My Approach to Being Bullied at School
By: Mark Farrar
Tags: School Days, Personal Growth, Resilience, Choices, Bullying

My response to being bullied at school worked for me — but was it merely a case of dumb luck?

It was my first day in senior school, after having been in junior school for five years.

I was sitting at the table in the dining hall, having just finished eating breakfast, and the boy opposite me began to concoct what looked like the most revolting drink imaginable. He used as many ingredients from the table as possible, including coffee, way too much sugar, syrup, ketchup, salt, pepper, and probably other items I cannot recall.

After stirring it up, he pushed it across the table and told me to drink it.

Now, it’s worth mentioning that this boy was large and intimidating. By that, I don’t mean fat — he was noticeably larger in structure and height and weight than most boys of his own age (which would have been 12 or 13).

I looked at the cup containing the foul mixture and refused to try it — several times.

I don’t know whether this was a serious attempt at bullying me, a not uncommon practice in boarding schools, as I was soon to discover, or whether he was testing my strength of character.

And to be honest, I thought at the time it was merely bullying. The possibility of it being a test only occurred to me later.

When I didn’t drink whatever it was, he left me alone, and I thought that was it.

I interacted with the boy many times over the following few years, and the incident was never mentioned. And when I did get bullied, primarily during my first year, it wasn’t by him.

Being a boy who liked to throw his considerable weight around, he had his group of hangers-on. Most of them were probably those who had chosen to be in his gang rather than be bullied by him. I know that happens because I was sucked into it for a short while in junior school before realizing that what I was doing was wrong.

In junior school, where I was from the ages of seven through twelve, I don’t ever recall being bullied at all. It was only once I moved up to senior school that it began.

The boy who started it started senior school at the same time as me and was in the same house and dormitory. He would push me around a bit and call me names, but he was more of a minor inconvenience than anything else. It probably helped that, being new to the school, he did not yet have his own gang of followers.

Over the next year or so, after moving out of the new boys’ dormitory to the first year one, the bullying continued and became worse and more consistent. For example, they made apple pie beds for me and poured water on my sheets. But I ignored it all.

Part of this was because I am not a physical person and didn’t want to start a fight. Perhaps if I had, the bullying might have ended sooner. Although I might have been badly hurt too. The truth is, at 61 years old, I have never got into a fight with anybody, ever.

But it was partly because I refused to let it bother me. I was fortunate in a way that the bullying was more name-calling and psychological torture. I was never harmed physically, as had happened to others in the past.

For example, there used to be a practice known as, I believe, a peppermint shower. This was where each shower in the changing room was turned on, with one shower being icy cold and the next boiling hot, and so on, alternating all the way to the end.

They would then make some poor, naked boy walk back and forth through the hot and cold water while things (usually gym shoes) were thrown at him.

I understand it was not a pleasant experience, but it had been banned before joining that house.

That is, of course, the problem with physical bullying — it tends to leave evidence such as bruises or even broken bones in extreme cases.

Within a year, most of the psychological bullying had stopped, and I’m pretty sure it was because I didn’t react. After all, there’s no point trying to intimidate somebody if they refuse to be intimidated. And by showing them it didn’t bother me, they moved on to another target. After all, there was a fresh intake of students to pick on.

I was still subjected to name-calling for most of my time in senior school, but it was more sporadic than a concerted attempt at terrorizing me.

I never let the name-calling bother me either. I remember thinking those boys would probably continue to treat others like that for the rest of their lives. Their behaviour seemed childish, even though I was still a child too. And I will admit that the thought of them never really growing up gave me a welcome feeling of moral superiority.