If you think the issue of bullying in America has been widely overblown, then you’ve never been bullied properly. I don’t mean mocked for having weird hair or glasses, I mean viciously bullied. Violently bullied. I spent three years of my life being bullied and humiliated relentlessly to the point where I swore to bring a knife in to my school. More on that later. Not everyone is lucky enough to have parents who’ll talk them down for a few hours. But then often times, kids do have wonderful parents that can’t hope to understand what they’re enduring, and the violence occurs in the same frequency.
Some kids actually do enter a school and ruin their lives just to end the pain. Bullying in America is very real and very destructive. It can destroy a person for a very long time and the rebuilding process can take literal years. Sadly, there doesn’t seem to be a deterrent for bullying yet, but I hope one day we can find out how to stomp it out once and for all. Posting campaigns on Facebook isn’t helping anyone. True sometimes bullying can stem from insecurity, and low self-esteem, blah, blah. And sometimes there’s just a person who is genuinely cruel and wants to make someone suffer for their own amusement. I vividly remember a student in high school who was incredibly violent toward just about everyone. I was thankful that he almost never targeted me.
I think around that period I was very receptive to the scent of potential tormentors and avoided at all costs. There aren’t many movies I’ve seen that have been able to answer the hows, and whys of hurting other kids. 2012’s “Bully” was a very good documentary, but it just didn’t offer anything but consolations and second best options for people suffering from the acts of cruelty. If you’ve ever seen the video of the young boy in the film being strangled and stabbed on the bus, then that’s a taste of mainly what my world was like in middle school.
During the time I was in seventh grade, it was 1996 and I’d walked out of school angry and in tears. I don’t really remember the incident that sparked my emotions, just the fall out from it. My mom greeted me at the school wondering why I was angry and I went off on a rant. I started barking about being pissed and in a rage declared I was going to go to school the next day stabbing everyone. The security guards at the time only looked my way with the same grimace adults supply to any crying preteen during that time. It’s kind of surprising to think that if I’d said that any time after the Columbine massacre and any one had over heard me, my life would probably be different.
There would be counselors showing up, interviews, perhaps they’d have investigated me and my home life, and likely would have either suspended me or expelled me. Of course, I never brought weapons to my school, and simply endured the torture and bullying until I graduated from middle school and moved on with my life. It was such an amazing feeling to think I’d be far from my tormentors.
After the Columbine massacre, America once again were paralyzed by the horrific event and responded the opposite of what any civilization should. They panicked, pointed fingers at everyone, and instilled the entire “zero tolerance” policies that seemed like a great rule on the surface, but solved nothing. I was in high school during this time, and I remember feeling much of the effect of the horrible shooting and blood shed. Not just as someone who was tormented and bullied violently in middle school, but as someone who was kind of demonized for being quiet. How ironic now that the tormentors and bullies were able to skirt by while everyone looked to the quiet and harmless students being tormented, viewing them as potential murderers and executioners.
The closest I’ve ever come to a gun was to one that shot paint balls. I was just very much a ghost in high school. I was very, very quiet and always sitting in a corner, and never talked to anyone unless I was spoken to. It wasn’t to be mean or brooding, I just liked to remain inconspicuous. My theory was that I couldn’t be bullied if I didn’t give off anything for people to bully me for. Once the shooting happened, people would come up to me to say “hi” and start conversations with me. They weren’t very complex conversations, just droning meaningless babbling about my morning, and my day. I felt like Jerry Seinfeld in the episode of “Seinfeld” where he is stopped by neighbors in his lobby asking how he’s doing.
It was nothing but questions and meaningless nonsense with no substance. I found it very disingenuous. The greetings weren’t so much “Hi, want to be friends?” as they were “I said hi to you, so don’t shoot me if you begin murdering people, okay?” Everyone has answers about what causes bullying, and how it affects the victims, yet no one has solutions as to how to snuff it out or prevent it. We can ease the pain and prevent horrible events by listening to the victims, noticing signs of distress, and ultimately not punishing them when they’re thinking of murder as a possible answer. Zero tolerance?. Why should the victims be punished? Why give them a larger sense of anger and resentment and nurture their feelings that the world is against them?
Other great movies that confronted the entire topic well was the criminally underrated “Bang, Bang, You’re Dead” starring Ben Foster. It’s a dark and very sad look at the effects of the acts of bullying. I also really suggest 2002’s “Home Room” which explores the aftermath of a shooting. It’s not a great movie, but it’s thought provoking. “Elephant” from Gus Van Sant is also brilliant, but only in its demonstration of the vicious revenge and how there just isn’t much information as to what causes such a horrific event like Columbine.
I’m not too sure how I managed to come out of it all after middle school. But I was very much broken by it for a very long time. I was just shattered and spent many years subsequent 1997 and spent much of my days re-building myself, and then watching it happen all over again to many people online. What can you do when you’re pushed in to a corner and horribly tortured by your peers? It’s not like the movies. There’s consequences and fallout, and everyone suffers for one act. I’ll be celebrating when it’s not such a problem in America, anymore. Hopefully that day will come soon.