Stop bullying now
Nov 17, 2009
from Dean Henk's entry on the Marquette Educator:
Attending the Law School’s conference on bullying yesterday took me back vividly to the one and only time I was bullied. It only lasted about 24 hours, but it made such an impact on me that I’ll remember it always.
When I was in sixth grade, our class bully threatened to kill me because I beat him out for the basketball team. I was traumatized, because he had flunked two times and was physically superior to everyone in my class.
He was a mean dude in every respect, and reveled in making others cower. I took his threat seriously. In fact, I faked being sick in class so I could be sent to the nurse’s office. But I never went there. I ran straight home instead–fearful, full of terror, and paralyzed. It took every ounce of courage I could muster to go to school the next day.
Fortunately for me, that very day another player got injured and the coach put the bully on the team. I was off the hook. But the mental and emotional damage to me was so profound that I’ve carried it into adulthood. I shouldn’t admit this fact, but I’ve often thought about how I would exact revenge on this bully. It turns out that he got another kind of justice.
Ironically, I often think back on sixth grade and how fortunate I was to avoid a long period of abuse as well as a severe beating. I honestly don’t know what would have happened if it had persisted.
Exactly how fortunate was I? Well, in tenth grade, the bully really did kill a classmate.
