the big bully in the room

While sipping on my morning coffee the other day, blasting passed different TV shows and sport highlight reels, I came across this documentary on CNN about bullying. I watched it for a bit. During the commercial, I started my surfing again. A few channels down, I again came across a little thing about bullying.

“This bullying thing is a huge thing, right now”, I thought. “Maybe I should do a write-up on it”.

Two days later.

I started to gather my mental notes about what I will write about. Trying to dig up any memories about being bullied. It took me hours. Nothing. I realized that I was never bullied at school. Shocking to most as I stand at 5’3 and I’m currently at my heaviest I’ve ever been. 112 soaking wet. I knew it was because I was that dude who always friends with the popular people. The bullies, too. I was protected. Even in grade school. I had an army of 4 foot 6 security guards who would beat up anyone in grade 2 up who ever touched me. Razzed by friends? Yes. Picked up and swung around to express man-love? For sure. But it never crossed the line to being bullied.

My next step was to see if there was any bullies around me at school. If there were any hidden or public incidents. Couldn’t think of any. Never at Waldorf. I guess that whole Waldorf rumor of it being a day camp for hippies and gnomes rings true this time around. We had our yearly run-in and little mishaps but never an ongoing battle between the bigger and the smaller. No one leaving someone in a locker, or turning them upside down threatening to drop them 10 feet down on the cement. Nothing of the sort.

I guess this is why when I read and watch accounts of what kids do with each other, it seems like I’m watching a movie.

If you don’t see it, you can’t conceptualize it. It’s not happening. It’s only when it’s happening in your own backyard is when you can think of it as real.
To this day I think those little kids on the television starving are just actors. Little people playing parts pretending just so they can grab dough from the rick folk. Mean, I know. But again. Out of sight, out of mind.

This is where I believe that Waldorf kids are protected by an ideal world of ferries and dwarfs and woodworking. Well the one I went to at least.

This is when we have to come to realize that we do have kids who are bullied every day at school. That this problem leads into deep depression, drop-outs and homeschooling.( Not that I’m against homeschooling, but I think it effects the child’s social skills for later on in life that could create a bigger problem down the road.)

What’s my point?

We have to stop blinding ourselves about the problem thinking that if it’s not happening to us it’s not real. We have to start to take control and do something to help out and stop this epidemic.

You don’t want to be having your coffee one morning flipping through TV shows and sports highlight reels to stumble on a news report about your own child..