I'm never quite sure where I fell on the bullying spectrum. I was a fat kid and copped relentless shit for it all through primary school (US translation grade school I think),and physically I was also a pussy. Never really fought, vary rarely threw a punch in anger. But I was also pretty bright, and eloquent compared to the other students, and probably borderline sociopathic. So, while I always got the worst of it physically, I could be remarkably cruel verbally. The guy who punched me in the face unprovoked in Grade 8? I called him out immediately afterwards on the fact that his mother was a literal prostitute. She actually quite likely was, a fact my parents had for some reason helpfully shared with me after I mentioned the fact that stepping on the bottom stair in this kid's house rang a bell in the master bedroom. In retrospect, I don't know how convincing this single fact is, but to a bunch of high schoolers and one ghetto-ass kid with no verbal talents it might as well have been gospel. Oddly enough, that kid didn't beat my ass after school, we just never spoke again, and he got known as 'that kid with the whore mother'. Looking back, obviously a kid with that sort of homelife is going to be fucked up and I should have cut him some slack, but as a nerdy 14yr old who had just been punched in the face, I was trying desperately to reclaim some dignity. Same deal with the girl who set me up. Claimed to like me, we went on a date, she asked me to write her a letter telling her how I felt. I did. Then she copied the letter and gave copies to 'everyone' (probably about 10 people in hindsight), and even put it on a website (it's still up by the way, and on the first page when you search my name. Fucking google.) telling them all what a weirdo I was. I called her a bitch, and in response she slapped me, pulled my hair, and then kicked me in the balls. Her best friend had committed suicide about a month before this. Again, extenuating circumstances that I didn't count important at the time. I said something like "No wonder the bitch offed herself. If you were my best friend I'd top myself too". Got sent to the school psychologist for that one, who told me that "words could hurt as much as punches". Yeah, no shit, that's why I used them when I got punched. That was the last time anyone really bothered me at school. After that, it was too much effort, and it was easier for the bullies to pick on the quiet kids, where there was no risk of that sort of unexpected verbal assault. Weird ending to the story above: that girl thought she was a witch, and told me of her plans to bury chicken bones in my backyard, which would apparently give me cancer. We didn't speak after that, for about 13 years. She tried to add me as a facebook friend not 2 months ago. Weird.
Bullies come and go, and sooner or later they left me alone, but what stuck with me was not being allowed to fight back. The few times I've fought back have been the only times I've been suspended from school. So, y'know, that was fun. Having to avoid fights, take punches when I couldn't, and not give any back upon pain of being trotted to the VP's office and held there until parents showed up to cart me off. Didn't really have bullying issues at my high school so much as I had "douchebags who think they're funny" issues, but both of those incidents worked out with minimal scarring (penny launched at temple, deflected with hand) and I think possibly improved night vision (laser shined in corner of my eye, not noticed for a second or two). So, persuasive skills/diplomacy, decent blocking/grappling techniques(I'm pretty sure I still punch like a little girl), and decent reflexes, in exchange for years of being unable to do shit about the shitty shit I was up to my neck in, caused by little shitheads who usually had the strength and numerical advantage, thus being able to send a whole lotta shit my way. So far it seems to be working out OK, let's see how it goes from here.
I lived in a lower middle class town until third grade and I was pretty popular there. I moved into an upper middle class town and quickly was picked on. I was good in school but not shy. I had a mouth guard that kept me from sucking my thumb so I quickly won the nickname "Metal Mouth". A group of kids would pick on me all the time and the kind of person I was, I talked shit to them. One time I got into a fight with one of the kids and got him pretty good even though I won a black eye out of it as well. All of our parents were called into the office as some sort of mediation and my grandmother, who took care of me, was told that I threw the first punch. My grandma said, "Well what the hell do you expect him to do when these kids call him names?" I actually became friends with most of those kids afterwards and my grades fell a bit. In fifth grade, I became famous for bringing beer to school in a water bottle and sharing it with a couple kids. We got caught because one of the morons pretended he was drunk and took his shirt off on the playground and ran around screaming "I'm drunk!" I lived literally down the block from school, so when I got suspended my parents told the school to release me and I would walk home. Knowing that my father's belt laid waiting, I was not fucking walking home. I walked to my friend's house who was sick that day and told him what happened, and hid out for the day. I went home the next afternoon and it was all across each elementary school in my town that if anyone had seen me to tell someone. When I went into middle school, kids from other schools knew me as "The kid who brought beer to school". I could always out-talk pretty much anyone and make them look stupid, and being a smaller kid they tended to want to turn physical where they held an advantage. Thankfully I was a bit scrappy and held my own. I was in trouble a LOT in middle school and thankfully learned my lesson before high school where I could have been really fucked. What's funny is that with the advent of Facebook, I've reconnected with lots of people who told me that back in the day I used to frighten them because I would talk so much shit and make them feel stupid. I did not realize that this whole time I was an asshole, because most of it was out of self defense. I still talk a LOT of shit and I have pretty much grown up on message boards where trolling is pretty much a given, but I have toned it back a bunch since finding out what people thought of me back then.
I wasn't bullied in elementary school, that might be denial though. I can remember getting beat up once. The first time was with my best friend by Adrian and Matthew. It was after school and we were getting beat. I ran. I ran like a little bitch. Leaving my best friend by himself. I ran as fast as my little legs would take me home. There I told my best friend's older sister who was baby sitting me and my younger brother what had happened was happening. She ran as fast as she could to the school. I waited, and I waited. My best friend and his older sister came through the door. My best friend had the biggest smile on his face. I didn't know why he was smiling so I asked what happened. His older sister happened. His older sister happened in a way that only an older sister can when girls have started puberty and boys haven't. She beat Adrian and Matthew in a way where my best friend felt that the beating we had gotten was a joke. If Adrian and Matthew had known the beating they were going to get in return for the beating they gave they would have never have given us a beating to begin with. That wasn't the only time she came to my best friend's defense either. This second time better illustrates who she is. My friend talked shit as he always is doing (he gets it from his father) to two older boys on a bicycle in front of his house. These two get off the bicycle and start approaching him. His older sister can see all of this from their kitchen which faced the street. Her response was to come running out of the kitchen with a chef's knife. The two older boys saw her and instantly recognized which way was up. They got back on that bicycle and started peddling away. My best friend's older sister wasn't wasn't satisfied with that though. She ran after them with that chef knife in hand until they were off the block. I'm convinced to this day that she would have stabbed them if she had managed to catch them.
It's weird, because although I moved in 3rd grade and again in 4th grade, I never really got bullied, even though I was both the new kid and the smartest kid in the class. More often I got asked to help with the cool kids' homework. I was also intensely misanthropic; I hated most everyone around me and had a hair-trigger temper all the way through high school. My parents were on the verge of a culturally-taboo divorce since I was 5, and it seemed I was taking after my father. Luckily enough I was never forced to back it up. You couldn't really joke around with me, and while this stopped me from being friends with people I didn't feel superior to, it also stopped people from trying to start shit with me unless they knew damn well where it was going. I was kinda... unpredictable. Only time I really did anything wasn't really even in response to bullying. I have a twin brother who was (and is) very awkward, and in middle school apparently that means you're gay. There was a vaguely-fuckup kid who liked to pull people's chains (his name rhymed with Eyelash) who would spent about 90% of his time going around talking shit about my brother. At the time, I was content hating him at a distance; nobody really listened to him anyway, and he wasn't very popular. Too bad for him: the one time he called me gay, I was walking by his school bus seat in the aisle and I had a tenor saxophone case in my hand. After about five seconds of crushing him into the window with twenty pounds of leather-encased brass, I moved on down the aisle. I don't recall him ever talking shit again. Note: Today I am a reasonably well-adjusted individual going to a good school. I have fewer issues, and the dreams where my father tears me limb from limb are getting less frequent.
I was a cocky little brat in grade school. I'm pretty sure the only reason I didn't get beat up was because I was taller and faster than all the other kids in my class. I made fun of everyone and got away with it because I was pretty smart and the teachers liked me. Also, if the popular sixth grade girls like you no one will say anything bad about you. I would have been fucked if anyone actually called me out though because I had never been in a real fight in my life. The only time it came close was when the class fatty tried to tackle me to the ground. I got out of the way and ran around the playground taunting him but in reality I was scared shitless of him catching me. Then everyone caught up to me in height in middle school and I shut the fuck up. Go me.
I'm a pussy who didn't fight back. I wish I was different, but I'm just not. I'd feel physically sick at the thought of fighting someone - that hasn't changed. I was relentlessly bullied throughout my entire school career, from Grade 0 (kindergarten) all the way through high school. I was, unfortunately, very asthmatic and had been put on a LONG course of drugs to help. Sadly, these drugs gave me the physique of Dom DeLuise. I'm also not very eloquent and would talk to myself (I still do), so I was CONSTANTLY catching shit for saying something stupid or weird, especially from the girls (my junior primary school was co-ed). I was a book-smart kid, not a street-smart kid. I wish I had been the latter, but I wasn't. I think, out of a small class of 8 students in grade 3, I was the only one eating lunch alone. Yup. I was just different. On to senior primary school (grades 4-7). Most of my teachers liked me, since I was smart. I still, however, said stupid things sometimes. My brain and mouth don't work well together. This made the other kids resent me and pick on me even more, particularly the ones who had followed me from my previous school. However, this particular year was the first year that that school's class had been together throughout junior primary, so, I was an outsider from the start that never got "in" with anyone. I was completely useless at sports, due to my near complete inability to run (any physical activity brought on an asthma incident) and major lack of strength, and once I dropped a catch during a match - I caught shit for that for a MONTH. I tried to fight back with words but I'd always come off second best. By grade 6, I was surly and disrespectful to teachers (who can blame me, really? You catch shit every day for 6+ years and it changes you - I'd catch it from 2/3 of the students at the entire school, so I wasn't in any position to fight back) and was constantly not doing work. I was one of the last kids caned before they banned corporal punishment. To high school. I was bullied by pretty much everyone, about my lunch, haircut, bad handwriting, saying dumb things - if it could be used against me, it was. The prefects made my life difficult and I was shunned by almost my entire class. In my first year, I did very little of my work and forged my mom's signature in my note book that I'd done the work. Notes were then mailed home and I was sent to the psychologist, who couldn't really help me. Oh, one guy also tried to stabbed me after I'd spotted his knife and reported it - he was able to punch the blade through my blazer and shirt but only grazed me. Grade 9 came along - it was so bad, I had to switch classes. My grade 9 teacher was a good guy, though, and tried his best to not get the other guys to pick on me so much, since I'd been put in the class filled with "difficult" students. Grade 10 was horrid, since my teacher made fun of me along with the other students - fuck, I hated that harpy cunt. Grade 11 and 12 was mostly more of the same, save for the last two weeks. One of my chief tormentors, a guy named Geoff, was talking shit to me (like he always did and had been doing for nearly 10 years at this point) and said something about my mother (you know what guys are like) and I said "At least my mom didn't die to get away from me" - Geoff's mom had died like a week before from cancer. He instantly shut his face. I haven't spoken to or seen him since school finished. I also never apologized for saying that and I have no regrets in saying that. I left high school with few friends, and keep in touch with even less of them now. Most of those assholes made my life hell. I don't think a day went by where I didn't think about killing myself - all that stopped me was my parents and the thought of what losing their only child would do to them. End result: I prefer spending time by myself than with other people. Can you really blame me?
Seriously though, dude. If half of that shit's true, you really need to see somebody. Don't let the fucking woozles get you down.
In grade school, I once attempted to defuse a potential fight between my friend and a guy in the grade above us. I am pretty sure I did this by mocking the older kid. This resulted in him jumping me instead. I fought back fairly successfully, getting a draw. However, because I was slightly nerdy and younger, I think he took shit for that. So for the next 4 years, he would terrorize me. If I did not see him coming, he would walk up and hit me in the face at random. If I was playing football (touch) at recess, he would run in from the sidelines and tackle me. It was less then fun, because I couldn't really fight back against these quick attacks. Eventually we were in separate buildings for a couple years and either I got too big or he got bored. Then in high school, my older sister (her senior, me freshman) was apparently cock-teasing one of her classmates. An all-state wrestler/all-conf baseball player. Sadly, he was in my gym class. He took out his frustrations on me. Being headhunted in dodgeball by the best catcher in 50 miles kind of sucks. It only really made sense a couple years later when I heard all the stories involving him and my sister.