Bullies and Bullying: My Personal Story

One of my favorite internet video movie reviewers, Movie Bob, has recently started a second kind of video show called "Big Picture" where he talks about random ideas and theories, usually how they relate to geekdom (kinda like my blog).  It's pretty good, and his most recent video got me thinking.  It's about bullies and how the victims (often geeks) react to them.  Here's the link:

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/the-big-picture/2709-Magneto-Was-Right

This got me thinking about my own relationship with bullying/bullies in my personal life.  It seems like a lot of the fellow geeks/dorks/nerds in my life have been significantly impacted by a childhood of being bullied.  One might assume this perception of my peers is skewed by tv and movie geeks, but I don't think so.  I know several friends and acquaintances in my life who have clearly been impacted by a childhood of bullying, not to mention I've seen several geek stand-up comedians reference stories about their geek rage bubbling up from their dark, bullied hearts, and the video game forum I often frequent is filled with the wailing and gnashing of teeth of those geeks still stuck in high school or have recently escaped.  So what about me?

Let's look at my personal history with bullies between elementary school, middle school, and high school:

In elementary school (grades K-5), I used my TOTAL AND COMPLETE GENIUS!!!! to create a system where I never got physically picked on (sorry, my wife just told me I was clever for this, so now I'm feeling narcissistic).  Since a majority of grade school children in Virginia, and I would assume a majority of kids around America and the world, don't look at homosexuality in a positive light, I thought of an awesome idea really early on.  The first time I was threatened with physical violence, I pretended I was fruiter than Liberace's ghost.  I walked toward my tormentor kissing the air like a cartoon character, and they would run away.  This NEVER FAILED.  In fact, I never got in a real fight or even beat up at school my entire childhood.  And thus began a long and continuous history of lying to those around me about my real nature for a laugh (because this was just self-defense, it was fucking hilarious).  There was plenty of verbal bullying though, and while I certainly didn't enjoy being the loser of the class, I was either emotionally strong enough or stupid enough to brush my shoulders off and take it.

In middle school (6-8) my faux-homosexuality bit me in the ass, when I asked a popular boy on a date as part of a comedy bit in my head.  7th grade was one of the worst years in my life, as everyone in my grade thought I was gay.  As a side note, if any of you reading this are automatically thinking "why, what's wrong with being gay?   Is blograptor homophobic?", then a)I sincerely congratulate you on being so far past homophobia that you can't even remember why anyone would think that way in the first place, and b)really? What kind of childhood did you have?  Were all your classmates gay-friendly?  Were you completely gay-friendly at the time yourself?  I've always been a fan of personal rights and separation of not only church and state but church and personal rational opinion, yet at the time I'm sure even I thought of homosexuality in this kind of context: "It's weird and unnatural, sure, but people aren't bad just because of it.  I'm not gay though, no way.  Another guy's penis?  Disgusting!".  It was 7th grade.  Very few of us were completely immune to the poison of society's hatred yet.  I only bring this up because I'm sure I would also react negatively to a blog post about someone being distressed to be thought of as gay.  Anyway the emotional bullying continued, and I eventually succumbed to the weight of a childhood full of being the outcast and got pretty depressed.  I temporally found religion again, and that helped a little..  Better connections to friends and teachers the next year helped heal a lot more wounds though.  Still, in this time period I could certainly join Movie Bob in the ranks of people who felt like they were being picked on unfairly because I was different or superior.

In high school (9-12), the traditional bullying all but stopped.  I just had a conversation with my wife about this, and while her school had a rather cliche high school social structure, I didn't.  Popularity was spread out pretty wildly, and the social structure consisted mostly of groups of friends interconnected by intermediates between them.  Nobody outside my group of friends really bothered with me.  I had a new issue to deal with, the dysfunctionality of being the annoying one in your group of friends.  So my enemies weren't bullies, but also the people I liked the most.  4 years of this, plus a great college experience, and now I don't really feel any animosity or lingering bits of regret about bullies.  Sure I have the same chunk of "I was the loser as a kid" taking up my personal history that my peers have, but I honestly don't feel like it defines most of me anymore. And as evidenced by my elementary school experience above, I perpetrated a lot of that ostracizing myself.  In fact, the only time I think about the sadness and hate of being the loser as a kid comes up when I think about my relationship to my ADHD, because my impulsive and hyperactive behavior was the main cause of the ostracizing in the first place.

Their mantra is "We do not forgive.  We do not forget".  See what I mean?

Unfortunately I know that I'm quite a bully myself sometimes.  It's been said by both Movie Bob in the video and by many other people that it's kinda depressing to realize that the victims of bullying would bully people themselves if they got the chance.  Just look at Anonymous.  A lot of the time a person might bully as a way of continuing this cycle of revenge for being a victim of bullying.  A father abuses his son, his son abuses a geek, a geek shoots up the school.  Or a kid is bullied by his own internal self-hatred, bullies a geek, geek anonymously trolls forums with racists comments.  Barney in How I Met Your Mother once called the adult version of this "The Circle/Chain of Screaming":
"Yes! The Chain of Screaming starts at the top: Arthur's boss' boss screams at Arthur's boss - Arthur's boss screams at Arthur – Arthur screams at you – you go home and scream at Lilly – Lilly screams at one of the kids in her kindergarten class – then that kid screams at her dad, Arthur's boss' boss. And the whole thing starts all over again, thus completing the Circle of Screaming."
However, is this really the case for all bullying?  I feel like sometimes people bully for other reasons.  Take me for example.  I HEAVILY bullied my little sister and brother.  Like, ruthlessly.  Seriously.  You would probably want to physically hurt me if you hurt some of the stuff I said and still sometimes say for nostalgia's sake to my sister.  My father would always try to comfort her by telling her that the reason I picked on her was because I was felt bad about myself.  You might agree, and say it was because I was picked on at school and hated myself from time to time.  And sometimes if I had a bad day that might even be right.  You might need to convince yourself that's why I did it too.

If you want to continue having any respect for me, don't continue.

But let me assure you, there really are monsters out there living amongst us.  And I, sometimes, am one of them.  There's a decently sized streak of sociopathy running through my personality.  I'm not proud of it, in fact I'm quite ashamed and try to force myself to be "good" to make up for it.  But I can't deny that naturally, my heart is largely dark.   I'm pretty good at self-perception, and when I really need to think about my reasons and why I do things (aka my father is convinced I pick on my sister because I hate myself) then I'm able to be honest to myself and really look at my motives.  And the motive for picking on my sister?  She starting annoying me when we were toddlers (as siblings are apt to do) and I responded negatively towards her.  Simple as that.  But it was fun.  It was really fucking fun to pick on her, and that's why I did it.  Why is it fun?  I'm not sure.  Her reactions were fun to watch I guess.  It's not just bullying, I lie to people for fun all the time just because I like to see their reactions.  I treat people like a tv show, and I want to see their take when they hear something outrageous from me.  I don't want to trick people permanently.  I don't want to scar my siblings.  I just want people to react, laugh at how funny I just made the situation, and then let it go.  It hasn't happened yet.
So am I a compulsive liar?  A sociopath?  Just insane?  A mix of all three?  I don't know.  But I don't like it.


So what's your relationship to bullies and bullying? Feel free to comment.