School Violence – The Knife That Killed Me

The first couple of months were doable. I didn’t have much, or any, friends in that school. Just a group of ‘other guys’ to which I shared some space and time, in class and at lunch hour. It took me quite a while to adapt to the new situation. A new school, new children, I was the youngest, for reasons I can’t recall the rest of my class were late 12 or just turned 13 years. On top of that I was quite skinny, too polite, raised well by my parents, a bit too well I guess and I still had a ‘childish’ side in me. I was young for my age. For those obvious reasons ( I was clearly not in the top of the social hierarchy…) ‘they’ turned against me. ‘They’ were a group of 6–10 guys. I wasn’t sure back then what I had done, or didn’t do, to them. What I was sure about was that I didn’t had a proper defense, not in any way, shape or form. The moment ‘they’ turned against me, was the moment I turned into ‘prey’.

The three years that followed consisted of being chased by this pack of wolves in and around school, in class, on the yard, on my way to and from school- there was never a moment to catch a breath, never a moment where I could come to my senses, no protection or help at all from no one. I was alone, I was spit at, got cornered, kicked and beaten up on a daily basis, sucked up the worst insults ever, had threats every other day or so, even to my life, and got publicly humiliated in several ways, was laughed at for the usual, stupid reasons, was ignored in various, humiliating ways, the list goes on and on. Never Ever A Single Moment Of Rest… Look over your shoulder, ‘cause they’re coming for ya… I was prey, I was hunted severely, even up to the doorsteps of my safe harbors. It felt like I was being tossed in a trench and for some reason had to work my way through that pile of mud and shit that was called ‘school’. Violence, unfortunately, was the thing that stopped it all. One day my mother laid in the hospital for a surgery that, if all went well, could heal her hernia. If it didn’t go well she might never walk again. We had some worries at home, so to say.

On lunch hour in the auditorium of the school one of the predators found out about it. I felt pressed to tell I was worried about the situation at home. In an auditorium crowded with some three hundred students he laughed at me once again, shouting real loud that I was lying and that my mother was hospitalized having cancer and was about to die. Upon which the rest of that group started laughing too of course. He apparently didn’t know we had cancer in our family. It was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I somehow jumped on top of the table, planted one of my feet in his face, in hindsight with so much force that he had the profile of my shoe almost carved in his face. A fully crowded auditorium turned silent in a moments notice and some three hundred pair of eyes stared at me, standing on that table. My predator laid on his back, as he had fell backwards from his chair. One of the teachers dragged me from the table and angrily almost threw me into the principals office, were I was ordered to wait. With that action he confirmed my believes that adults are the worst sort of traitors towards children. Finally I stood up for myself, only to find that I was cornered again and had to pay the price- in the form of a harsh conversation with the head of the school shouting at me that ‘violence was not allowed in school’ and ‘what the hell I was thinking kicking that poor boy in his face’…

All the while he shouted at me I was thinking; why did I stop? I should have smashed the entire damned table in his face for what he’d done to me… Make him swallow the stupid chairs too…. But moments before that, between the for-mentioned table and the principle’s office my ‘heroism’ vanished in thin air and I could mumble not much more than an apology. ‘School’ was a head-on collision with a freight-train and it took me nearly 30 years to gather the scattered body-parts and put myself together again. Did something particularly well came of that, you ask? Well yes…mostly in hindsight. The bullying stopped for the last few months that were left of the 4 years that I was at that school. Later in life I gained quite some knowledge on social structures and hierarchy, how human interaction works, both positive and negative, victimizing, the importance of setting boundaries. It pushed me very far away from religion (God- any God for that matter- should not allow humans to treat each other in such despicable ways). I was invited to a school near my current town, a few years ago, to talk about my experience to a class of young people. That was a particular good thing. They followed a course on different sets of behavior, bullying was one of them. The teacher sort of interviewed me, I had a discussion with that class and heard their story’s.

This was the first time I heard a story from, in this case a girl, who had bullied herself. It was an eye-opener for me, ’cause this was the first time I heard a story from ‘the other side’. She had serious problems at home, didn’t understand her world anymore and just kicked around at everybody who didn’t stood up against her out of grieve and frustration. Bullying is a highly underestimated subject with long term problems following it’s tail. It calls for a lot more communication on the subject. Schools are the place where children learn. They (we) should learn more on humane communication, to say and accept ‘no’, to stand up for yourself and another. And surely parents are the first to teach a child decent behavior. Unfortunately, parents are only human too.