Steinherz wrote:Kid who punched the bully out got suspended. Bully got off scot-free.
Because America: Home of the Zero tolerance policy for bullying*
*except when you defend someone or yourself from bullying physically. Then fuck you you scumbag. Leave that poor child alone. /sarcasm
This was before the rot had set in too deeply, but:
As a grade school kid, I had a friend I'll call Toby (because that was his name).
Toby was albino, and although nobody I knew considered him "blind" (he didn't have a cane and didn't ever ask for guidance), he had glasses like the red stapler guy does in
Office Space.
Well one day we were walking home from a bus stop that wasn't my normal one. It was his, but we had been having a good conversation and I just wanted to continue it, so I got off at his stop a few blocks before mine.
We got jumped by five or six kids, all of whom were older than us. They weren't after me, they hadn't even been expecting me. One of them basically grabbed me and threw me out of the way while they went to work on Toby. I dove back into the pile anyhow, and got the crap beat out of me, but Toby managed to get out of the pile somehow and run home, bringing back his older brother to rescue me. Then I ran to a friend's house because it was closer than mine and there was nobody home at my house anyhow, where they had to call my mother. I ended up with stitches from the cuts.
Toby's brother got suspended. Nobody else did. I got fighting lessons from the friend whose house I ran to, and his older brother. That's why I still fight like a lefty even though I'm not. That would be considered a good outcome, I suppose, except that I was advised by both my parents (independently, since they were divorced) to take it to the bullies at the first sign of trouble, not wait until they formed a pack.
This led to a "shoot first, ask questions later" mentality, and attacking weakness in others before they could start attacking me, even when they didn't particularly deserve it. In short, I "solved" most of my bullying problem by becoming one of them, and only invoking it when I got triggered. This includes two times I attacked girls, only one of which I was (or am) sorry for. One involved getting a bucket of water dumped on me, leading to me chasing her down and clotheslining her. That was unjustified. The other was someone taking offense at my (solely verbal) criticism of her friend's musical performance (which I had been explicitly asked to give), and taking a swing at me. I didn't even know who was attacking. I just saw the punch coming, blocked it, and swung back. It turns out her mother saw the whole thing. When she went crying to mommy about it, her mother said "you little bitch, I would have hit you too." I'm still not sorry about that one.
I still have a problem holding back on people who have been aggressive toward me in the past, even if they're co-workers. I also have a hard time disguising the contempt I feel if I see someone being a bully. At the same time, when it comes to performing my job, I won't single those people out if they are also doing their jobs, even if I am in a position to cause them difficulties. I'll write up friends when they deserve it, and I'll praise enemies when they deserve it. This doesn't always endear me to my managers, who may be looking to get rid of the troublemaker by inventing job-related failures. However, it did lead to grudging respect from the people I was supposed to audit, because they knew I wasn't out to screw them over. If they screwed up and I caught it before they did, I wrote them up. If they caught it first, or someone at their approximate level did so, then as far as I was concerned it never happened.
So when Hanako snapped in "Misstep", I could understand it even if it was aimed in the wrong direction.
