Originally Posted by: PonyOneat first my parents basically told me that i should be the better person, no matter what... like jesus... tell the bully he's being mean, that i wanted to be his friend, that there was no reason for him to be mean to me, and it was stupid... and he'd feel stupid, he'd look at himself and be like "oh man he's right" and apologize.

well that was how it was supposed to work. i guess 7 year olds don't internalize that much.

and of course the "recess ladies" could have given two craps what was actually happening. so my parents got sick of me coming home with bruises and told me to stick up for myself.

maybe you guys remember the rodney king riots? well i went to an almost all-black school in a black neighborhood when that happened, and so i can bet you can imagine how popular i was at that point. the really sick thing was that kids that age don't have that intrinsic hate... they went home and listened to their parents talk about how evil white people were and that they kept them from getting good jobs... they listened to their older siblings talk about how they needed to give white people a taste of their own medicine, that it was their turn... so then my friends would come to school and we'd be out on the playground, and suddenly i found myself being beaten by five to ten people i thought were my friends. it took a few years of therapy to erase the terror reaction i got from being in crowds, and even still, if i'm at a club or something, sometimes i just need to step out for a minute and center myself.

well after i came home with my face kicked in and had to go to the hospital, they decided it was time to put me into karate. that was the end of it, for the most part, though i was no stranger to social ostracization. because of everything early on in my childhood, for a long time i found it hard to be a social person; i just didn't trust anyone or anything, you know? Being a loner makes you a hell of a target, and being a loner who was taller and bigger than most of the kids your age and was reputed to know how to fight made you an even heavier target for the natural bully kids, who had to prive how awesome they were by abusing others. i wore a lot of clothing that people thought was militant, or confrontational: camo, jeans, black t shirts, neutral color button-ups, a black trench coat... stuff that in theory makes you blend in, disappear, into the bushes and the shadows, where people will leave you the hell alone. in practice, everyone just takes note that you aren't wearing what they are (at the time, BUM Equipment, Mossimo, Stussy, Unionbay jackets... hahaha) and they pounce on you.

ultimately, somehow, i ended up being fairly popular, but i was always kind of like the "nerd avenger;" i'd jump into a fight where one of the jocks was picking on one of the nerdier kids and beat the jock up. i couldn't stand to see people beat up on people weaker than them, and i felt like i was lucky enough to be taller, stronger, and better equipped overall for defending myself than most other kids, and i guess that's sort of carried over to nowadays... i want to be a lawyer, do the adult equivilant of it.

thank god that now i'm an adult, and in the adult world where we are abusive to one another in a civil way. the really funny thing is that bullies never really change: whether they go on to be a "real man" and lift heavy stuff for low pay, or they go on to get a well paying job, they still like to try and feel around for people they think are "weaker" than them. sneer at you for not driving a BMW or wearing a Rolex, or tell you you're a homosexual because you don't drive a lardassed pickup that's lifted 8 inches and they can bench blah blah blah WHO CARES. they never do change, it's just that the rules change, and to this end, it never changes that most of them don't give me hell, because i'll still give it back to them.