When growing up my parents taught me to stand up to bullies. (We’re talking about verbal abuse and manipulation, not physical bullying.) Following that advice as a kid led to mixed results yet it’s stuck with me into my adult years.
These days though, using this advice only seems to backfire. When I give them what they’ve given me, the bullies just get more angry and use that to justify their continued bullying. They see themselves as the victim.
Any suggestions that would be more helpful?
I had a bully that kept walking past my desk and kicking my leg for no good reason when I was 12. I tried to announce loudly to the substitute teacher that day to get him to stop. I know for a fact that the teacher and all the students heard me quite clearly. But the substitute teacher didn’t even acknowledge me, nor tried to do anything to stop him.
So, I tried to stand up to the bully myself. As he walked past yet again and kicked my leg again, I swung around behind me as he was passing just behind me. Unfortunately my glasses distorted my view as I tried swinging while looking past the edge of my glasses and I missed.
The dude turned back and punched me in the right eye, breaking my glasses and busting my face. I came close to losing my right eye. I left the class along with him to go to the principal’s office, crying and keeping my right eye closed. I was scared that my right eye might have been ruptured. Luckily not though, but it was mighty close.
Anyways, in the long run, the other student was expelled, his parents had to buy me new glasses, and apparently they fired that substitute teacher for not doing a damn thing to prevent the situation when I first announced it.
Long story short, you can’t always expect an adult to do the right thing, sometimes shit just happens. If I had it my way, I would have avoided any fight to begin with, but since I was being ignored, I tried to resort to self defense. Didn’t work out like I expected, but the dude got what he deserved.
Fuck bullies!
One moral of this story is practice your punches before you get into a fight.
If they had landed the punch, chances are they would have been expelled instead of the bully.
That’s very possible actually. They technically listed me as suspended for the next 2 weeks myself, but I think they only did that as a technicality for sake of the superintendent’s office records.
They never actually told me I was suspended though, and I didn’t miss a day of school. Everyone at my school knew the whole thing was messed up, and they knew I didn’t do anything wrong.
I guess that could have been useful too, if that’s what you want to take from my story.
But nah, seriously I was trying to swing around behind me, I was looking out of the corner of my eye, beyond the angle of my glasses. That was my only significant mistake, and an unavoidable mistake at that.
Since I was looking beyond the edge of my glasses, my vision had a distorted shear where everything was doubled (seeing the same thing outside of the glasses and also magnified within the field of my glasses).
It apparently really screws with one’s depth perception when looking out of the corner of their eyes while also wearing really strong glasses.
I’m sorry for your experience. It sounds rotten.
How the heck was that determined? I haven’t heard of many eyes being ruptured by a punch from a 12 year old.
He cracked my right lens in half. It wasn’t so much the strength of his punch (but it did take a strong punch to break my polycarbonate lens), it was more the sharp edge that cut my face open, just a couple millimeters from my right eye.