Time to Talk about Bullying

I've found myself thinking about bullying over the past few days.  I heard a discussion about it on the radio. The person speaking said how vividly most of us remember being bullied, probably much more so than the person doing the bullying.  I don't know if that is true, but perhaps in many cases that is so.

I do remember some specific incidences from my past.  I don't think I ever experienced really severe treatment, so I feel for anyone who was treated much more cruelly than I was.  It happens all the time.  Humans can be really mean to one another.  It's learned behavior, I suppose.  I don't imagine in most cases it's something that arises from within.

Once when I was in high school, I started dating a boy a few years older than me.  I really didn't know him or the people he ran around with that well.  He had an ex-girlfriend; a very pretty, popular girl.  I guess she wasn't really over him, but I didn't know that.  Apparently she and her friends were out riding around in a car, and decided to come to my house and egg my car.  They were bold - the car was sitting in our carport, and they came right up and egged the car.  I think they even opened car doors and threw some eggs inside.  One of the problems about this was that it wasn't really my car - it was my mom's car that I just got to drive sometimes.  I wonder if they still think what they did was funny, or did they grow up and regret that?  I don't know.  I don't want to be friends with any of them now.  I never treated anyone like that.

I remember what was called "high school initiation" in my town. It was hazing.  They probably don't do that anymore, but it was very common in the 1970s.  Someone even called my mom and got permission to take me.  She told me later she said 'yes' because she thought the consequences might be worse for me at school, had she refused.

This was another opportunity for bullying. It was done in a group.  They took us to a public, city park. I don't remember everything, but I was made to do some embarrassing stuff.  They put oil, maybe even motor oil, in my hair. It was really hard to wash it out. Also in my hair - peanut butter, maybe gum too. The upperclass-women (seniors?) made some of the girls eat cat food and other gross stuff.  We were yelled at a lot, and made to lie on the ground and walk in compromising, uncomfortable positions around the town square.  I was amazed with how aggressive some of our tormentors were, and how some of them really got into the whole thing.  I don't really understand the point of all this to this day.  When my turn came to be one of the "initiators" to the younger girls, I refused to take part.  It probably was also another reason I never chose to join a sorority in college.  That whole 'group or crowd mentality' thing scares me to this day.

What is bullying really about?  I'm making up my own theories here.  I do believe in some cases it's about jealousy.  I have a lot of faults, but I'm not really a naturally jealous person. I'm grateful for that.   In other cases, I think it's a power play, a way to establish dominance.  That is so animalistic, like horses trying to establish a pecking order.  We are not so far removed from the animal kingdom as we would like to think we are.  Maybe this is really one good point of the value of church, morality or religion, if we can get people to really think and treat others as we would like to be treated.
 
It still happens.  Sometimes it's very subtle.  I'm laughed at, trivialized, mimimized sometimes by members of my adult friend group.  Patronized? They would deny it.  It's mind games.  I try to call it out.  People can't say directly what is really bothering them or they don't even really know, so they abuse others and take out their frustrations that way.  It all has to leak out in some way.   It's basic physics - the natural laws of the universe.

As an adult, I've taken a dance class with my teenage daughter. Unexpectedly, we were also bullied there. I guess a mother and daughter dancing together was such an anomaly, we were fair pickings for some rough treatment. Stares and "bird-dogging" came our way.  So infantile, yet hurtful.  It's hard to always keep up a thick skin.

Let us be kind. Let us be gentle. Let us say we are sorry when we have transgressed. Let us all play our parts to stop the cycles of bullying, ostracizing, intimidation, mocking, teasing, and all those things that can send us down that very dark road; which may lead, way too soon, to mayhem and violence. Peace be with you.