This past week was marked by people making a big show by wearing pink shirts to symbolize their stand against bullying.
If you look at the photo attached to this blog, you’ll see the exact spot in Burnaby where I took my last stand against two bullies.
Back in the 1980s – at least in my corner of the world - people didn’t rally against bullying. No slogans. No pink shirts. No solidarity.
Instead, you were expected to either take it or fight for your freedom because nobody in positions of power were going to do a damn thing about it.
I learned this lesson the hard way with blood, bruises and sore knuckles.
It’s weird because both cases happened within about 100 feet of each other and occurred in Grade 8 at Burnaby North Secondary School.
The first happened during PE class. We were playing football and one kid started taking vicious runs at me, including a nasty blindside hit behind the play when the teacher wasn’t looking.
His friends laughed themselves silly as this goof did it four or five times until I had blood trickling down my face.
At first, I took it because I was too terrified to do anything else. I was actually in shock because I didn’t know this kid and hadn’t had an issue before. It came from out of nowhere.
What he didn’t know, however, is that I had a lot of bottled-up rage inside of me and he knocked me down one-too-many times. I had finally had enough and I exploded, getting in his face with the kind of insane look that made him visibly shrink.
He mistook me for someone who wouldn’t fight back. I used my words by I was ready to brawl and he turtled.
I didn’t want to do it. I would have rather gone up to the teacher and explained what was happening and wait for justice to take place, but, yeah, I knew at the time that wouldn’t happen.
The second incident was in the same place, but took place in a much-different fashion.
This other bully had been tormenting me for months until I finally had had enough and loudly challenged him to a fight after school. I don’t think he was expecting it.
Back then, fights took place either at a church lawn just off school property or by Kensington golf course.
When school ended, I stayed after class at told my teacher what was going on. I didn’t want to fight and wanted a grownup to stop the whole thing. The teacher nodded as I told the story and when I was done, he said I just walk home a different way.
Defeated, I walked over to the golf course and tried to pull myself together. There were probably 50 boys standing there waiting to watch two kids pummel each other.
I did my part and fought. We both ended up bloodied and panting until I finally just walked away.
The bully never bothered me again.
I’m not advocating this for other kids. I’m simply sharing how helpless I felt because there were no adults around who could take action to stop this from happening. I felt betrayed by my teacher for not even seeming concerned. It took me a long time to trust adults again. I felt forced into fighting because the adults around me were uninterested in taking action. Fortunately, I was able to defend myself thanks to a hefty temper and being athletic. Many others at the time were unable to do so and suffered for years.
The problem is I’m not sure things have really changed all that much. There are pink shirts and slogans, but I hear from a lot of parents who say people in positions of power don’t really take action when they are made aware of bullying.
My daughter was bullied in school. One of her tormentors was the daughter of a teacher at the same school. I approached him and was as delicate as I could be and he flat-out didn’t believe a word I was saying and walked away. The principal also listened, but took no action at all to deal with the issue. We ended up having to move schools.
That was 10 years ago. I doubt things have gotten much better since then.
I really appreciate the efforts of people with the pink shirts, but as I’ve said before, if people in power don’t take action then nothing will ever change.
Follow Chris Campbell on Twitter @shinebox44.
