Background to bullying

We moved just before my eighth birthday, from a downtown neighbourhood to what was, realistically, a separate, small, rural town.  We were among the first suburban families to move in. It took a while to get accepted, but for the most part, there was harassing but not bullying. Possibly this had to do with a generally violent culture, one in which fist fights between adults weren't uncommon.  Kids may have been careful because it was hard to be sure what the consequences would be.

I made friends among the new suburban people and the farming families. I don't recall any particular skill driving this besides curiosity, at first. I was the fat kid who was usually chosen last for pickup baseball or football. I don't call that bullying, just normal kid behaviour. Similarly, it was normal that my status improved when they and I discovered that I could hold a football line together better than the smaller kids. We also found out that if I couldn't hit many doubles, I could hit any baseball thrown at me and bat a lot of runs in.

Junior high was a new world. Sports, indeed all extracurriculars, were organised and dominated by cliques. I have always sized up my situations slowly and carefully. In hindsight that may not have worked for me. The pit bulls (all of them but one smaller than me, by the way) attacked before I had things worked out. Once they had, by the way, I discovered I really didn't have any friends from my old school to have my back. I didn't then, and don't now, know what made these people so important.

The next year, after my demotion, what seemed to save my bacon was that natural curiosity. Left on its own, my curiosity is strong enough to deflect hostility. So it fell out here. I don't remember pointing out my tormentors to these new guys. Still, I was hanging out with shop rats who could chew steel bars for snacks, and this made  for protection without actual violence. Oh yeah, I could help them with their homework.

The vindictive teacher was both my 7th grade English teacher and my guidance counselor. Years later, I understood that my quickness in class had bruised his ego. His curriculum featured  dull school fiction, and I was doing book reports on Joseph Conrad and Nicholas Montserrat. This growing conflict was playing out in front of my tormentors, in the same class. All very complicated.

All this brings me to wonder if middle schools in particular need to put more energy into matching "different" students with teachers who can tolerate the talented different child. In another class of my 7th grade was a student who was perpetually ahead of his teachers, and completely preoccupied with his music. His teachers evidently had more resilient egos than did my teachers. He has gone on to win a Grammy Award, a Pulitzer Prize, and every other award music can offer. Not to say that I'd have matched his abilities: no chance there. But how much might he have been stifled by more mediocre teachers and small-minded bullies?

Out for now.