My Opus Operandi

I was moved by all of this talk about bullying. 

In fact, before I get seriously critical, there are three massively important things I want to admit too.  

First, when one has kids, they can’t help but get emotional about bullying.  My son is five, and very emotional.  He is creepy-smart but wears his heart on his sleeve.  He has the potential to be a target for a bully…he’s small, thin, speaks his mind, and takes everything seriously….maybe too seriously.
Thinking about the effects of bullying, especially “cyber-bullying” makes me angry, and scared.

The second thing that pops in my head when I think about bullying, are the kids at my service learning site.  Being in middle school, they all seem so small.  As I watch them in the mornings, I first thought, oh look at the cute innocent kids…but as I looked a little deeper, I noticed, some definite social pressure cracks.  When they walked the halls, the “cool” kids winked and nodded, and laughed, while the “ not-so-cool-kids”, sat in their seats, digging out old worn binders, without any paper in them.  There are perhaps some cliques, even in the halls of Shuksan Middle School, and perhaps those cliques are unhealthier then I first thought.

Lastly, and this is a huge connection for me…because even though we didn't have computers, or social media, we sure had cliques, and nobody was more ruthlessly “cool” than me.  I was a bully!  I've never hit anybody in my life, but what I was too afraid to do physically; I more than made up for emotionally.  I was ingenious.  I could literally whip a kid with words, and be socially accepted, without as much as a second thought.  My little teen aged pseudo-moral mind, never even contemplated that the words I said were making larger wounds than any slap, poke, or pinch.  The wounds were psychological, and they were devastating.  I was so bad, that when I came home from the Army, the first thing I did when I ran into anybody from my high school days…was apologize.  Most of the time, the now twenty something versions of the kids I used to destroy, would usually just smile and wonder what I was even talking about, like those day were not only best forgotten, but  perhaps already left behind with those things we like to imagine never happened.

So yes, I do connect deeply with this topic.

So, on that note, I have decided to use the same platform I used back then: words!  Only this time, I will fight on the side of the good, the right, and the fair.

Please read my Anti-Bullying Blog, and help me make it better.  If you have any resources at all, or just want to talk about something feel free to comment.

And remember above all else! No matter what happens, you are still alive...and Kicking!!!

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