There has been a lot in the news in last few years about bullying, so I thought I'd write a word or two.  I too was a bully victim, like so many, but my view of it is quite different.  Yes, bullying is wrong.  Yes, it drives the bullied to do things they regret.  Yes, it can really screw with someone.  However it is survivable.  I am an example.  I haven't been to therapy, my guidance counselor was worthless, and I have come out the other side relatively unscathed.

The short story of the very long story is that the 180 days of 6th grade were HELL.  It is the only time I can truly say I told my mother every day that I didn't want to go to school.  Where I grew up 6th grade moves you out of the comfort zone of elementary school and into the middle school where all the elementary schools come together.  There was no one in my homeroom from my school and it seemed like the entire class picked on me.  I'm sure it wasn't all of them but a few faces stick out in my mind.
I was picked on for my butt length blonde hair and probably for how naive I was.  However I want to tell you about the day the straw broke the camel's back.

Once upon a time in Mr. Marsh's 6th grade home room it was reading class.  I had a rotten morning for whatever reason and then it happened.  My hair, being very long, was braided down my back but still tumbled down my back far enough to fall over the back of my chair.   The girl's desk behind mine was close to my chair and my hair happened to tumble onto her desk.
"Get your hair off my desk!" she squawked and brushed my hair off her desk top.  
That was it.  My blood boiled, my ears rang, and I turned in my seat, fist ready, to knock that smug smile off her face.  But something happened that hadn't happened in all my fantasies of knocking this girls' block off.  My brain, my conscious, my inner Jiminy Cricket said,
"Wait!  Look before you do this!"
Resisting letting my fist fly for just a moment, my eyes flicked to the other side of the room.  There was Mr. Marsh leaning against the radiator with his copy of Philip Paulsen's The Hatchet open to where we had left off the day before.  He was looking at me over the top of his glasses.  He said nothing, but the look was clear "you don't want to do that."
He was right.  I didn't really want to deck her and what would be accomplished by doing so?  I would get in trouble.  I was a good kid with a terribly guilty conscious, and though I didn't think about it then later I pondered what my mother and father would have done if I had let my temper get away from me?
I turned around with a huff, rummaged through my messy desk and opened my book determined not to let anything from behind me disturb the wonderful book we were reading.  As we left the room for math class Mr. Marsh put a hand on my desk and said,
"You made a good decision."
I wanted to yell at him, to plead with him to let me hit her just this once, but all I could do was swallow my pride, mumble "thanks," and trudge off to my least favorite subject.

That's it.  It is not to say that 7th grade wasn't more of the same but I wasn't with the same homeroom all the time so it was tolerable.  I also met my friend Jen that year.  A friend made all the difference.

What did I learn?  Honestly I can't remember too much of what I learned in the class room in 6th grade, though I think can still do all the Names and Capitols of the provinces of Canada and recite most of Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening (both also thanks to Mr. Marsh).  What did I learn by not slugging the girl behind me?
I could control my temper.  It was never a problem but it was nice to know that I could keep it in check.
Listen to your conscious.  It is normally right.
Get to know your teachers.  I spent a lot of time in Mr. Marsh's room and Ms. Kunkle's (the science teacher) they along with Mrs. Gates the home economics teacher are the reason I survived 6th grade.  They never told me to stand up to my bullies, they never gave me instructions, they did a very important thing; they listened.  To a 6th grader someone to listen to you ramble on until it is 5 o'clock and your mother comes down to the school is very important, or at least it was for me.
But the most important thing I learned,
We grow up!  We grow up and in a few scant years we find ourselves again with new folks in a bigger and possibly scarier thing called High School.  I was in the Marching Band and our band had 80 people in it.  80 People who were my friends, some of whom I still keep in contact with.

The truth of the matter is that bullies are everywhere not just in grade school.  Dealing with them has taught me how to deal with them in the real world, though they are fewer and further between.  Am I saying that bullying should continue?  No.  It is a difficult thing to deal with, but I did and came out all the better on the other side.

If you are reading this and you are being bullied remember Time is your friend, this too shall pass.
If you are reading this and you are a bully remember every time you pick on that one person, they could someday be your boss.

A little kindness in this world goes a long way.  A smile, a phone call, a kind word can keep a person from going off the deep end.
Sending kindness and hugs,
~Fae Marie