The Adventure of the Childhood Bullies

 This week is anti-bullying week and it got me thinking about my own experiences of bullying. 

I was bullied a lot during my childhood. I often don't feel like a normal adult but I was certainly even less normal as a child. I had a love for learning and that probably contributed to me being more academic than at least three quarters of my peers at school (this is not meant as a brag and there is certainly much more to life than knowing things and getting good results). My dyspraxia meant I was pretty rubbish at sport and generally disliked it and it also meant I was generally awkward and clumsy, not that I realised this at the time.

I don't believe there is every a reason to be bullied but from my experience at least bullies seek out points of difference. I was certainly different to the norm- I wasn't obsessed with football, I loved school and I had an awkwardness about me. In films bullying is usually portrayed as an endless persecution my one nasty child, usually with two sidekicks egging them on. I never found it that simple and there was never just one bully. I'd have a terrible time being persecuted by someone and circumstances would change and they wouldn't be in my environment any more but sooner or later another bully would rear their head and the cycle would continue. 

Towards the end of my time at primary school my main antagonist was a boy called Chris. It's weird looking back as an adult at people you despised at the time. I wonder what was wrong in his head to make him such a horrible little shit. Generally his venom to me was verbal but he was no above a good bit of physical abuse such as the time he scratched me with his claws on a cross-country run. 

How could you bully someone with a dog that cool?

One particular incident stays with me because of how ridiculous it feels to me now. It was World Book Day and we were instructed to come into school in costume. I'd forgotten this fact until minutes before I was supposed to leave for school so I rummaged around my bookshelf and managed to match some clothes to an image on a front cover. In order to defend the fact that I was basically just wearing my normal home clothes, I took in my copy of The Hundred Mile-An-Hour Dog to school. When we went round explaining our costumes I waved the copy of the book and Chris made fun of me for buying a book just for World Book Day. I felt humiliated at the time but years later I realised it should have been the other way around. I'd had a clever idea to wear my normal clothes and I owned books because I loved reading. Chris on the other hand had worn a suit and comes as 'James Bond' because the likelihood is he didn't actually own any books of his own. 

Another example comes years later around the ages of maybe fourteen and fifteen. I was in the Cub Scouts and we were sorted into small groups. The adults selected boys to be in charge of the groups and as far as I could tell they simply chose the biggest and most vocal boys to do so. Their job was to inspect our uniforms and keep us in line for the flag ceremony, because the Cubs seemed to think they are some strict military operation rather than simply two hours of pissing around in a crappy hut. Alex was in my year at school and was much bigger than me. He'd shout at me because my shoelaces were usually untied and I couldn't tie them and generally belittled me. It felt awful and I ended up leaving the Cubs because of it. Looking back, it's especially frustrating as the adult me can understand my deficiencies and not be bothered by them in the way teenage me was.

There are many more examples of people making my self-esteem cripplingly low until I was about seventeen and was finally able to have more freedom and not be forced into spaces with such horrible people. I don't want to elevate my suffering to something it wasn't and I'm aware that people probably faced far worse experiences than I did but all the same I certainly had a tough time at school and suffered emotionally because of it.

It's really hard to work out the effect that being bullied as a child had on me as an adult. Are there elements of my personality that have been moulded by my negative experiences? I can't say for certain but I consider that my self-confidence would likely be higher had my childhood not been like that. I am not at all a confident person and pretty much every day of my life I have at least one moment, usually more, where I feel a sense of uselessness and lack of worth. I'm also a shy person and I do wonder if that was caused by being bullied. I know that I was quite a confident child and would happily speak to anyone and went out of my way to put my hand up in class no matter what was being discussed. At some point that disappeared and I think I learned that it was safer to keep quiet and hide in the crowd. 

There is one way I'm certain my personality was changed my bullying and that's the burning desire to not let it happen to anyone else. Way back when I first started spending time in schools I was teaching a maths lesson alone (the students were about ten but are fully-grown adults that have left school now). As I was busily helping a student with something I notice a child across the room suddenly burst into tears. He had curly ginger hair and big, round glasses which were now blurry. I took him out of the room and established what was going on. I discovered that he had lost his Mum to cancer a few years previously and that a girl sat near him was making fun of him for it. 

Obviously I never experienced something as tragic but I could sense the way the girl had made him feel, those bitter words opening up an already unpleasant wound. I kept my calm exterior and comforted the boy but I felt the anger rise up in me in a way that it's rarely ever done. There was absolutely no way I was going to let this stand. I was there at the moment to teach division or something but well-being is far more important. I ensured the issue was addressed and made sure I was very clear to the class teacher that this needed dealing with properly. 

Bullying is such a huge issue that we really should be doing more about. The general feeling that we want to address it is there but it doesn't happen. Home Secretary Priti Patel was found to have been found bullying staff in a report released this week yet the Prime Minister basically said "it's fine". Donald Trump goes around bullying anyone who dares to have a different few than him yet millions of people still voted for him. 

I don't know about you but I believe in the power of kindness and I will always do whatever I can to stop bullies in their tracks.