Bullies, Be Bullying Since I Don’t Know When
I know some title for a blog post huh? We live in a world where bullies seem to run stuff. Here in America we just through a year of political campaigning that made me think back to elementary school. I’ll tell the story and you figure out what side of the story fits your ideas about politics and bullying.
In my class there was a boy who was about a head taller than anyone else in the classroom. He took advantage of being bigger. He was a bully like no one had ever seen. He had a real bad knack for picking on the smallest kids in our class. I had a friend that was smaller than the rest of us, and one day he got some new boots and kicked my friend right in the shins to show them off. He hurt him and then made fun of him for crying. This went on all the time.
In P.E. one day we were running around the field when he was in a really bad mood. He and my friend were coming up on me as we ran, and they both cut around me when he shoved my friend down. Something inside me just sort of snapped and I remember sweeping his leg and him going down on his face. I kept running and everyone starting watching. The bully got up and ran across the middle of the track to catch up to me. When he did he told me he was going to wreck me. I took up a stance, I mean; I think it was a stance. I had never been in a fight so I just mimicked what I saw on TV. There we stood toe to toe and I was not sure what would happen next.
He reared back and threw a haymaker. I leaned back and he stumbled in front of me and I hit him in the nose a couple of times. He looked surprised and threw another one. Same result. Popped him in the nose and then the bell rang. We both turned and went into class. He didn’t make eye contact with me the rest of the day. After school I wasn’t sure if round two would happen or what. I went home not sure what to think.
The next day at school here was the bully wanting to be nice and friendly with everyone. We all could not figure out what had changed. I did not trust him and wasn’t turning my back on him. I knew he was going to do something. He did, he tried to fit in and not bully anyone anymore. It was just strange that a punch in the nose could change someone’s attitude so quickly. It just seemed so strange that out of nowhere he changed his tune and wanted to be included and all the stuff from the past to be forgotten.
I think we just watched that in our election. Trying to bully people to get their way and make us all back down to their terms. Name calling and intimidation was stupid in elementary, it is even dumber when we do it as adults. But, here we are on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook trying to bully each other into seeing things our way. It is a little sad to think that in all our time growing up we knew that kind of stuff was wrong, but we keep it going when we run out of good ideas. Amazes me that adults can go back to elementary so quickly when they think they are losing.
We watched both parties do this for one year and yet in the end after all the mudslinging, bullying and name calling there is a call for unity. Funny how we are called and expected to forget how nasty people are and then just act like it never happened. Maybe it would be easier to be unified if we treated everyone good all the time. What if we could not try to force our opinion and beliefs on others in any way we deem good. We are being torn about as people because, we think behind a screen or in a crowd we can say and do what we want and then just act like it never happened. That is the wrong way to go about gaining unity among any group of people. My elementary bully taught me that lesson a long time ago. Maybe this little story will help us all remember that kindness and good words are the best path to unity.