It makes me sad
to see the number of people on these pages who were let down by teachers in schools.

I remember whilst teaching that if I saw any type of bullying of any kid then I came down like a tonne of bricks on said bully and the reason for that was this:

When I was in high school I was bullied. It was by a kid smaller and weaker than me but I wasn't a fighter despite playing rugby for the school (I'm still not now to be honest). This kid made my life a fucking misery, punching and kicking me, setting my friends against me and the like. One day I cracked after he'd gotten me in a headlock and decided to drag me along the ground, I went to a teacher who went to the deputy head, we were both called into his office. This man was a legend, a strict disciplinarian but also a good teacher, he had this kid in tears within minutes of going into the office and then he made him apologies to me.

This stopped the bullying for a time...

But in the end the bullying had to be stopped by a fight. This kid couldn't punch for toffee (I've been hit much harder in Jujitsu since then so know I can take a punch if need be) and I only hit him once, in the face, where he said he couldn't see any more so I walked away.

And what did the coward do? When I had my back to him he ran after me in an attempt to attack me from behind (not like that you dirty buggers!). Only a call from the crowd (I think to this day it was my best mate but he denies it) made me turn round and face up to him again, the second I did that he slowed and looked at me. I then told him that we could keep doing this and we'd both end up getting hurt quite a bit in the end.

After this the bullying stopped. What I'd like to know is what stopped it? Was it the teacher? Was it me hitting back? or was it reasoning?

I'd like to say that I'm driving Ferraris and shagging Supermodels and he's on the dole, on drugs and on the way out but life isn't like that, I'm in an ok job and am a well rounded individual and his dad gave him a pretty successful property business where he earns a load of cash.

Am I bitter? No, this happened may years ago and it had some formative affects on me but had that not happened I wouldn't be the person I am today. Since then I carried on playing rugby, and then took up Jujitsu, this has resulted in a lot less bullying and also given me the confidence to know that while I may take a beating I can at least administer the same. It also helped in the schools I worked in that it was known I was a high(ish) belt in Jujitsu and I took a very dim view of bullying.

So my advice? My mate told his lad best, first you tell the teachers, then you tell them again, then if that doesn't work you hit the sod as hard as possible and when the teachers tell you off you can tell them that they were told twice and did nothing about it and he, as his dad would tell them the same. As far as I know his lad hasn't been bullied yet...

Sorry for length and lack of funnies...but it's my second to last day at work so fuck it
(Fuckarma was masturbating into your handbag, Thu 21 May 2009, 11:17, 1 reply)

Bullying in the Army
Way back, when I served in the forces. I'll always remember basic training for witnessing first hand some of the most horrific bullying a person could ever be made to go through. First up, the sergeant was a complete and utter sadistic bastard. No question about it. Luckily he took a bit of a liking to me though so I got away with the most of it. In every group there's always a weak one though, and one of my fellow new recruits was, shall we say, a little less than suitable for military life. He was a tad overweight, a bit soft, and frankly just didn't have the right aptitudes for being a soldier. God only knows why he signed up. Anyhow, this inevitably led to him performing much more poorly than the rest of the group, and whenever he cocked up the sarge had a rather sickening technique of punishing not him but everybody except him in the group, which as you can imagine resulted pretty soon in almost everybody turning against him too. Things all came to a head one night when, having had enough of being punished for his fuck ups, everybody (myself included, I'm ashamed to say) snuck out their beds, held him down to his bunk and proceeded to knock seven colours of shite out of him using bars of soap wrapped inside towels. he cried in his bunk for ages afterwards.

He topped himself some time afterwards. In the back of a Honda Accord I believe.
(TheManWithThePlan, Thu 21 May 2009, 10:42, 6 replies)

Part the third (and fourth, for that matter).
Part-the-third (first two bits are on page one).

My teacher at primary school in Wales bullied me and all the other kids (90% RAF-brats, not going to be living in Wales after we left school) into learning five lessons of Welsh to one lesson of English.

In the interests of gaining something that wasn't quite revenge but might have felt like it ... I stood up to her (aged about 8, I think) and ended up with the headmaster for my insolence.

I got to read science books (mathematics particularly) when the rest of the class had Welsh lessons. All of the ace :).

Part-the-fourth

Eric Ross ("hello, if you're reading"). Looked like a dinosaur, refused to let me on to the BBC B computer when I was 11-years old because I wanted to do some cosmology and astrophysics calculations.

Despite my having a liking for maths, he thought for some obscure reason that I was taking the p*** as most of the other kids who were in his maths class were.

My satisfaction was palpable when I returned to the school with my first in pure maths ... :D
(Eds Meds Mathskillz=1,Socialskillz=0, Thu 21 May 2009, 9:53, 5 replies)

Bullies
Time to get my 2pence worth in methinks!

In hindsight I wasn't really the ideal victim until I hit highschool. But the bullying started for me on my very own street. There was this vile snotrag called Leanne who loved nothing more than making my life hell, I would come in sobbing almost daily when she had hit me/said something mean/set her brother on me and a friend with tennis rackets. My mum was at her wits end and shouted at me one day that if I didn't hit her back she would hit me. I was so shocked that my mum had said this that I did run outside, volleyed over our wall and laid into the bitch. I'd like to think I thrashed her ass karate kid stylee, but I imagine it was more like hair pulling, kicking, biting and scratching. My mum dragged me off her after she let out a scream that sounded something similar to a pig being decapitated. She never passed my house alone after that, only ever with a bigger, even more venomous slag called Karen.
(vampyre_gem has been dead since, Thu 21 May 2009, 9:50, Reply)

Name and shame
A number of people have - rightly or wrongly - focussed their ire on teachers who failed to help and in some cases made things worse.

Step forward Mr Carrington-Porter, you useless fucking hippy.

What adult in their right mind would, when I finally snapped, announce to the class, "You've made The Light in Chains cry. I hope you're proud of yourselves." That was his first and last acknowledgement that anything was going on.

They were 11-year-olds. OF COURSE THEY WERE FUCKING PROUD OF IT. And they didn't know until you told them.

From the younger b3tans' posts it would appear that you can still become a teacher while totally flunking the "maintain control of the classroom" section. Still makes me angry three decades later.
( The Light In Chains won't play poker with the Skull Spark Joker, Thu 21 May 2009, 7:49, 5 replies)

Grrrr.
This week's question has made me quite angry - reading other people's horrific stories and remember the bad time I had at school. I've only got one hand so you can imagine the types of taunts and insults I got. Teachers don't do anything, you realise that quite quickly from the age of 5 or so upwards, and the whole "ignore them and they'll stop" doesn't work either.

I now have a 7-month old daughter, and as soon as she's old enough to go (and wants to go, obviously I'm not going to force her to do something she doesn't want to) I'm going to enroll her in a kid-friendly martial arts class. There are several reasons for this:
a) it's great for fitness, flexibility and general health (sadly lacking in a lot of kids these days)
b) it teaches discipline and respect for others
c) if she evers needs to, she can stick up for herself.

If she ever gets bullied to the point where it's obvious it's not just a bit of ribbing from other kids and it's clearly distressing her, she's going my full permission to put a stop to it physically. I'll have no difficulty explaining my reasons to the head teacher and the parents of the other child(ren) because there's no way I'm going to let her take the misguided advice of the adults in charge and undergo a repeat of what happened to me. Teachers have got no clue half the time and are happy to sweep stuff under the carpet, and no power to actually do anything the other half.

My bullying finally calmed down when I was about 15 or so, when one day one of the bullies gave me a slap round the head, knocking my glasses halfway across the classroom. I turned round, belted him, knocked him over a table, inadvertantly ripping half his ear off in the process. It wasn't my intention, but this had to stop, you know? Well, it did. It makes me sad to say it, but I wish I'd done it earlier!
(JohabMorelli is spenging merrily away, Thu 21 May 2009, 3:53, 1 reply)

Revenge is a dish best served cold... and wet.
Primary school, bully named Arnold (can't remember his surname otherwise I'd quite happily post it), used to belt one and all for no apparent reason.
This went on for two years until we went on a school camp to a farm and on the first morning when we all bounded out of bed, Arnold stayed put.
Poor boy had wet the bed.
Some genius immediately realised the old French song "Alouette, gentille Alouette, Alouette je te plumerai" could EASILY be sung "Arnold wets the, little Arnold wets the, Arnold wets the, Arnold wetrs the bed..."
And his reign of terror was over.
(difficultchild, Thu 21 May 2009, 1:38, Reply)

Some advice for anyone wanting to mentor a tormented kid
Years ago, I saw this article on Slashdot that offered advice on building social skills in smart kids. If anyone's been inspired by this week's QOTW to get out there and do something, the article is well worth a read.
( mistaspakkaman - think of it as an extended vacation!, Thu 21 May 2009, 1:28, 1 reply)

Will this week ever end?
.
Please bring on the new QOTW. While this has been cathartic, it has also been very painful for many of us.

Lets get back to basic stories of puking, spunk, and regular insanity!

Three-somes, I want stories about threesomes.
(MichaelS wasn't picked again, Thu 21 May 2009, 0:40, 9 replies)

Big Brother...
Been deliberating whether to post this as a) its lacking in the funnies, and b) it doesn't involve spunk.

And its also deeply fucking private...

I've posted on here before about my sister, but I've intentionally left out the fact that I also have an elder brother. Why? Well, because the first eighteen years of my life before I escaped and fucked off to university were made pretty fucking unbareable by this bastard.

He would beat me. And I don't mean in a playful brotherly way. He would literally kick ten barrels of shit out of me. Thinking back, I was hospitilized at least a dozen times. One time after he'd watched V for Victory (that footie film with Rambo twatting about in a beret), he forced me to recreate the scene where the fella had his arm broken by bracing it between the slats on a bed and applying the foot. That one got me a couple of days in hospital with a compound fracture with complications. He also punched me so hard in the face once that my teeth came through my bottom lip. Another time he chucked me down the stairs.

And my parents did fuck all about him - I had a heart to heart with them a few years back to ask why they'd let it happen. And they couldn't answer. They said back then there wasn't any support for this sort of thing and they just didn't know what to do. At the moment we've got a shakey truce. We just don't talk about my dear big bro... at all... ever...

Don't get me wrong. My childhood wasn't all bad. I had some great times. But, unfortunately, I seemed to take it for granted that at some point or other I'd receive another unholy kicking for, basically, being in the way. It was just normal to me and its only now I'm an adult I realise this is totally ab-fucking-normal.

So, at eighteen I fucked off up to Manchester to study Economics. Not because I particularly wanted to - it was just as far as possible away from home as I could get. And as I left that day in my mum and dad's car that's the last time I ever saw the evil cunt. I'm thirty-four now. A long, long time ago.

He moved to Finland while I was at Uni after a big falling out with my parents. Thank fuck. And I've never thought about him since. When people ask me if I've got any siblings I only ever talk about my sis. My brother is - and always was - dead to me.

Only something fucking terrifying happened recently. He's been in touch with my parents wanting to reconcile, admitting what he did to me was wrong and that he wants to meet up and start over.

I'm afraid I said point blank "No..." And that's the last I've heard about it. And now I feel bad. Ever notice how its always the victims of violence who are left feeling guilty when being magnanimous goes out the window and they just want to be left alone by a past tormentor?

I can't forgive and I can't forget. Only in this. Otherwise I'm the most easy-going bloke in the fucking world. But not for this.

I consider myself to be a pretty well balanced individual - I've got a great partner, I'm in a loving relationship, I interact with my social peers without getting my cock out (well, most of the time). But a part of me is still incredibly angry. That cunt took away my childhood. And I'm never gonna get that back. And here I am now, at the age of thirty-four, being made to feel like I'm the big fucking villain for not wanting to patch things up...

Fuck me, its been grim this week. Here's hoping for the usual smut and filth next week.

Cheers for listening...
(SpankyHanky, Thu 21 May 2009, 0:20, 20 replies)

Dear Mom...
You know that thing you always told me? "Just ignore them and they'll stop bothering you?" Doesn't work. Just for your own information. I ignored them and they bothered me all the way up to graduation.

I had extra curly hair as a child that my mother always cut very short so it poofed out. I was the afro girl with the glasses and crooked teeth. Not my better years. I wasn't bullied as much as teased, except for Benjamin S., who took enjoyment in insulting me, occasionally threw rocks at me and once punched me for touching something that belonged to him.
My brother had more problems, poor guy. He's schizophrenic, a bit fat due to his medication, and once had a growth removed from his nose that left it looking a little funny. Still, he's the sweetest guy I know, and to all you assholes that beat him up, broke his things and followed him home taunting him: You suck. It's your fault my brother doesn't trust anybody outside the small circle of people he's known all his life. Also, to the teacher to whom my brother reported bullying to and just told him not to be a tattletale: You suck too.
(mariam67, Wed 20 May 2009, 22:33, Reply)