What I Learned about Bullying
When I was a kid, another kid thought bullying was part of the school curriculum. We will call the other kid, Flora.
I was about 7 years or thereabout. Controlled by another 7 year old. How or where did she learn this?
My dad would even drop Flora home along with me after school. She could sit very comfortably in dad’s car. Yet Flora would not befriend me. Or even say to me as much as a single syllable ‘bye’ when she slammed dad’s car door.
Flora always appeared to be lurking somewhere in the playground too especially if I was the center of attention. Appearing at an opportune time, Flora was there just to throw some catty remark if I had lost a game or my team was not doing as well.
She resented the fact that I had lived in another country for a while. My clothes were different from everyone else’s. I spoke differently too! I was trying very desperately to be like everyone. I was a kid trying very hard to lose my accent and be just like every other person around me. She did not know my own insecurities at the time. Flora could not see that I wanted to fit in with the others, as much as she wanted me to fit into her controlling mould.
Flora would pull my hair. I protested with mum to stop pressing her hair. You know, just leave my hair natural in its frizzy look, it did not need to look straight. Mum would retort she wanted her little girl to look nice. But her efforts was making my life rather unpleasant on planet earth.
Flora’s crushing words to me would hang in an oppressive air in the playground. She would be the ringleader in any conspiracy of silent treatment directed at me. She even dared to report me once or twice to dad for something I had allegedly done in the playground. I would ask myself a soul wrenching ‘why’!
Interestingly, I never for once uttered a word to my parents. Why do kids do this? I was being emotionally bullied, yet I voluntarily chained my tongue, never letting on to a soul what was happening. It was not as if Flora had threatened me to silence. Maybe because it did not happen every day. Maybe because I thought I could handle it. Could that have been the reason? I have searched my mind to find the answers but draw up a blank on that one.
Over the course of the next few years, the bullying kind of abated and fizzled out. Flora never included me in her circles ever. She never ever tried to laugh it off as the growing pains of childhood, even as we grew into teenagers. Even in adulthood, she kept well away from me, merely replacing the bullying to silent malice.
Before I continue, let me say this. My story is very tame compared to what others literally suffer with bullying. I do not even attempt to make light that bullying is a big issue. Bullying can lead to fatal consequences and that by no means is a joke.
A few years ago I mentioned Flora’s name to my mother telling her of what I had endured as kid all those many years ago. Mum told me that Flora back then had been having a terrible childhood. Her father had been having an affair with her mum’s younger sister who lived in their house.
So that explained it. Flora had been miserable at home. She may have witnessed the arguments, seen her mum’s tears. Perhaps the father did not care. I knew, even as a kid, that finances were tight too.
Flora had probably seen in me what she herself wanted. The stability of a happy home. My nice clothes.. My pressed hair! Dad coming to get me after school… Her distraught mother probably did not have time to make her look that way amidst the bedlam.
The penny had finally landed after a long drop. I could now understand the psychology of what had turned her into what I had perceived was a bully. Flora had been a kid in turmoil, resenting her childhood. And even as an adult, regretting her past.
With the benefit of hindsight, would I be right to say that those that bully after all have a human bone in them? That bullying is a behavior that can change? Perhaps so.
Can I say that we must reach out to those that bully and help them work out their inner issues instead of just labeling them as bullies?
Well I think so. Only when we reach ‘bullies’ can we prevent and stop bullying effectively.
And understand people like Flora!
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