Reply #215: Will, your post nearly brought me to tears.

[SeattleGirl]

And it brought up my own nightmares. I was not abused in the way that you were, and for that I am thankful. But I was laughed at, derided, made fun of, and that's not fun either.

I was set up as the butt of a joke more times than I care to remember, like the time a "friend" of mine paid a boy to dance with me, or the time another "friend" offered me a seat at the dance, only to have her boyfriend, without looking at me, grab my hand, as he thought it was the hand of his girlfriend. When he finally looked at me, he was horrified -- HORRIFIED -- to see that it was not his girlfriend, but me. Little ol' "ugly" me.

Things like that DO hurt. I don't care what anybody says about "sticks and stones," they HURT. They HUMILIATE. They can DAMAGE.

To add in the things that happened to you, and that have happened to countless others....well, frankly, I can totally understand the feelings you sometimes had for wanting to take an Uzi to those people and wipe them off the face of the earth.

Whose responsibility is it to try and correct this ugliness?

It is the parents.

It is the teachers and school administrators.

And, is it for any of us who sees something that is not right, who sees a pack of kids going after another kid.

It takes a village, it is said. I agree. Perhaps in our roll in our villages may be small, but it may also be important.

It is NOT okay to bully. And it is NOT okay to sit back and decide that it is someone else's responsibility to stop it.

I weep for the bullied kids of the world.

And I weep for the bullies too, because most of them probably haven't had the care and guidance they needed to stop it.

There are some among the group of bullies for whom no effort, no person, can make a difference.

But for the rest.....

:cry:

.....it's also not okay to just ignore them and let them slide down into the garbage heap.

Some folks ARE worth saving, and I mean the bullies and the bullied.

Will, you seem to have come out of your experience an all right guy, scars and all.

I, for one, am thankful that you did.

:hug: