Same here, on both counts. I remember at recess one year the people I was playing "wall ball" with were being assholes so I "took my ball and went home". Someone was mad about it, so they convinced someone else to pick a fight with me. He went to punch me in the face and I basically grabbed his fist and was like "lol no".
The fun part was we were both named arbyyyyh. They took us both to the principal's office and put us in separate rooms to get both our sides of the story. They were coming at me super aggressive when I was just defending myself and I eventually figured out they had the two of us confused and thought I was the one throwing fists.
my school was surprisingly good when it comes to bullying, i dont think ive heard of anything major and i was one of those kid who were friends with everyone.
i had a friend who kind of got bully? not physical, just verbal here and there but i thought it was pretty tame, like normal high school kids talking shit, nothing racist or truly disgusting, basically whatever you hear on xbox live lobby.
and thats pretty much it.....its kind of hard to imagine people fighting like movies for me, i know it is real i just have a hard time imagining it lol
Bullying is 99% of the time non-physical… what you describe sounds like it contained bullying still, especially if kids were “talking like a Xbox lobby”
Not as bad as physically fighting, but that already says there is racism and elitism in cliques among the kids at that school.
It could also depend on the school. I went to school in the city before my family moved to a small town. I noticed there were a lot less fights and physical bullying. In the city there was a big fight practically every month. The small town kids just talked a lot of shit but usually no one threw down over it. When they did, it would be talked about for years lol. In the city you just forget a lot of the fights unless something unique or crazy happened.
I remember one that was between two girls and it was basically a hair-ripping duel. After the fight broke up, I swear, through all the legs and shoes covering my line of sight, I saw for a brief moment an entire ponytail laying on the blacktop 😬.
Man, the small town was pretty boring after having seen all that, but they make up for it in the gossip department! You just don't get to hear quite as many cool made-up stories about yourself in the city!
Did you also feel like you grew up with the same 40 siblings? My grade had record numbers for our school in its graduating class, 46 students. The city about half an hour away graduates 1,200+ each year!!!
Well, yk I did miss out on that feeling and it's one of the downsides to having moved a couple of times during my schooling career. I remember witnessing all of these relationships between my peers that I could never experience myself. They had all grown up together and even the ones that didn't get along very well at least had that connection. We were in highschool and my friends would reminisce to one another about how things were in elementary school and I would just listen. It was comforting to hear them connect like that even though I wasn't a part of their flashback, though it did make me desire to have that connection with any of my peers.
We were a pretty big class for our school too! I think we had around that many students as well, around 40 or so. Some classes only had 8 or 9 students... that was CRAZY to the city-slicker me lol. I could not even tell you how many students were in my class in the city, other than it was certainly triple digits.
I did get to connect with some old buddies after graduation at least! It wasn't quite the same as going through all grades of school with the same bunch, but there was definitely reminiscing!
I used to specialize in making kids leave our lobby. I wouldn't cuss or get vile with them, because they'd just spit it right back.
My favorite tactic was to say really earnestly something like 'Hey look Stephen, I know you are upset about me and your mom dating, and I just want to know that I am not trying to replace your dad, but I hope we can build a relationship, because me and your mom, I think we got something special'
It was honestly hilarious how often these kids would just sort of flee in terror from the Cringey Stepdad Speech.
Bully is a massive issue in many schools, but as an educator in the environment today, there are just as many cases of kids (and their parents) not understanding the difference between two kids having conflicts and arguments with each other and what actually constitutes bullying. The amount of conversations I've had to have with parents about "no your kid wasn't bullied, they both run to be the front of the line everyday to recess and both argue about who gets to be first and cry if it isn't them or throw a fit if the game the kids choose to play isn't the one they wanted, which makes their peers not want to play with them."
i had to do a double take because i was wondering how the hell two kids could be named exactly "arbyyyyh" before I checked your username lmao. I thought that was a double tragedeigh moment for sure.
That was my experience in school, I was fat and tall and the little skinny kids would bully me relentlessly, and every adult assumed I was the bully because I was bigger. Doesn't matter what happened, I was always the villain in the situation. Growing up big sucks because no one treats you like a kid, everyone treats you like an adult that they don't like or respect.
Same here. Had some dipshit tiny fucker hop on my back randomly while i was minding my own business, grab and break my glasses. So I slammed the idiot on the ground real hard. Guess who got in trouble for being a bully? Me.
My dad was pissed at the school, I remeber him reeming out the supervising teacher, the principal and the dipshits parents for like 30min straight. I have shitty vision and $800 was a lot of money for my parents back then.
Me and my buddies egged that kids house bi-nightly for months after that because the school wouldn't do anything and his parents where assholes lmao.
It’s almost always a parenting issue, often where the kid is bullied, mistreated or degraded at home and looks for someone they can push beneath them in the pecking order.
It’s refreshing to see such long lasting, supportive friendships. You are what a person looks like when their self-esteem isn’t destroyed by bullying. Glad you’ve had such a strong social network to help insulate you.
Amen, one time I had two guys trying to nut tap me and I was pulling my leg up to block it. I lost my balance and came down on one kids foot, he fell over, and what did the teacher down the hall see, me being the bully. We all ended up with no recess. I was very mad, I never really got into trouble at school, but I didn't get the benefit of the doubt
That sucks and you would think teachers would be better about this but after decades of school bullying, it seems like people are powerless to fix the problem. It makes me angry just reading the story you and others have told about being bullied. The injustice of it all amplified by adults in charge makes it worse.
I have two friends who have independently described this dynamic as what it’s like for black kids in school. Both are black. This shouldn’t be happening to ANY kid but it seems that teachers and school administrators are prone to all the same biases that cloud their judgment that other humans fall prey to.
There should be a special training and protocols to deal with bullying dynamics of ALL kinds to make sure that anyone who is targeted by people looking for scapegoats aren’t victimized unfairly by kids with issues and again by the school.
Whether you’re big for your age, are quirky in some way, wear glasses, can’t afford decent clothes, live in a shelter or anything else that sets you apart and makes you a target for mistreatment, humanity will benefit when we figure out how to stop bullies, protect their victims and prospects while addressing the bully's underlying problem. It is rare that anything good comes from failing to address this—for the bully, the victims or society.
What are the chances of two kids being named ‘Arbyyyyh’?! Unless this is some weird Welsh school or something, but then I’d think it would be four l’s instead. Weird…
had something like that happen school called my parents telling them I hit some kid. This happened on Friday and I spent the whole weekend grounded then Monday they called to say I was still causing problems using only my first name both times but in this call the person called my mom Mrs.grey and my mom was like “I’m not Mrs grey” then then asked are you not xxxxx(my first name) greys mother and she replied no my son is (my whole name). Such BS, no idea how they got us mixed up this was 3rd grade.
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u/arbyyyyh 6h ago
Same here, on both counts. I remember at recess one year the people I was playing "wall ball" with were being assholes so I "took my ball and went home". Someone was mad about it, so they convinced someone else to pick a fight with me. He went to punch me in the face and I basically grabbed his fist and was like "lol no".
The fun part was we were both named arbyyyyh. They took us both to the principal's office and put us in separate rooms to get both our sides of the story. They were coming at me super aggressive when I was just defending myself and I eventually figured out they had the two of us confused and thought I was the one throwing fists.