Random thoughts from an old bullying incident

With the recent Ontario election, I was reminded of one of my bullies. His claim to fame within the panthenon of my bullies was calling me a ho because, at the age of 12, I wasn't interested in dating yet. (It was doubly bizarre because I'd never heard the word "ho" and thought he was saying "hoe", which didn't make any sense in any universe.)

He sat in front of me in our homeroom classroom, where we had English, Math, and History classes, and he'd always turn around and harass me and mess with my stuff, stealing things and breaking things and writing on and spitting on my papers. So one day, I decided his actions should have consequences. I looked around for a weapon, and decided on my purple glue stick. Next time he started touching my stuff, I said "If you don't leave my stuff alone, I'll put glue on your shirt." He persisted in messing with my stuff, so I put glue on his shirt. He rather freaked out, and said that he'd tell his mother on me, and, since she was a teacher, I'd get in trouble.

As it happened, I knew his mother. She took over my Grade 2 class for a semester when our regular teacher went on maternity leave. I would have had no problem whatsoever explaining to her that her son repeatedly turned around and harassed me and messed with my stuff, and that I had clearly stated the consequences of continuing to do so. If he didn't want glue on his shirt, all he had to do was leave me alone. I figured that since she was a teacher, she'd get particularly mad at him for turning around and disturbing me in class when we were supposed to be working. I thought I might get in trouble with my own parents (which didn't bother me because I felt my actions were just), but I had no fear whatsoever of the prospect of explaining to a teacher the measures I'd taken to be left alone so I could do my class work.

(At this point, some of you are no doubt expecting me to say that this bully never bothered me again after I retaliated. Would be a nice plot resolution, but it didn't work out that way. He bullied me for the rest of the school year, after which we were never in the same class again.)

I have a number of thoughts arising from this incident, none of them conclusive:

1. How is it possible that a student could, on a regular basis, get away with turning completely around in his seat and bothering the person behind him during times when they were supposed to be working or listening? Turning around is visually conspicuous.

2. My bullies would always bully me any time they saw or thought that I had been speaking to my parents. When my parents tried to give me anti-bullying strategies, my bullies would say "Did your mommy tell you to say/do that?" I even got bullied for being seen with my parents out in public. In an environment like this, how does it even occur to a person immersed in bullying culture to invoke telling his mother?

3. The reason I thought it was a possibility I might get in trouble with my own parents was that grownups in those days seemed to have the attitude that just bugging someone didn't count as misbehaviour. I don't know if it was my own family or a broader social attitude of that time and place, but if, for example, my sister kept opening the door to my room and trying to come in even though I didn't want her to so eventually I shoved her out, I'd get in trouble for shoving her, but she wouldn't get in trouble for barging into my room. In retrospect, that's bizarre. In the real world, someone who keeps forcing their presence on someone else despite their protests at the very least gets a "WTF is wrong with you?"

4. The reason why I felt it was just to put glue on his shirt is a) it was proportionate to what he was doing to my things, and b) I gave him fair warning. It might not have been kind or ethical or virtuous or the kind of behaviour to which we should aspire, but I felt it was just. Sometimes I wish the rules of the real world worked this way - you give someone fair warning, and then you can take proportionate action or impose natural consequences. For example, if someone who's being harassed by paparazzi says "I do not consent to being photographed. If you take any pictures of me, I will disable your camera so you can't take any more pictures," and then they act accordingly, they'll be made out to be angry and unstable. But, really, that's natural consequences and a fair warning. Obviously I don't mean "Give me all your money or I'll shoot you," I mean more as self-defence, to get people to leave you alone. Which goes back to my previous point about lack of respect for simply wanting to be left alone.

5. One thing that made this particular kind of harassment especially annoying is I was trapped. If I faced forward and did my work like I was supposed to, he was in my face. The only way to escape him was to turn around (thus bothering someone else) and not do my work. This is why, of all the bullying I faced, the one that came from my sister was the worst - I couldn't escape her because we lived in the same house, and our parents kept making it so that we had to spend our free time trapped in the car together. In comparison, once when I was in high school, on a band concert day, this one guy kept following me around telling me how hot I looked, with enough skeeviness that he wasn't going to get anywhere. I was kind of worried because his brother was my ride home, and I didn't look forward to being trapped in a crowded car with him. But on the car ride home, he behaved himself. He didn't take up any more than his fair share of space and talked normally with everyone about subjects unrelated to how hot I looked. I gained enormous respect for him for that. He was skeevy when I could walk away, but put it away when I was trapped. No one ever taught, or even explicitly stated, that nuance - that it's no longer "just in good fun" (if you can make the argument that it ever was) when you can't walk away. I wonder if it would have helped?