Growing Up Bullied

Kids are fucking little monsters. What I mean is, of course they're not engaging in coital activity with small supernatural entities, rather, kids are fucking little monsters. Note how I cleverly cleared things up with the clever use of italics. I should explain myself right? Of course I should. Just so I don't get buried by hate mail.

The urge to dominate is a primitive instinct to establish social order. Sometimes it means who gets sex and who doesn't. I'm sorry. I mean it establishes mating and procreational rights. It's not exclusive to primates though one of the best examples you might see of this behaviour is at night clubs. These days all you have to do to be Alpha Male is to be white. Or at least half white.

But anyway. Back to it.

Kids themselves tend to have their own social order. A lot of what you come across is the need to empower themselves. That's why they run around in groups cos there's strength in numbers. In the group itself you can bet your ass they have their own social order. It's never the smartest kid. It'll be the biggest kid. Individually, kids will bully other kids to get that sweet high of the all important power rush. That's why kids like to play with toy guns. Cos on TV when you've got the gun and no one else does, they yo bitches - while you still got the gun. Don't lose the gun okay?

Kids target kids who are different. Of course the smaller weaker kids are natural targets. They resort to another one of nature's wonderful things. It's called symbiosis. It's a fancy word but it happens everywhere. Even in prison. When a big dood is happy harry cos he's got himself a cell bitch and his cell bitch is assured of being protected from the other inmates, that's symbiosis.

Carrying on, all you have to be to be bullied is different. The only different kids that don't get bullied are those that are already shaving in pre-school and have nicknames like 'Mongo'. Then again, they probably get it from other Mongos from higher grades. Eventually they group together to extort lunch money. Mongos Inc is now a gang. To be different, all you got to be is one of the following: smart, stupid, ugly, beautiful, retarded, disabled, weak, rich, poor, the wrong color, six fingers, one eye.... you get the drift.

All it is is a natural process of growing up. Kids need boundaries, guidance and example. If a kid is a rotten kid, blame the parents. There's something wrong there. Beating seven kinds of crap out of a kid at home for misbehaving doesn't work either. Now that that social order's established it fuels the urge for this kid to do some establishing of his own so he establishes royally on his younger sister who in turn does her bit in the classroom. Especially if there's no cat at home to kick.

My parents decided that my sister and I would grow up like any other kid. This means we pretended that living in a house where my bedroom was bigger than the living room in some of my friends' houses was normal. I was given less allowance than my small-house-living friends. To learn the value of money apparently. In all, it must have worked. I'm a stingy bastard when it comes to money. As the younger of two I tended to try to dominate my peers except that I was one of the smallest kids around and I was frightened of everything. I got beat up by my sister at home and the cats at home had died by then but I assure you that was nothing to do with me. Just the recipe for a complete bastard by 21 but no one accounted for my mum. My mother may not have done a perfect job but I think she did a damn good one. We were brought up with a proper balance of love and discipline and with enough protection from outside influences that we were protected but no so much that we became dependant on that. I love my father. I carry many of his personality traits myself and learnt a lot from him. All I'm saying is is that it was my mother that did all the delicate balancing.

As for being the rich kid. I paid my dues. I was put on a school bus like any normal kid. Every other kid on the bus lived in a low cost housing area. They'd be on the bus and I'd get picked up. These little bastards were like ninjas. I'll tell you why. It first started with the verbal assault. They'd talk loudly amongst each other about me and I'll bet you it wasn't about how nice my parents' house is. Luckily for me my cantonese is shit. My cantonese is still shit 25 years on so you can imagine I didn't know diddly squat back then. I was one of those sensitive cry babies. It would have really hurt my feelings if I understood them. I always had my head down and I didn't ever say a thing. That didn't change when the physical assault started. I got punched, kicked and slapped around like a little bitch but I never reacted. Could be what saved me, could be what condemned me to more of the same. Anyway, the fucking little monsters would fuck me up quietly enough just so the bus driver wouldn't notice. Right little ninjas those bloody kids.

When I was 12, I grew seven inches in that one year I was in Standard 6. I went from something like 4 feet 5 inches to 5 feet 2 inches. In a single year. This is the single most important thing that happened to me as far as bullying was concerned. One, it chilled me out totally. I didn't need to bully anyone anymore. I didn't have to be able to fend for myself either. I was one of the biggest kids in class. I could fend like anything if I needed to. And I didn't. I didn't need to. But. When I was 12, I beat up, no, I royally beat up one of my classmates. I beat this kid so bad it was the last physical fight I ever had in school. No one messed with me after that. Talk about stupid, the kid I smashed was the aggressor and I don't mean he just called me names.

I stopped growing when I was 14 and reached the height of 5' 7". That bummed me out but from the perspective of this blog posting, I was already a giant. Kids remember. To this day, some of my friends from school still think I'm taller than they are when they overtook me about 15 years ago.

Which comes to the main theme of all this. There're mean people out there. People who are mean just for the sake of being mean. Even nice people can be mean. I'm nice. But I can be mean. Usually to someone who can't retaliate. In the end, all of us, every single one of us. Look at how people behave towards one another, in life, in love, in business, everything. Look back at everything I've written so far and tell me adults don't do the same shit. In the end, we're all just a bunch of fucking kids.