everyone in my family, and he is a close family friend. He pulled me out of my first geology class, and had me tested. He knew I was smart, and he knew what I was going through. And he told me that since he was the biology and physics teacher he was going to have me test out of those classes so he can watch over me. I was in biology my freshman year with a bunch of sophomores, and I got along fine mostly because my teacher didn't give a
>-bleeped-< about what other people thought about him.
By the time I finished the Physics program at our school, I had all the science requirements to graduate, so I had two extra free hours every day to do what ever I wanted. But instead of going home early, I became the Physics TA. Got my own lab coat and everything. The funniest part was when I was a senior, and my classmates were finally taking physics classes, they thought my teacher was going easy on me because all I had to do was grade papers, clean tables, and draw models for gravity and aerodynamics and I would get an A.
He was a great teacher, and he became one of my closest friends. He gave me the confidence to be myself, so I let the geek out. Before the first semester of my senior year was over, I was finished with all of my Advanced Placement classes. My last semester schedule looked like this:
A Day;
First period: Speech class
Second period: Free hour
Third Period: Free Hour
Fourth Period: Free hour
B Day;
First Period: Senior Seminar
Second period: Free hour
Third Period: Free Hour
Fourth Period: Free hour
In my experience, the bullying will stop once you stand up to them. Most people will not fight or want to fight once you stand up to them. But it is a different case for me because I am so tall. No one wanted to get in a fight with me. By the time I was finally sticking up for myself, all the upper class men and women were my friends, and I had about 3 or 4 girls crawling all over me (Geek is in BTW
)
It is ALL in the CONFIDENCE!
I could talk about this all day, but I know people don't come on here to read a novel... sorry this was so long haha.
