Thursday, May 24th, 2007...9:32 am
Modern bullies have a lot to learn from 1980s pop culture
When I was in junior high school, I had a bully. I called him My Bully because, like the ubiquitous My Buddy commercials of the 1980s, wherever I went, he went.
I had severe acne then and every day in P.E., My Bully reminded me that my pizza face was unacceptable. Also, he made himself quite clear that my ability to get better grades than he would not be tolerated.
As punishment for having hormone-charged sebaceous glands and a superior intellect, My Bully would push me to the ground and call me a FAG, which, for some ironic reason, stood for “Female Ass Grabber”. One day, I questioned his logic in front of the entire class and wondered if that made him a “Male Ass Grabber”.
This reverse psychoanalysis must have confused My Bully because I never did get an answer, only a violent shove. But it worked. He left me alone.
The problem with modern bullying is that kids rely too much on the instant gratification of hitting someone. Psychological warfare, though, can be a much more satisfying tactic if applied correctly.
My friend GoPats was a self-described bully when he was 11-years-old, but not in a physical way.
“I tended to dominate the conversation and get laughs at other people’s expense, kind of like I do now,” he told me.
I asked him if mental bullying was better than its physical counterpart.
“It takes more brains,” he responded. “Psychologically tormenting someone takes a little more thought. Walking by and punching someone is stupid.”
When my future kid gets picked on –- and he will — I’m not going to treat it like an ABC After School Special and tell him to talk it out with His Bully or that he’s just more scared than he is or any of that other Growing Pains bullshit..
Instead, I’ll help him design a fool-proof retaliation strike aimed at emotionally scarring the bully.
And if that doesn’t work, I’ll teach him how to trim bansai trees and enter him into the All-Valley Karate Tournament.
After all, not every bully has parents as awesome as this mom.
Photo credit: Frank Bellino/The Press-Enterprise
Two days in a row, Wonkette? I’m blushing.
27 Comments
May 24th, 2007 at 9:43 am
Oh I was so bullyed as a kid. I was fresh off the boat in a white upper class neighborhood and I barely spoke English. Those kids hated me. I never could get the upper hand… language barrier thing.
What did they do? Make fun of your accent? Punch you?
May 24th, 2007 at 9:45 am
“Instead, I’ll help him design a fool-proof retaliation strike aimed at emotionally scarring the bully.”
You are now and forever more, Ducky from Pretty In Pink.
I was never bullied OR a bully. Didn’t see the point in bullying and I’d knock you on your ass if you bullied me. As an athlete though I was always pointing out to the other guys on the team who did this sort of shit that it SMACKED of repressed homosexuality, and that it seemed to me that what they REALLY wanted in their smaller, more timid prey was a lover, not a fighter.
Which, I’d like to believe, saved a few “Duckys” from a beating that day.
I saw Andrew McCarthy in New York City last year walking with his kid. I stopped him and asked for an autograph. He punched me in the throat.
Fucking Andrew McCarthy.
May 24th, 2007 at 9:54 am
That picture is awesome. You definitely have to wonder about the parents of kids who do bully: what is it that they’re doing (or not doing) that allows their kids to think that they can act that way.
Did you see that story about the girl who was bullied in Novato? Apparently a letter writing campaign was started on her behalf by other teenagers in San Francisco and Novato, and they actually turned the situation around into something positive.
No, I didn’t hear about the Navato story. Do you have a link?
May 24th, 2007 at 9:55 am
, but it’s the first thing I thought of.
My Friend-I-once-experimented-with-at-summer-camp and Me could be Hasbro’s next product. Great stuff!
May 24th, 2007 at 10:06 am
Physical bullying is just a sign of stupidity. Psychological bullying, if done just for meanness sake, is cruel. It means that you’re being calculating about hurting someone. Kind of like the game.
At its heart, all bullying is a sign of insecurity.
May 24th, 2007 at 10:12 am
i was bullied on the playground in kindergarten by a girl who said if i didn’t play with only her she wouldn’t be my friend. so i did and didn’t question it because my parents told me i had to be friends with everyone. we went to different schools the next year so i had a break until we ended up in the same middle school, where she got bullied/teased by the smarter, more popular girls(aka my friends). karma is going to get you, even for the things you do in kindergarten.
Wow, that qualifies as psychological torture bullying.
May 24th, 2007 at 10:20 am
Great. Now I have the My Buddy and Kid Sister jingles stuck in my head.
Good. I had it in my head the entire time I was writing this.
May 24th, 2007 at 10:28 am
At a young age, bullying in children is very similar to bullying in animals. Rather than a sign of insecurity, it is an establishment of a social order.
The “new thinking” on low self esteem as a cause in young children is bullshit invented by victims to make themselves feel better about torment.
…pussies.
GO PATS!
So what do you call bullying at an old age?
May 24th, 2007 at 10:43 am
I was only bullied once - at Girl Scout camp. I was 10, and it was my first time away from home. For a week and 1/2, this awful girl just would not stop picking. I wasn’t used to this. I’d always been fairly well-liked. I tried to be nice to her, but it only made it worse. And she also managed to acquire a posse during her reign of terror, and they began to join in with the teasing.
One day, I was napping in my tent, face-down, when I felt something being sprinkled on the back of my legs and I heard giggling. And I SNAPPED. Picture Ralphie in “A Christmas Story” going ape on his tormentor. That was me. Completely enraged and off my head.
I chased her out of my tent and into her own, screaming obscenities (that I’d heard my father using when working on some home improvement project) and, as she curled up in the fetal position in the corner, I threw books, cups - anything I could find - hitting her over and over again. Her posse just watched, stunned. She cried and begged and apologized, but I would not be stopped. When I ran out of things to throw, I turned around and walked back to my tent, and resumed my nap.
They were all incredibly kind to me after that. It was a strange mixture of fear and respect.
You ARE Ralphie! Good for you. That moment, though you might look at it as a negative in your life, probably helped shape the person you became.
Remind me never to sprinkle water on your legs.
May 24th, 2007 at 11:03 am
I had quite a tulmultuous experience as a nine-year old at summer camp back in Oz. I was the youngest person ever to attend the camp, so naturally, I was the butt of much bullying and torment at the hand of older campers. Being a bed-wetter didn’t help matters either.
One night at about 3AM I awoke to all my cabin mates excitedly getting their fishing gear together for a super early morning expedition. Half-asleep, I followed suit, hastily dressing for the pre-dawn chill, gathering my pole and tackle while everyone got organized. What a surprise - this was going to be fun!
I headed down to the dock to await the arrival of my mates and the councilor who would be leading the expedition. I waited and waited until the sun came up, whereupon I realized I was the butt of an elaborate joke - one in the string of many that summer. I headed back to the cabin in time to find all my peers getting up for breakfast and celebrating the success of their prank.
I got them back the next night. I put a little plastic egg inside each of their sleeping bags. Inside each egg was a tiny scorpion…
That’s traumatizing AND fun-filled!
May 24th, 2007 at 11:13 am
Hey, Ducky -
Ducky was actually Jon Cryer, not Andrew McCarthy. I only know this because I have *huge* crush on his nerdy ass to this day. But, please, feel free to punch Andrew McCarthy.
I was bullied at school, which is why I turned into a tomboy and put a smack-down on guys that bothered me. (For one guy, I pulled his shoes off and threw them in the gully. Yes, I’m from the country.)
Plus, I had older brothers who could physically and mentally abuse me. Believe me, I got it much worse from my oldest brother than any bully in school. At least I developed a good sense of humor after my oldest brother emotionally scarred me. See, all the funny kids have had the most traumatic childhoods.
I know Ducky is Jon Cryer, but Andrew McCarthy STILL punched me.
May 24th, 2007 at 11:36 am
I got tortured all throughout school (pre- 1st attempt at college) for being the ugliest person anyone had ever seen. It was so traumatic to be harassed the way I was. As a young child, I would get violent back at the kids and consequently got kicked out of 3 schools before the age of 4.
By the time I hit about 13, I learned the advantages of retailiating with snippy come- backs, sarcastic comments, complicated sentence structure, and an impressive vocabulary for someone of my age (or maybe everyone else was just really, really dumb). That became my weapon and would garner me some respect. When of course I wasn’t too humiliated/ shy/ mortified/ scared to use it.
So, in conclusion, I whole- heartedly agree with this:
When my future kid gets picked on –- and he will — I’m not going to treat it like an ABC After School Special and tell him to talk it out with His Bully or that he’s just more scared than he is or any of that other Growing Pains bullshit..
Instead, I’ll help him design a fool-proof retaliation strike aimed at emotionally scarring the bully.
I got picked on a LOT for being short. It made me learn how to use humor as a defense mechanism. And I took karate. I never needed it, but I still have the urge to do a roundhouse kick at any kid who would make fun of someone’s looks. To me, the rule is easy: tease anyone about anything they can change (clothing) but not what they can’t (physical appearance).
May 24th, 2007 at 11:43 am
I think girls employ psychological bullying more than boys. Or maybe it’s just that boys are more into physical bullying and girls are just bitches.
Usually bullies have some sort of dark and tortured home life, so exposing that to the other kids would be genius!
I think boys turn to their physical strengths more easily because that is how we know how to resolve problems.
May 24th, 2007 at 12:40 pm
Psychologically tormenting your kids is far more effective than hitting too. I am proud of the fact that I have never raised my hand to my children. However, I’ve started saving not for their college fund, but for their therapy sessions 20 years from now.
Now that is what I call forward-thinking parenting.
May 24th, 2007 at 1:31 pm
My brother used to bully me all the time. It was partly out of sibling rivalry, but mostly because he was an asshole.
I had about 500 fistfights with him when we were growing up. My record is 0 wins, 499 losses, 1 tie.
You wrote a really great blog post about that. Let me see if I can find it…I think is it. Made me laugh.
May 24th, 2007 at 1:40 pm
Ok, I have always hated your logic about teasing people for “things they can change” vs “things they can’t change.” That is ridiculous! What about the poor kids who can’t change their clothes because their families don’t have enough money? Or kids who have “different” clothes because of their cultures? Bad rule, babe, bad rule…Even I, as an adult, can’t afford all the beautiful clothes that I want, but by your logic, somebody could make fun of me if they thought I could change the way I’m dressing if I wanted! I think it makes more sense to just have a blanket rule: No making fun of people.
Take your pinko-commie liberal hippie attitudes elsewhere. And get a haircut!
May 24th, 2007 at 2:06 pm
If no one made fun of anyone else, Chris Rock wouldn’t be funny.
And neither would you.
May 24th, 2007 at 3:08 pm
In sixth grade, people made fun of me so badly that the teacher made me play Jesus in the Passion Play (And you thought Jews were weird! (Oh, wait, that was me…)). Let me tell you, that didn’t help as much with my “being made fun of” problem as one might think.
Please tell me you’re joking. Your school had Passion plays?
May 24th, 2007 at 3:35 pm
Passion Plays…that sounds like it could be a better title than Private Practice.
May 24th, 2007 at 3:43 pm
I didn’t have a bully, but my older brother did. He was a senior in high school my freshman year, and his bully decided the best way to get at my brother was to come after me. So, he got *extremely* fresh with me and I broke his nose in front of half the school including the vice principal. He left my brother alone after that.
I ran into him at a Grateful Dead concert years later and we had a good laugh about it. Well, I had a good laugh.
Nice job, HS! Did your brother resent you for it?
May 24th, 2007 at 5:33 pm
My brother, who is smarter than me, was also bigger than me till high school. He kicked my ass regularly AND subjected me to psychological cruelty.
So I joined the wrestling team, and then beat the hell out of him when I was a sophomore in HS and he was in college. Was it worth 4 years of an eating disorder and jogging to school in a plastic suit?
Yes.
Finally, something positive about eating disorders.
May 25th, 2007 at 6:47 am
My bully/ex-manager at work was a guy who engaged in psychological warfare and lying. He was 32 but acted like a Plastics wannabe at my crazy last job. He’d also confessed to torturing his little sister when he was little.
Now I have something new to ask at job interviews of potential managers/employers.
Have you scanned his name in the newspaper headlines recently? Looks like it’s only a matter of time.
May 25th, 2007 at 8:48 am
I like to make fun of people and mask my insecurities with sarcasm, mostly because my penis is 1.5″ long with the girth of a Canadian nickel whilst erect.
That’s one explanation.
May 25th, 2007 at 9:40 am
I was on the rasslin team, and part of the psychological torture to opponents was to eat a disgusting italian sub in the back of the bus, vomit it up and not rinse or brush so you could breath peppery/roast beef puke stench on your rival.
I never did it, cause thank god I never made varsity.
May 25th, 2007 at 9:42 am
I thought the solution to a small penis was to buy an SUV, root for the yankees or write a blog.
You’re two-thirds right.
May 25th, 2007 at 1:48 pm
Thanks arjewtino, now I can’t stop singing the “My Buddy” commercial jingle. “My Buddy! My Buddy! My Buuuuddy and meeeeeeeee!”
If I had to suffer while writing it, you have to suffer while reading it.
May 30th, 2007 at 11:15 am
Your “Female Ass Grabber” story reminds me of what kept bullies from messing with me: They knew I’d embarass them if I started craking jokes at their expense. I looked different from most of the other black kids in my neighborhood since I’m light skinned with curly hair. That meant, I had to be quick with comebacks, because people always tried to talk shit or make jokes. Once I learned that I could make people cry quicker with words than with bitch slaps, I used that(coupled with my tendency to fight dirty) to keep the bullies from bothering me!
I was like the kid from that old “Jhoon Rhee” self defense commercial they used to show in the DC area! God Bless Youtube…lol
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