Let us, as the philosophers say, unpack it. I have a special regard for studies that tell us that the way to reform calls for changing human nature. This study, apparently, also demonstrates that there is probably no such thing as a bad bully, but that behind every bully is a lonely, confused boy, frequently ill-adjusted, often a smoker of cigarettes, someone who has himself probably been bullied. Boys, surely by now everyone knows, are brutes. Between the ages of 12 and 18, no matter what their other attainments, they are chiefly interested in sex and talk about sex, in devouring large quantities of unhealthy food, and in playing games at which they can outwit, triumph over, and otherwise humiliate their fellows.
Boys exist in a near Hobbesian state of nature.
Modern life isn't, thank goodness, nasty, brutish and short, but boys, given free rein, would make it so. The first rule of the jungle in which boys grow up is that older boys dominate younger. The older guys in this case were boys from St. George's High School. Fair was fair. But fair, as frequently happens in life, turned out not to be fair.