I was, at my old school. The new one's swinging by just fine. Guess it's something to do with me being the "new kid", but the people seem genuinely nice.

Nope. Not even when I was a freshman in high school wearing bondage pants and had hair down to my shoulders... and was (and still am) very skinny. I'm just too cool for people to bully me.

My dad always said Aikido is for when you don't really want to hurt the other guy.

Krav Maga is when you do.

Aikido I'm sure is for defending yourself and immobilizing the aggressor, at least that's what the boys told me, and it teaches you how to effectively disarm people weilding weapons - but I guess every martial arts does that at some point.

I've never heard of Krav Maga but I have done some Taekwondo, I got to a yellow belt before my parents decided to stopping paying for my lessons, was a lot of nice people going there as well.

Never. They all thought I was insane, and I did nothing to dispel the illusion.

It's the art of turning your opponents into tomato paste -my dad.

Thought up by the Israeli's and taught to the IDF. My dad spent some of his service time there and picked it up from them.

A little. I quickly made myself a social outcast in my school for being a little bit weirder than most of the kids which resulted in the majority of the kids getting a little mean. Luckily I was always pretty big and strong so the kids wouldn't mess with me physically (except on rare occasions where they would get together in a large group) but exclusion and psychological bullying can be quite bad too.

It got less and less with each year as the kids matured but I never really liked them enough after the first years to have any desire to make friends with them and then there were of course the few kids that didn't grow out of verbal bullying. There is one thing that makes me think it was all mostly just group behavior that kept on going because they would see their peers being mean to that weird kid so they'd jump in as not to go against the norm of the group. And that case would be when one of the kids that at the time used to bully me quite a bit had to move out of the neighborhood and one day he like followed me on my way home and then intercepted me on my path and gave me a big apology saying he only acted like he did when the other kids were around and such.

It takes a lot of sincerity and courage to go up to someone and apologize like that one on one, especially as a child, and again more so when the kid dislikes you and is more than big enough to take you on when you're alone (as opposed to surrounded by friends =.=) if he so desires. I get the feeling he had felt that way for a while but just didn't want to say anything until he would be moving away from his peers so he wouldn't become a social outcast too, and perhaps some of the other kids felt that way too but just never acted on it because they weren't going anywhere for the next few years like he was.

People will tell you that if you don't show your bully any rage or sadness that it will stop bullying you but that is a lie. However I think showing them nonchalance and being kind to them in return in your normal day to day activities can inspire them to be better people and remove any feelings of their bullying being justified as they grow up to be able to reason better. Most bullying tends to be done in groups so that no instant retaliation can be done by the one who is being bullied, so often kids that get bullied will dish our revenge on a cold dish. But I think that tends to leave bullies with the mindset of "he was mean to me too anyway" rather than "I shouldn't have bullied him, he didn't deserve it". Which in turn I'd say helps teach them empathy and generally makes them better people in the future rather than people with a mindset of "me VS those who would wrong me if I don't wrong them first".

It makes me wonder however for those who were bullied here too. If you had the chance to go back in time and teach your younger self one of the two. The ability to beat up your bully, or the ability to teach empathy to your bully. Then which one would you go for ? Would young you be getting his or her revenge, or would your bully simply lose his or her will to bully you or anyone else again ?

Wait, wait, wait! Papa knows what it is now!
Its in that Simpsons episode where they go to Israel "Holy land" with Flanders and the Church, then Bart begins using Karate on the seemingly innocent girl who turns out to be working with the military and knows Krav Maga and kicks Bart's ass all the way back to Springfield


@Ellert - I don't think showing them kindness works either, that can just fuel them and give them the idea you're a dork or an idiot. I was out in the open with my emotions when it came to bullying, nor was going to pretent to be nice to them, but I wouldspeak to them and treat them with some respect. This however was stupid, treating someone with respect and kindness achieves nothing but having it flung back in your face. Now there are various types of bullies and various ways to deal with them but the only one I ever found successful was violence. Violence when I used it would stop 2 bullies when I only fought one because the other would fear me turning on him, and the one that did fight back stopped because, well, is a broken nose really worth slagging someone off for a cheap laugh.
Sometimes just having an older sibling present in school is enough to prevent bullying, in my brothers case, he looks similar to me so he was in line for the same crap, but by the time he came to the school I had made my intent clear with anyone trying to bully me no one tried it on with him - except one boy who's older brother (in my year) took away and told to stop. I think violence is easier to understand than confusingly nice reactions to bad times.

Nah I was never bullied, not even during freshman year in highschool. I was pretty much known as the loudmouth who every teacher disliked and the one who spoke about football all day. I suppose bullies aren't attracted by me. I have been teased though once or twice for being short in comparison to the other 6 foot 3 inches guys I went to class with. Maybe I'm just too cute for anyone to bully me.

Nope, never been bullied. I was always pretty popular at school. Come to think of it, I can't remember any kids being bullied at my school. At least from what I saw...

You might well be right. Mind you I did go to an all girls school and the dynamics are pretty different. There's few beatings but a lot more emotional crap going on. I distinctly remember being made to feel like an idiot because I didn't want to go out and get drunk...but as soon as I realised how stupid that was I just sort of manned up. Wonder if nowadays people would call that bullying?

Heavily. I ended up having two suicide attempts before the tenth grade.

Having Asperger's Syndrome and being the son of a cop in a ghetto school will do that to you. Life was not fun.

The ability to beat up the bully. There was one that I did fight back and of course I lost, but he never messed with me again. That was the very first time anyone mad me snap. I guess that was their intention all along. Must have been frustrating for them, because it many years to do. I ran from my bullies everyday after school. heh, thats why I run so fast now, but it wasn't really the speed that I was good at. Being smarter than them, I went to places they normally wouldn't go and got lost in, trying to look for me. I made escape routes that don't function as them(jumping off railroad tracks and into a tall grass "forest" below, and them refusing to follow and wondering how the hell I survived the jump and ran off like I was ok). Some of course outsmarted me, and took advantage of my gullible nature(this is gone now..good luck getting me to trust you). Some even managed to "infiltrate" my own home.

By all the most frustrating thing of all is that I had very little help. The one time I thought I had a friend, when they came at me, he said "I have nothing to do with this" and walked away.


....

Nah it's best I DONT go back in time. Because I wont teach my young self anything. I will instead kill them all myself for the sake of myself.

Although my life now is worse than it was when I was teen and frankly would rather be dead, in most situations, I look back on it and say those days are over with, and I can finally live in peace. Because from age 8 to 16 there was no peace. That said my sig has some meaning to my life.

/end needless rambling.

A bit, less bullied and more crushed I'd say; never properly bullied, just subject to constant disparaging remarks. Probably brought out the ego and megalomania I feel. I there was a consequence-free way I could impose violence and suffering on the work-shy, obnoxious spongers who populate my current class I would; make them properly appreciate there genuine lack of value to society and any prospective employer to-whom they would have no qualms in taking money off for doing [censored] all.

Yes after elementary school I was tormented everyday. I got into fights a couple of times but it never changed anything.

A little bit. Then I decided to be a bully. Way more fun. WAY more fun....

Highschool was a blast.

Severely in 8th grade. I was miserable. We moved to another town when I started high school and was a little bit bullied in my first two years there as well. I was kind of a chubby, pimply faced kid with glasses so I was an easy target. Then in the summer between 10th and 11th grade I shot up to 6' 4" tall (and slimmed down as a result) and my parents bought me a new Toyota Celica to driver to school. Suddenly it stopped and I was almost considered "cool". Hypocrites.

It was a quote from Duke Nukem Forever I've been looking for a reason use it lol . But to set the record straight I was bullied like hell at my school, mostly because the school I went to did nothing about bullying because they didn't have any policy against bullying.

Not really. There was occasional name calling and [censored] but it never really went anywhere. I guess because I never really fought back they just got bored.

Edit: that censored bit looks more suspicious than I meant it to. I wasn't molested or anything.

I was never bullied, although I guess I did bully a little. I'm sure it's just because the neighbourhood I live in is so nice and because everyone in the neighbourhood is a millionare's child Asian math nerd. The only kid who I ever bullied was a kid named Marcus who told me that him and his girlfriend were having six in the washrooms all the time. Keep in mind this kid was 7 years old and I was 10. I disagreed with him and said I knew he was lying. Then he did a spinning punch that hit me in the face. I paused and looked at him and then punched him in the stomach and walked away. He fell down. From then on I was kind of a bully to him. He would tell me to "TAKE A HIKE!" and his name became "Take a hike"

It was only bullying because he was younger than me. We were more enemys than anything else.

Was bullied just twice. Once when I just started high school, this dude just got in my face, saying this and that.. I punched him hard square in the face, he went down like sack of bricks crying.. I then proceeded to kick his head for a few blows. Never had a problem after that..

The second time, was again when starting my senior year.. my family had moved to another city and so a new school.. this guy was riding my butt ALL DAY.. that macho crap that bullies like to do.. well, in the last class of the day, in a 3 story building, again riding my butt.. I snapped - I hung that SOB out of the window by his feet - I can still hear his screams all these years later. Again, never never had a problem after that. I can still remember the look on my science's teachers' face..

Trust me, ignoring them doesn't work if they're intent on hurting you. Being nice, doesn't work. Fighting back didn't work either, because the people who were doing the bullying were the kids that the advlts liked because they were rich (or were the kids of the advlt's friends). So I kept getting suspended and they just laughed all the way to graduation.

Things aren't always so black and white when it comes to bullying.

And if I could go back to that time, I wouldn't teach myself anything. I would go to the police and make darn sure it stopped long before it reached the severity it did. I just wish kids had someone to help fight those battles that can't be won any other way. (Physically fighting my bullies didn't work... they were guys bigger and stronger then me in the group and they all jumped in. And I'm a girl. Yeah... fun times! Those guys were awesome!)

From first to seventh grade. Nothing physical, but I was never accepted into any groups and I had to take a lot of insults from people. It left me with a great deal of mental problems for my future life and destroyed whta little self-confidence I ever had. I sometimes think about hunting down those bastards and letting them know what happens when you screw with me like that.

Then I tagged along with another bullied kid who later became one hell of a brute and neo-Nazi skinhead (this was because one of his greatest enemies was a pack of Somali immigrants who had bullied, robbed him and threatened his life several times over). If someone offended me I could just tell my buddy and he would go as far as beat the [censored] out of the guy. Despite his neo-Nazism he was a loyal and a good friend and very smart as well. Too bad he turned to drug abuse later and we lost contact. I strongly believe he is dead by now...

That might depend on the first impression you give them.

I think once you confirm in their minds that they can get a reaction out of you, even a small one, they will never leave you alone. However, if there is no reaction from the start, they may give up and look for someone they can have their "fun" with.

That's just my guess.

Yea, I was bullied until I was around 14 and we moved away. There was this guy, who tried to play mean tricks on me, even hit me in the stomach once. I met him years later, in a Nightclub and I wore a sixy mini skirt haha, he was all over me and I just looked at him and said: Guess you didn't grow much in all these years, huh? He was a short guy! hahahaha Well, that was rather satisfying...

Plus, there were 2 stuck up chicks in my class and of course (I have no idea why) I wanted to "be like them, hang out with them". *rolls eyes* Anyway, my mom died when I was 14 and suddenly all the kids were really nice to me. My dad re-married and we moved away from that crappy town. I decided to just be myself in the new place. It turned out this was the best thing that could have happened (well, let's not talk about the 8 years with an evil step mother...)

However, if you would ask me if I had any regrets, I will tell you that my past made me who I am today. A compassionate person, who tries to do right by others and has a huge heart (for both animals and people). We learn our lessons, we will take away what we need from our past experiences and then hopefully make the best of it.

Self reliance, self love and self esteem are valuable qualities in life. Sometimes, you just have to be a bit "selfish"

And never forget: You are unique!