“Sweetness, sweetness I was only joking
When I said I’d like to smash every tooth
In your head.

Oh … sweetness, sweetness, I was only joking
When I said by rights you should be
Bludgeoned in your bed.”

I don’t know how we got there, but Dr. O’C and I were talking about bullying the other day. I think I expressed my concern that Boy Z could be the victim of bullying one day, to which Dr. O’C responded, “I’d rather that he be a bully than be bullied”. This kicked off one of our trademark “debates”, with me speaking eloquently for the position that bullies, ultimately, are worse off than their victims. The bullying eventually stops, leaving the bully-ee to get on with life, but the bully has to live with themselves for the rest of their life. Now, I know that this is presuming some sort of emotional maturity to people who are little more than burly thugs, but I stand by my position.

Mike, who blogs beautifully at The Newborn Identity, got me thinking about my own experience in school with a post about similar fears around bullying and his little girl. I’ve got a whole shed full of anxiety about Boy Z’s future and can certainly relate. It’s part of being a parent, we’ve got a biological imperative to protect our progeny at any cost.

I don’t think fondly of my time in middle and high school, but I didn’t really have it that bad. As you can probably guess from the photo above, I wasn’t really in the upper social strata of high school. Nonetheless, I didn’t have it that bad on the bullying front. I mean, I took a fair share of verbal antagonism, but I was never stuffed in a locker or anything.

One of my survival instincts is that I can blend in to my environment. I’ve always been able to avoid the line of fire. I sorted high school out pretty quickly – you were either predator (football player, cheerleader, prom queen), prey (stuffed in a locker) or one of the herd that just got generally ignored. I aspired to the herd. The worst moments of high school for me were when I stood out, when I became the slow wildebeest – the one you see being dragged down by lions in nature documentaries.

I’ve already written about one of these incidents in which I found myself at the edge of the herd (involving glasses, P.E. and appendages), but I’ve got another for your carnivorous pleasure. The closest I ever got to being physically bullied is when I made the mistake of aspiring to a predator’s place in the high school food chain. I was crap at ball sports but was a pretty decent swimmer. I earned a high school letter in swimming in my junior or senior year. That was fine, but I made the mistake of deciding that I would like to dress in wolves clothing – I ordered a letterman’s jacket.  On a day that, unsurprisingly in hindsight, resembled that day in P.E. class a few years earlier I proudly walked through the doors of my high school wearing my shiny new purple and gold letterman’s jacket. With my head held high I wandered the halls of my high school for aI don’t remember how long it took for a couple of football players to corral me against a wall. They explained to me, very clearly and none too politely, that only proper athletes – football, basketball or baseball players – were permitted to wear letterman’s jackets. They convincingly expressed their opinion that if I wished to keep my limbs fully intact that I wouldn’t wear the letterman’s jacket in their presence. The jacket stayed in my locker for some time*, fortunately without me in it.

Now, these were not pleasant experiences by any stretch of the imagination, but I still stand by my assertion that I’m better off than these guys (and girls) are. I can laughingly tell these stories 20 years later. I’ve gotten past high school, grown, developed, become a happy and content person that lives largely without fear of being stuffed in a locker. They have to live with the fact that they were, and in most cases likely still are, dickheads. Even if they’re not dealing with the remorse of treating people like crap, even if they’re not self aware enough to know that they were/are nothing more than a self-loathing goon, they will still have karma to deal with somewhere along the way.

In a vaguely ironic 21st century twist, a number of these people that at best ignored me in high school have discovered Facebook. Some of the people who went out of their way to make my high school years unpleasant have asked to be my friends. I’d like to suggest that in addition to “Add As A Friend” and “Ignore”, Facebook add a “You were an asshole to me in High School and now you want to be my friend? Sod off.” button.

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This cover of The Smiths’ classic is one of my favorites ever. Treepeople were an Idaho band that used to tear up the Seattle clubs back during my time there. They were led by Doug Martsch, who subsequently went on to form the outstanding Built To Spill. If you like what you hear you can buy Treepeople’s records from C/Z Records.

Images:

Lion and wildebeest

Lettermen

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*A few years ago and I don’t remember why exactly, probably as a result of a rant like this one, my friend Alex got in touch with my parents and had them send him my letterman’s jacket. He then “gave” it to me as a birthday present. There exists a picture of the two of us in our high school lettermen’s jackets. One of us with a big grin and the other slightly chagrined. If we talk real nice to Nichole she may be able to come up with it.

 
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