Victim Alert!
So where do we start?

Probably with a bit about me. At school I was neither popular or unpopular. I was happy to mix with the ‘cool’ kids and they weren’t unhappy to have me around, I was happy to mix with the Goths, the geeks, the wiggers and the sports-players I wasn’t close to any of them, I was just ‘there’. All in all, I was known to everyone, but without my own identity. Simply because my identity (as I’ve learnt in adult life) is that of a tolerant, laid back, friendly, pacifist with no hate and no violence in me, but a love of music.

At school though, some people took my happy-go-lucky-mates-with-all-sorts as a weakness, and here in lies the problem.

You see, everyone gets victimised at school in some way, shape or form. Maybe you can’t kick a football as far as someone, aren’t a bright and someone or your family aren’t as wealthy as some others so you haven’t got the latest clothes, the designer trainers and a watch that can simultaneously given you the time is dozens of countries you are never going to visit, and for that, kids get grief.

The other ‘rule of the playground’ is if the bullying isn’t happening to ‘me’ then that’s alright, in fact, I’ll go as far as to humour the bullies who are handing out kickings, demanding money and making other kids life hell – if it means its not happening to me, no matter what anyone’s standing within any group is, as long as this happens on the outside of the group and not to yourself, you’ll put up with anything if it stops it from happening to you.

And herein, lays my problem. With no identity, I was affiliated with no group. Yes, I had mates in all of the cliques, yes, I was funny and yes, in general I was happy. And for the first 2 years of secondary school, there was no incident that comes to mind that was either uncomfortable or saw me ‘excluded’ from peer activity.

Then it changed. My older brother had completed his studies and left (as you would do after your 5th year) and, whilst I hadn’t needed ‘protecting’, having a big-brother at school certainly helped as this made you ‘untouchable’ what I hadn’t banked on though, was my brother having a reputation. A reputation as a ‘hard man’ (to me, he was just my bruv) and when he left, I suddenly found myself on the receiving end of comments, punches and kicks that were apparently ‘owed’ to my brother. This wasn’t constant but slowly, older kids had started a smear campaign against me and my welcome into a variety of groups became more strained.

Before too long, kids in my year were having ago at me – seemingly because ‘I deserved it’ (or at least, that’s what they’d been told) the physical beatings were fine, it was the mental cruelty and the sick ‘jokes’ that were paid that got to me. It was things like walking down a school corridor and having people flick ink at your back, getting to the bike sheds to find both of your tyres has been deflated, sitting in the wrong seat in class and not being able to concentrate because you know that behind you, someone is getting ready to do something you won’t like. I was slowly being distanced from all groups, the kids in these groups not wanting to be tarred with the ‘what’s wrong with you? Hanging around with Mullered’ brush.

For about a year I put up with this, there was graffiti in the toilets and on walls questioning my sexuality, suggesting I was in a relationship with a disabled boy – stuff that to a 14 year old, is tear-inducing.

And then something happened.

I got a girlfriend – and, thankfully, not a girl from the school, someone I’d met away from school – and she was really good looking, had lady bumps and liked me.

The girlfriend of the day also did a paper round from my local newsagents and it was there that we’d started chatting, before too long, we were inseparable, going to the cinema, sharing a bag of chips and snogging in the car-park of the local newsagents. Now, being a youngster trying to fight rumours about my sexuality, I would – naturally – claim when faced with another ‘Mullered is a uphill gardener’ – ‘how can I be gay? I’ve got a girlfriend’ This was usually met with ‘yeah, right’ and other cries of disbelief. Any then, one Saturday afternoon, en route to the Odeon to see a film, I’m spotted by one the guys making my life hell, who simply gave me a curt nod.

For what I can only guess is this reason –everything changed. The bulling stopped, people wanted to be my friend (again) and party invitations started coming my way. The reason? Apparently, most of the boys in my year at school liked girls, but none of them had ever been out with one. And they wanted Mullered here to teach them the ways of the force as far as relationships and bagging yourself a bird.

So, I did what any self-respecting teenager did. I complied, suggested friends of my girlfriend they might like to meet and I sucked up to them all in an attempt to fix them up with girls and to stop myself from being bullied.

This story isn’t funny. It’s true though.

I had absolute no self-respect, low self-esteem and to me, the weight of relief for the bullying to be over was worth sacrificing any scruples I may have had, by going over the top to ‘fit in’ with these shits who’d made my life hell.

I’d love to tell you all that I mugged them all off and got on with my life, but I complied. I let them make my life a misery and then, with a click of the fingers, I was bending over backwards to be their ‘friend’

If I could hate, I’d be hating these people, but I can’t. Nothing riles me enough to ‘hate’ (well, nothing so far in my 30+ years on this planet).

Saying that, maybe I do hate them, because at a school reunion some 5 years ago or so, names were thrown around as to what everyone was doing and apparently, one of the bullies is dead, another is living rough following a drug issue. I found that quite heart warming.

Right – cathartic type over.

Bullies might be ‘cowards’ but teenage boys desperate to be accepted are shallow, weak and timid – at least I was.

Mullered – over and out.
( JeffTheDogFucker Can you dig it?, Wed 13 May 2009, 14:08, Reply)