So I thought I would finally put “pen to paper” on a very important subject, one that had a great impact on me when I was a child and a young adolescent. A subject that, truth be told, we as a society are not doing enough to address. I was bullied! There, I said it…I was bullied! It took me years to figure out why because I was not any of the things that stereotypically attracted bullies. I was not fat, I was not gay, I was not disabled, I did not have a learning disability. My “fault” was that I was a book worm who decided early on that it was better to listen to my folks than be a rebel “to be accepted” by my peers.
It did not help that my parents were friends with the teachers at my school or that the local police officers and their families were often at the house for dinner and social gatherings – I remember going to my mother and begging her while in tears to take back the $5 I’d won in the Halloween costume contest in Grade 5, the other kids were saying my Mom had gotten the teachers to vote for me because she was friends with them. How is an 11 year old supposed to process having his best friend since we were 4 (…my parents practically raised him) walk up to me in school, slap me behind the head and tell me he’d no longer hang out with me because I was a loser and then have the other kids start yelling “…hey Roch, how does it feel not to have any friends” and putting their fingers in an “L” shape on their foreheads? How does a 14 year old kid, who is already dealing with all the joys that early adolescence brings, deal with having to ride a school bus one hour every morning and every night and have to listen to other kids call the bus driver a bunch of names…by the way, I called that bus driver Dad! I was in my own little hell for five years and there was not a visible bruise or scar. Those are but a few examples of the things that made waking up every morning something I would have liked to avoid at the time! Fortunately, I was one of the lucky ones! By my second year of high school I had met a new set of people and had removed myself from the environment that had caused me such trauma from Grade 5 through Grade 9.
I’m writing about this on my blog not for therapeutic reasons but because I get so upset when I hear of young kids that take their own lives because they could not deal with the bullying they had to endure from their peers. I get especially outraged when I hear otherwise very intelligent adults say: “…well it can’t be that bad”. It CAN be that bad! Trust me I know firsthand how hard it can be to be bullied and I did not have it anywhere near as bad as the stuff we read about today. I can’t even begin to fathom how difficult it must be to be a gay adolescent, trying to figure out a whole lot more than the average teenager has to, while being endlessly teased and harassed by other kids, often in demeaning and brutal ways.
When I was kid, bullying was portrayed as someone taking another kid’s lunch money…the stakes in 2011 are much higher! Our young people are killing themselves because the adults around them are too busy or too ignorant to address the issue! I commend everyone, specifically school teachers and law enforcement that have taken stronger stands over bullying. But we need to do more, we need to care more!
If you are reading this blog and have children of your own or are around children please look out for the subtle signs. These kids are so innocent and to have their childhood ruined because of bullying should be unacceptable in our society
If you get a chance please watch this video clip from Rick Mercer! Thanks Rick!!!
