I've recently heard about this story that appealed to me as a future teacher. A Youtube video popped up from Australia of a kid named Richard bullying a bigger kid named Casey Haynes. This turns out poorly for the little kid: Now, Casey has been hailed as a hero and has been called "Casey the Punisher." More than that, the video has again sparked the debate on bullying, and how it should be handled. Apparently, both Casey and the bully were suspended from school for the incident, and some are outraged that Casey was suspended at all (the little kid clearly throws the first punch), while others think he should have been suspended longer as he took the fight to such an extreme level. You should also know that apparently Casey is three years older than the smaller bully (Casey is in Grade 10, the bully in grade 7). If you google Casey Haynes, stories and videos galore pop up, from the New York Times to facebook pages supporting him. Shit, even Penny Arcade got in on the act. Focus: Bullying.* Ever been bullied? Ever been the bully? How did that work out for you? Alt-Focus: Discuss the video and the case. Is Casey in the right? Should he have been suspended, and what can anyone actually do about bullying? *Note to Mods: I know there is another thread about bullying by IWantSomeJuice just a few posts down, but I thought the video and the viral nature of the story lent itself to a good discussion, so apologies for being redundant.
This kid is also being referred to as Zangief Kid and was a trending topic on Twitter when I looked earlier. I've told this story before - my best experience with bullying was when I was in homeroom in 8th grade. All 7-8th graders are basically small monsters and there's a good argument for just incarcerating them. Anyway, the guy who sits behind me decided that his father didn't hug him enough or something, and hit me in the back of the head for no reason. I turned around to ask him what the fuck, and as soon as I did (before I even got to the 'what the fuck' bit) he grabbed my pencil - my only writing implement for the day - and snapped it in half and threw it across the room. I then decided to skip the 'what the fuck' bit and tell him to fuck himself, but before I even got to that he punched me in the face. He shattered my shatter-resistant plastic lenses on my glasses. I then got detention for "being involved in a fight." Anyway, don't hit other people.
Yeah, I would hate this nonsense, and it's reason #3,402 why US (and apparently Australian) public schools are utter shit. Sometimes a kid would pick a fight with me, just hit me for little provocation, because I was freaking weird and didn't speak English well back then or whatever, and being the tallest and strongest kid in my grade, I would beat him down. Not fucking once did that stop me from getting punished along with the actual aggressor, and in some instances, I got punished more than the person who started it. It was frustrating, because if a kid would hit me and I told the teacher, nothing would happen, but when I retaliated, I would get in trouble. Oddly enough, junior high was a huge improvement, because if I got into a fight with someone and beat them up badly...they wouldn't tell the teacher on me! In fact, most teachers didn't even particularly care. As a result, any problems could be handled without adult interference, and ultimately, I had far fewer fights or people starting shit with me. Anyways, the advice to anyone being bullied is this: get in shape, learn to throw a punch, and any time someone hits you, repay them with interest. Also, when they're retreating from the fight, make sure to get a few parting punches in to the back of their head. Very soon, they will move on to other targets.
I've always had a pretty serious hate on for bullies. My younger brother grew up as kind of a fat kid, and while I grew up skinny and didn't fill out until I hit high school and discovered the gym, it's easier being the tall skinny kid than the fat kid. The stuff kids used to say to him was infuriating and I did my best to stand up for him, as did my friends and the friends he had, but obviously there's only so much we can do. It wasn't until he got to high school too that he got over the "never hit anyone back" mantra that the schools shove down kids' throats and just started reacting in a more aggressive manner, and the bullies left him alone. In the past few years he started hitting the gym too and has lost a lot of weight, so bravo to him. I like that video above a lot, to be honest. There is no fucking way that kid should have been suspended. Sure you can claim "blah blah blah you don't know what happened before the video!" but it's pretty obvious from the start that the bigger kid wants nothing to do with the situation. If you can't defend yourself when you're getting punched in the face for no reason without being punished, then it's a pretty sorry fucking state of affairs. I do, however, see some humor in the scrawny little ginger kid picking on the significantly larger kid though, especially when it dawns on the big kid that he can just wreck the small kid.
I only was bullied when I was small in the early grades, because most of my life I was a little guy. I also had buck teeth that would make Freddy Mercury look like Mr. Bottomtooth, and was teased mercilessly for it. All. The. Time. So, one day when the ringleader of the taunts started up with me, I cracked him in the side of the face with my metal contruction worker's lunchpail. He went into a sobbing cry fit, told on me, and a got the ruler stick across the hands from the vice principal (doesn't everyone my age or older miss that?). I never ratted on anybody for teasing me once, and that's what I get. The mouse makes it through the maze and is rewarded a chloroform gumball. I also didn't get made fun of nearly as much, because I was the little guy who fought back. Part of the reason I'm too stupid to back down from anybody. Bullying is pathetic and cowardly, no matter how you slice it. That kid in the video did the world a fucking favour by slamming that little shit, and I hope others follow suit. If I could, I would happily tire iron a bully.
I was a loser in my youth* and was bullied alot more than most people in my school. To me, I just tried to ignore it, but it was hard. I remember one time in grade 6 being pinned down and two kids older than me trying to suffocate me. The teachers at my school were asses as well. They never did anything to prevent it, looked the other way. Hell, the teachers would believe them over me. Well when there's five of them versus the one of me, who'd you believe? I remember a few times in gym class one kid throwing my clean clothes in the shower every so often. WTF? Not long after was when the Columbine disaster happened. After that, the school started to take a 0 tolerance policy towards bullying. It got better after that. By the time the kids were in grade 10, they smartened the eff up. I actually became friends with most of them. Weird how times change. *and today
Through the ninth grade, I was enrolled in a small Christian school in a bumfuck town, the school being hosted by a church building. I was the only student there whose family didn't also attend church there. Because of this, and my still-present social awkwardness (not to mention I looked like Macauley Culkin, wore glasses, and had a 007 hairstyle (Brosnan, for fuck's sake). I was ridiculed and taunted endlessly, but there was only one physical incident. In sixth grade, one of my classes started after lunch, and our teacher was notoriously 10-20 minutes late. As soon as I sat down, three girls got up to close and hold the doors, while the two largest guys in the school grabbed a pair of couch cushions (the big, heavy, dense ones) and started wailing on me. This was in a classroom of at least 10 people, and not a goddamned one of them said or did anything to defend me. I ran and tried to hide under a desk, which wasn't really the best idea because it just kept me immobile. After near-on five minutes of this shit, I finally got the idea in my head to scramble for one of the doors. Shoving one of the girls out of the way, I ran into the hallway, and almost bounced off of the teacher. Now, you would think that seeing a disheveled 12-year-old hauling ass out of a classroom in tears, he might have have been concerned. If he did, the sentence "Get back in there and take a seat!" didn't quite convey any. In all honesty, a couple more years in that place and I would have tried to kill someone. No exaggeration, no joking. Public school was much more tolerable, there was only one attempt anyone made at bullying me. Some punk asked me for lunch money, got denied, and came back with two friends. They made a semicircle behind where I was sitting and made empty threats until they got bored with watching me chew my food and walked away. I still get shit from time to time on account of my appearance. Being of legal drinking age but having the face of a 16-year-old (on a good day) and weighing 130 despite a level of food consumption best described as "gluttonous" doesn't really help with that. I have a coworker who likes to be a prick, sometimes by talking shit for no reason, other times by talking shit just to get a rise out of people. To be fair, I do have a very mild form of small man syndrome, but it's mostly situational, e.g. if a random person starts talking shit, I'll ignore it or laugh it off, but if it's someone who has made it a point to consistently fuck with me, my fuse is very short. In this case, I've been threatened multiple times with having my ass kicked, and each time I've told him to back it up. Still waiting. Reading back over that, I'm not sure if God simply hates me or if I've always just been a well-meaning but insufferable douche.
<a class="postlink" href="http://news.ninemsn.com.au/national/8226894/net-video-bully-sorry-but-says-he-was-provoked" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://news.ninemsn.com.au/national/822 ... s-provoked</a> Apparently saying "get to class" is grounds for punching someone in the face. Stupid little Bogan (Australian Redneck) Kid. edit.... MORTAL KOMBAT!!!!!!!!
I was really quiet when I was younger so I was an easy target, particularly for girl bullies. I don't really know why, but it never bothered me that much and I can't say it had any lasting impact on me. I just let it slide off me, especially since the only thing I found more annoying than bullies were tattle-tales.
Alt-Focus: I was discussing this video with a friend, and while I don't know if he deserved what he got as in tit for tat(Casey is a douche for all I know, and maybe the kid didn't start it? but I'll assume he's the bully for this point)..but that kid was bullying the hulk? Am I only the one wondering how the hell he thought he could take on a huge kid like that? This kid is tiny, how the hell did he think that would turn out well. I'd say he got what he deserved just for that stupidity. How the fuck did he think he could bully that monster? This kid is going to be playing chicken with snowplows if someone doesn't teach him not to. I hope he didn't get seriously hurt, but that just baffles me.
In Aus high school is between grades 7-10. I was a micron until the start of grade 10, I was one of those poor bastards that puberty forgot. As a result I was smaller than just about everyone until near the end of year 10. I never became a monster like all you 7 foot man mountains on here but reached a respectable 5”10 and am solid enough. I was bullied a fair bit, and most of it I would consider character building however I was picked on mercilessly by 3 year 9 students when I was in year 7, it went on until near the end of the year and was consistent and pretty nasty stuff. I had tried fighting back using fists and feet but this just resulted in them having a better time while beating me. I never considered reporting them. Near the end of the year I finally cracked & sharpened a pencil to maximum pointiness, and waited. Didn’t have to wait long, they approached, the ring leader stepped in to push me and without warning I stabbed that fuckbag in the arm ice pick style. As hard as I could. The pencil stuck in. I ran. They didn’t report me to teachers and left me the fuck alone afterwards. This incident and my TIB name are a coincidence. Probably.
It's amazing how much shit a kid will let bullies get away with because their parents have given them a "There's no need to ever get in a fight to defend yourself. Just tell the nearest teacher and everything will be okay" sort of mentality. I've noticed that bigger kids especially have this refusal to fight back, mainly because it's been impressed on them that they're bigger and could really hurt someone, so it makes it that much more difficult to stand up for themselves. Once that dynamic exists, it's not so hard to see how a younger, smaller kid will realize he can get away with bullying the older fat kid and take full advantage of it. Of course this only lasts until the point where the victim grows out of the pacifist mentality or simply snaps and beats the aggressor into a pulp. Most of the personal stories posted on here seem to back up the idea that it only takes one serious act of retaliation for a bully to stop or move on to another target.
This. Thanks to my birthday and my mom's cooking, I was bigger than most in my classes. Couple this with the fact that most of my classmates were of the Asian variety, and it was like Manny Pacquiao vs. Butterbean. Except that I had it drilled into my head to hit people smaller than me (probably for my little brother's protection). The way the kids at my high school operated, if you fought one, you were going to get jumped by six later. It was like attending my own little prison yard.
The kicker is trying to figure out which option will lead to less torture. You fight one, he backs off, and you get jumped in the parking lot later on by a half dozen of his buddies. You don't fight any, and you're a target until you graduate. That obviously doesn't cover all circumstances, but when you're 16 and just trying to make a go of being a teenager, with everything that entails, it's a hard choice to make. Alt. Focus: Truth be told, you can't do shit. I mean, yeah, some kids might get lucky and not be a target anymore after dropping a bomb on a bully, but that doesn't work for everyone. And yeah, a few kids here and there might have some luck squealing to the teachers and the principals, but that's hardly a conclusion with a happy ending. Fact is, there is no one-size-fits-all policy that will stop bullying as a whole. The key to limiting it, and I choose that word because stopping it entirely, while well-intentioned is a fucking joke, is for parents to pay close attention, as best they can, and try to work with their kids instead of for them. My old man taught me that throwing punches might work, but only if you could handle the repercussions. You have to take every situation and analyze it carefully, making note of your aggressor's tactics, allies, resources, etc, and that shit is hard for a child, or even a teenager, to fully grasp, which is why you need your folks to back you and help you. My old man knew, like a lot of others, that sometimes you can't just walk away and pretend it isn't happening, and that you have to be realistic. He knew that the teachers and the principals aren't always on your side, and sometimes shit had to be dealt with on your own terms, even if those terms meant a right hook and a stomp. All this PC shit has gotta go. Not necessarily in favor of hard-charging, gung-ho tactics, but rather some critical thinking about the subject.
A similar thing happened to one of my buddies in high school. He was 6'4" and had a huge frame, but still had some of his baby fat, thick glasses and is a ginger. Because of this people thought he was a pushover. Sophomore year some tall but scrawny kid picked a fight with him, landed a punch that didn't even move my friend's head and just stood there in a moment of disbelief. My buddy picked him up and choke slammed him on a radiator, game over. All I could think was "how did that other kid see the fight going any other way?"
FOCUS: I was mercilessly bullied throughout my entire school career. I was, at first, the skinny, sick kid, then after grade 2, the fat, sick, weird kid. I used to get slapped and/or punched multiple times a day by pretty much my entire class in elementary school - my grasp on reality was pretty tenuous by this stage and I'd often disappear into my own world while around others, trying to hide away from my situation. Like I said, I was weird and looking for ANY sort of relief I could get. I'm pretty certain the entire school was against me by the time I left. Unfortunately for me, I had a big mouth and would rat on people in the early days, until I realised that did nothing but make it worse. I'd stopped even trying to complete schoolwork, because getting kicked out of class allowed me to spend time away from those making my life a misery. I'd go so far as walking slowly and peering around corners to see if I was about to get jumped again... Not only this, but I'd often have my stuff go missing and no-one would ever own up or return it, not even under questioning by teachers, so I'd get punished by the teachers for losing my stuff too. My life had become an endless circle of shit. Then came high school. Now, it was more emotional bullying which was sometimes accompanied by physical violence. One guy tried to stab me in grade 8 - my dad didn't believe me until he saw the hole the knife had left in my blazer, since I had learned to be good at dodging attacks after years of putting up with this sort of shit* - thankfully, that kid WAS expelled. I was not physically strong and thus unable to fight back. I was sent to a school-mandated psychologist to find out why I wouldn't do any work in classes and why I'd been forging my mother's signature in my homework notebook. He concluded I'd behaved admirably when I described my experiences to him. My misery continued to be administered by other sources. The bullying became worse in 9th grade and then continued all the way to 12th grade. On days when I had P.E., I'd often change in one of the toilets to avoid further ridiculing about my weight or weirdness, only to have my bag snatched out from under the door and my stuff thrown all over the school as a result, some of which I'd never find again. I'd had to retrieve my bags from the trees a few times, too - not so easy for someone with poor balance and no climbing skills. I'd stopped complaining at this point, since I'd figured out no-one was listening and that no-one gave a shit about me, not even my parents at this point. I was one of the lucky ones who was bullied by about 40% of my grade at this point. By the time I was finishing 9th grade, I BEGGED my parents to allow me to drop out of school and home-school myself, but they said that "You should tough it out because it builds character". The moral of the story: your kid comes home crying every single day, maybe you should consider taking him out of school. Just a thought for the parents here. Some kids actually cannot function in the normal school environment, simply because others won't let them. Is it any surprise that I really don't like people now? Thought not. *Remember, if you're incapable of fighting back, you'd best be good at dodging. I wasn't a fast runner so this tactic didn't always work... in fact, some of the bullies would get pissed that I tried to run in the first place and made me pay for it when they caught me.
I was bullied like crazy in middle school. I was a really small kid (when I left in 8th grade, I think I was 4'9" and weighed maybe 110lbs). This made me an easy target for shithead middle school kids who picked on people. I had my stuff thrown on top of my locker, which I then had to scale to get because I was so short. I was pushed around, picked up like a little kid, literally tossed back and forth, and generally handled by anyone who wanted to fuck with me. I spoke with my parents about it, and instead of them saying that I shouldn't fight back, my mom surprised me with how awesome she was. She said, "The next time someone tries to fuck with you, wait for the opportunity and then smash them in the face, kick the shit out of them, do whatever it takes to get out of their grasp and show them that if they fuck with you again, they'll get hurt again. When you get in trouble, which you will, I'll defend you with everything I've got." So I did exactly that. About a week later, some douche picked me up from behind and carried me through the hallway chanting something like "baby boy, look at my baby" or some stupid shit. I kinda squirmed down in his grip and thrust the back of my head back into his face, busting his nose and mouth. He dropped me, and while he was reeling in pain I got behind him, kicked out the back of his knee and then just kicked the shit out of him as he laid on the ground for a good thirty seconds until a teacher pulled me away. Sure enough, I went to the office and they called my mother. When she came to get me, she told the principal that I had been bullied by these kids incessantly and that I'd had enough. She went on to say that if I was punished for my actions, she would gather testimony from all of my friends which would reveal a total lack of intervention on the part of the faculty, who absolutely witnessed a lot of it, and would present it to the local news station. The principal stood there in awe and my mother turned and left. I was sent back to class. Two days later, the kid came to me and apologized (something which was orchestrated by both the principal and his parents) and I was never screwed with again. As for the video, I wish I had been big enough to lay down that kind of body slam. That kid did the right thing. Sometimes you need to go to extremes to get people's attention. He may be screwed with again, but never by that little punk.
That scrawny little prick got exactly what he deserved and I hope he feels like an idiot now. The bigger kid should not have been suspended. Anything said before the punches were thrown doesn't mean a damn thing. They are just words. You would think after he hit the kid in the face with everything he had and the kid didn't even flinch, he might have rethought things. I don't agree with telling kids not to fight if they are being bullied. In fact, I have specifically told both my sons that if someone hits them they have every right to hit them back, and they should punch them square in the nose. That bullying shit will end quick and they will NOT be in trouble at home if they get in trouble in school. But if they throw the first punch or started the bullying, they are in DEEP SHIT. I wasn't bullied that much in school, nothing major where I got beat up or anything. Just your basic verbal shit where one day you're friends with a group and the next day, for whatever reason, they decided you were the target for the day. But it was never physical. I have always been very quite and easygoing and come in under the radar. In fact, most people underestimate me in general.
Exclusive interview with Zangief's bully, worth a watch <a class="postlink" href="http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/little-zangiefs-bully-speaks-out" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/little-z ... speaks-out</a>