Bullies

When I wrote about Bronies last week, those men and teenage boys who love My Little Pony, I said that a boy of 13 or so wearing My Little Pony clothing would be committing social suicide. Of course, in an ideal world, this would not be so, but there is no demographic least understanding the feeling of others than 13-year-old boys (the same may be said of girls, but their world is a complete mystery to me).

The Internet has changed many things--it has pretty much done away with the phone book, made porn available for everyone (when I was a kid, you actually had to go to a "theater" to see it), and it has made bullying completely different. When I think of a bully, I think of Butch from Our Gang (played by Tommy Bond, seen above), a kid a bit bigger than everyone else and to be generally feared. Another classic example is the coonskin-capped, yellow-eyed terror in A Christmas Story, who is revealed to be a coward, a standard trope for bullies.

I was bullied a bit as a kid, but not excessively so. I was a 98-pound weakling, and there was nothing so stigmatizing than being the last kid picked in gym class for teams. But I had friends--I just had to avoid certain kids when walking to and from school, because in their boredom they might just make me a target.

I also did a bit of bullying, one of the most shameful things I've ever done. I was with a group of kids, and we were walking behind a kid even lower in the pecking order than I was. He had tried to make friends with me, but I spurned him, fearing guilt by association. The kids I was with threw buckeyes at him, and I did, too, and for once in my life I was accurate, nailing him in the back of the head. He ran off crying that he was going to tell. I did apologize to him, but more out of a fear that he was going to the principal than anything else. I was horrible.

But bullying has gone high-tech, and I wouldn't recognize it. Now it's done through cyberspace, and children commit suicide over it. I can't imagine functioning in such a world. What possesses children to do this to other children is the kind of mystery that extends to why people do horrible things to people in general--a way of feeling better about one's self. Girls picking on another girl because she is different is just the first step to the pinnacle of hatred--putting people in gas ovens because they are different.

Fortunately most bullies grow out of it, but sadly not before lasting damage has been done. I sure hope the kid I hit with a buckeye, Matthew was his name, has forgotten that incident. Of course, I haven't forgotten it.