The only physical bullying I recall was a girl in fourth grade who kept hitting me and then grabbed my braids and pulled me into a mud puddle. I had to tell my mother about that, because of the state of my dress, and she said to get her back. So I laid for her outside her house and knocked her down and hit her. Her mother promptly called mine to complain, and my mother said she got what she deserved.

We moved five times between when I was 10 and 13, to progressively smaller towns, and each one was another fresh hell. I was taunted, accused of cheating, not given honors my grades deserved and generally made miserable. My mother did throw a fit when I was not entered for Governor's Honors, which was a summer program for gift students. At that time, each district nominated students and the top overall students were chosen. The small town I lived in had never had a student chosen. I was chosen and the closest thing I had to a friend, a girl I took art classes with who was also a pariah, was chosen for her artwork. (Students could enter their own portfolios for art, without the filter of the school officials.) The town was shocked that the in crowd did not prevail.

I hated high school.

I had a couple people challenge me to fights who didn't show up when the time came.

The most physical fight I ever had was when my eldest brother (one year younger than me), called someone in my grade "faggot" (which was unbelievably stupid...but we were raised in a family where that word was thrown around to mark anyone you didn't think was cool or manly enough *sigh*). I was walking home from school and could hear him behind me yelling for help. He was being chased by about 6 guys from my grade.

I put my foot out just like in the cartoons and it worked. The guy closest to him in the chase went flying. Then I continued walking to catch up with the gaggle who'd caught up to him and were pinning him down on a neighbor's lawn while punching him. I punched my way through the guys and picked my brother up and we went home. This is the brother I get along with least but our family has always been the type to think "Hey, *I* can punch him but I'm damned if I let *you* punch him!"

"Hey, *I* can punch him but I'm damned if I let *you* punch him!"

That's what families are for!

one of the things I'm learning in my middle age is that we make a lot of assumptions about people and even the people we think are doing very well may not perceive things that way or may be hiding some private pain the world never sees.

I read this and thought "Earshot". And yes.

one of the things I'm learning in my middle age is that we make a lot of assumptions about people and even the people we think are doing very well may not perceive things that way or may be hiding some private pain the world never sees.

Oh, that's what I was told almost verbatim if I complained when I got shit. "There are things about his/her life you don't know/understand."

It took growing up for me to learn to not give a crap about the motivations of a person being abusive to me. If you're nasty to me I don't care why. If I could go tell 12 year old Trudy anything it would be that.

I need to find out if my sister ever felt put upon. I think she was never even slightly weird (eta: until after uni). But I know I'll find out something different.

Yeah, any fighting I did was mostly informal. There was never any meet you after school stuff. It was mostly running and grappling. And then more running.

Timelies all!

I was painfully shy, smart and unfashionable. You do the math.

Meanwhile, something is wrong with our landline, so anyone who tries to call us gets a busy signal.

I got bullied a bit when I started high school (years 7-12 here), but there wasn't really anything after the first year. This despite being smart, small, young, odd sense of humour and nerdy-looking. We had an exercise in the final year on a retreat where we had a bunch of students sitting in a circle, and then we went around the circle and the others would say what they liked or admired about that person. I still remember being told by people I would never regard as friends that they respected that I would never give in or change just to fit in better. (I also remember one guy saying he enjoyed it when I showed up the teachers.)

Trudy, I wasn't trying to say that people who bullied should be given a pass. I was commenting as to someone like Teri Hatcher, who according to my friend was a popular cheerleader, could conceive of themselves as being a geek, not popular, etc.

Of course, in the case of celebrities they may truly be fibbing because it plays better in the press if you *weren't* always popular.

You're absolutely right that someone being bullied shouldn't be handed a line about empathy as if that makes it all better.