"In the End My Bully Respected Me – ADHD and All."
When one boy's bully wouldn't back down, he took matters into his own hands – and got him to apologize. Read more from Blake Taylor's book ADHD & Me.
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ADDitude – In the End My Bully Respected Me REPLY – August 21, 2022
Bullying is a lightning rod issue to me because I had to continuously deal with it when I was in Grades 5-10. This is one man’s opinion, so take it FWIW. I am a man in his pre-geezer years and I still have bitter flashbacks from over 50 years ago. I hate bullies; bullies rob people of their dignity.
The story above “In the End My Bully Respected Me” represents a rare best-case scenario. I see some unusual circumstances here. This seems to have happened in a private or charter school that cherry picks its students, highly motivated kids who come from stable homes in an affluent neighborhood. In this case these fortunate students outnumber the bullies by 20 to 1.
Bullies occur in all societies. These people have varying proportions of anger, insecurity, sense of being deprived and are always searching for submissive targets to vent their frustrations and rage on.
Please allow me to present two very different scenarios from my actual history. I write this in the hopes of providing a wider perspective and apologize beforehand if I offend anyone.
In 5th Grade my father was transferred to a semi-rural town in a flyover state. The whole area was a poverty pocket and its misery index was off the charts. The divorce, alcoholism and unemployment rates there were twice the national averages and the per capita income was among the lowest in the nation. I was an outsider and the class nerd.
The local citizenry was most upset that their high school was having an endlessly losing football season. Therefore, they hired an overpaid prima donna athletic director but they continued to experience an unbroken string of humiliating defeats. The pressure on the principal was intense. He was too preoccupied with the football program and had no time or patience for a small group of bully victims like me. Hell, many of the worst bullies were the football players themselves!
I suffered through 5 years of abuse but upon graduation I went to college in a more progressive and prosperous state and got a STEM education. I had a reasonably successful career and my little family and I lived in an comfortable upscale tract house suburb.
Safe from bullies there? NO! About 20 years ago our youngest son had just started high school. An older big bully stood in front of the school bus door and demanded a $1 “fare” from all of the boys. So, we had to drive our son to school.
We complained to the principal but he replied, “Since this is not happening on school grounds, there is nothing we can do.” Then we called the local police. A sheriff’s deputy came over and took a report. We asked him if he could have an officer show up for the 7:20 AM bus every school day but that never happened. And this was in a toney, upscale bedroom city in Southern California!
Relief soon came from an unexpected source: the Drug Enforcement Administration, aka, the DEA! The bully’s father had some kind of criminal background. He was arrested, prosecuted, convicted and sent off to the state slammer! That family moved away shortly after, to the intense relief of the entire community.
I sympathize with all people who are being undeservedly abused by bullies. Maybe someday school administrators will take the movie “Bully” seriously but it is a daunting uphill battle as detailed above in my examples.