What was your relationship to the child everyone made fun of in school?

I was the fat kid – actually, I was the fat boy. There was also the fat girl. Man, it sucked. I had to quickly learn how to fight, and I was able to get pretty good at extracting blood from people on the playground.

Probably because of this, I also would sometimes play the role of sticking up for the other kids who were picked on for some reason. There was a kid who we all thought was mildly “retarded” (term of the time). I recall having to smash some faces into pavement to stick up for that kid a few times.

Note: I’m 6’2” and 175lbs right now. Nobody believes me until I show them the photos of the fat blob I was.

At primary school there was a boy in our class who smelled. He lived out in the country on a farm and the smell was so bad that no one wanted to be friends with him. He was always bottom of the class. He wasn’t picked on or bullied but ignored by just about everyone, including me. I can see him yet and remember his face and name but have no idea what became of him.

In Russia, when I began school, I was the popular kid since I was a natural leader and they loved that and my big brother was in school with me. Once we came to America, I was bullied endlessly for my clothing and my lack of English and was beaten up. Sadly, once I gained friends, I bullied others ‘cause I was so alone inside and wanted to fit in. Once in high school, I was the protector of all the bullied kids, the one to stand up to everyone for all those they hated. Still am like that.

I was the little nerd that everyone made fun of.

I wore HUGE glasses and nobody liked to be around me because I was a teacher’s pet.

I was just nice to them. I wouldn’t necessarily say they were my friends,I stood up for them when I could, but that was about the extent of it.
I remember one girl who was slow, I’m not sure exactly what what wrong with her, but she was the sweetest girl you could ever imagine and she was beaming with confidence. She had a gorgeous singing voice, and kids used to have her sing for everyone… to make fun of her, not to enjoy her singing. I never understood that, because she really did have a beautiful voice. Anyhow, that girl died my junior year, from an aneurysm, and I’ll tell you what.. you would not believe how many people showed up at that funeral. I’ve never seen anything like it to this very day, and I’ve been to a lot of damn funerals. Guilt is a powerful thing.

Usually I sat back and felt sorry, but occasionaly I would stand up for them, although I wasn’t their friends. I just saw a wrong being committed. My friends and I were pretty neutral in high school. We weren’t popular and weren’t made fun of as much as people that got it really bad. But everyone is made fun of for something.

There was the girl who was very quiet and reserved, very much a lone wolf. She dressed a bit unusually and worked very hard in school and I guess for most assholes people that was as good a reason as any to pick on her.

I could see that, despite coming off a bit unfriendly because of how shy she was, she never meant any person a bit of harm and was simply not your average cookie-cutter high school girl. I don’t think I ever managed to be a true friend to her, we were never close partially due to laziness on my part, a lack of common interests, and a seeming inability to open up to anyone on her part, but I did at least attempt to make an effort to show her some friendliness.

Then she ended up having a cancer scare during our junior year, while I was simultaneously going through a really horrible ulcerative colitis flareup. I think there was a mutual sense of camraderie while we both went through difficult times. She sent me a houseplant and I sent her a card in which I told her very clearly that I thought she was a very sweet girl, and that I knew that she didn’t like to open up much, but that I was always available if she did want to talk. She never did take me up on my offer, so I do wonder from time to time if the gesture made her uncomfortable, but I like to think that she at least appreciated my benevolent intentions, when most other people were so hostile towards her.

I went to a really small school, my graduating class was 50, and I don’t remember anyone picking on one student. We all kind of got along.

There was no such kid, not in a singular sense anyway. Tons of kids had the piss ripped out of them, nobody died. In fact the whole business, it could be argued, built character. Survival instinct kicking in & all that shite.

I was homeschooled from 3–5 grade. Then I went topublic school in sixth and seventh grade, and I was just so weird, so of course I was teased.
I most likely deserved it. Haha.

I don’t really remember there ever being “the kid” that was picked on. Lots of kids were picked on, including me, for many different reasons. I was always the girl with only one or two friends (that number maybe went up to 5–7 in high school) and those friends were a lot like me—we kept to ourselves and didn’t bother with anybody else.

Well, in primary school I was the kid that got picked on, in secondary school I’m confident enough to choose my friends by my judgment rather than others, and so I’ve made friends with a couple of the nerdy/goofy/teacher’s pet types. Let’s just say nobody bothers to mess around with them if they’re with me.

In sixth grade, I was the kid who everyone made fun of. I was a in the TAG program (talented and gifted) and all of my teachers loved me. I was called a “faggot” pretty often and kids would tell me that I should just kill myself, and things like that. Gym class was the worst. The skaters and football players would team up to harass me in the locker room every chance they got. They would surround me and hurl sexual epithets at me Luckily for me, I was very physically strong, despite my appearance, and I used this to my advantage to end my torment one day. The leader of my bullies was behind me as I changed in the locker room and he went about his usual business of calling me horrible names, telling me I should kill myself, and so on. I turned around, shoved him into a locker, and told him that I would choke him out if he didn’t leave me alone.

Strangely enough, nobody really bothered me all that much after that. When highschool rolled around, I became very popular and everything was hunky-dory after that.

I also knew a younger kid when I was in 7th grade who everyone picked on. His name was Ben and everyone spread rumors that he was gay and called him “Ben Dover.” People would also say that he would try and “hump” you if you got too close. He was a small kid with a bright, somewhat effeminate face, and he was very genuinely nice. I watched him get picked on all the time, but I decided to befriend him. People would ask me all the time why I was hanging out with him. The word “faggot” was thrown around a lot more, of course, and one guy was planning on beating up Ben. This was after I shoved the head bully into the locker, so I used this to my advantage. I found the guy who was threatening Ben and told him I would ruin his shit if he touched him. Most of the bullies left Ben alone after that, but he wound up transferring to another school because it was still too much for him to deal with.

In the end, I hate bullies with the intensity of a thousand suns, and I hate people who prey on the weak. In regards to my personal beliefs on the matter, I have borrowed a little bit from the Sikh religion, which mandates that you don’t stand idly by while someone weak is being hurt by the strong. As evident, I was not, and am not, opposed to using or threatening violence to defend someone if I think it is necessary, even though I am usually a serene individual. That’s the only language that many bullies understand, unfortunately.

I was the weird nerd back in elementary school, who people learned not to screw with because the little weird nerd would have his weird nerd revenge soon after (ranging from antagonizing the school bully to punch me in front of the principal which resulted in his expulsion to throwing a beehive into the restroom shortly after the original antagonist enters to super gluing their feet to the floor in the middle of class since the desk arrangement allowed me to crawl underneath them without any notice). In high school (which was in a different town due to my dad having to relocate), I was one of the kids that fit in with nearly every crowd and at the same time was generally someone people didn’t want to fuck with.

@King_Pariah I’m so sorry I laughed at you dude. Please don’t superglue me to this seat…

@MilkyWay different plans miss. >=D

One of the girls in junior high was very fat and people (boys and girls) would call her mean names. She was in my gym class and I really liked her. She was really funny and nice and we had a lot of interests in common. We used to jog and walk around the track together. In fact, she and I had a group of chubby girls that used to hang around together. I was skinny as a bean pole and had embarrassingly white legs. We all just tried to band together and not let the nasty names bother us.

Another girl had very greasy hair and a lot of kids avoided her. She was one of the smartest kids in school and was very nice. I liked her and we were friends, not close friends, but we always talked to each other in class, where other kids would not talk to her. I always felt sorry for her, but I was too shy back in those days to even have any kind of a discussion with her about her hair. Actually, back then I would have thought it particularly rude to even bring up that subject. I never did know why she seemed to never wash her hair, or if there was something else going on at home.

That kid made fun of me.

From grade three to seven, there was this guy that was teased all that time. He was super tall, and in the later years had a real bad acne problem. He also wasn’t very good at any subject. Inevitably, he was a target for many. However, one thing he could do well was punch some fucker’s lights out when the glass overflowed. I had no relation with him, and I didn’t tease him. People did respect him a little more after they saw him fight.

Which is kinda sad.

I was teased a lot too, for being a poor person in a middle class people school lol.

@Symbeline I figured that you would be the person that was teased for being too awesome in a world full of ninnies, dodos, douche bags and dumb sh*ts. : ) Rock on girl!

@Kardamom Hey! Not all middle class people are what you said above! :P

Like @tinyfaery, there wasn’t really one person who was picked on. People were picked on variously for various reasons. I was picked on in elementary school by other boys periodically for having friends that were girls. I knew someone who was picked on for being fat, others for being geeky, some for being quiet, some for being weird, others for being dumb, etc.

Let’s just say that I can only think of one instance where I made fun of someone for something they couldn’t help. I did it to fit in with the crowd and I felt so bad about it afterward that I cried about it, away from school.I did finally get the chance to apologize to this person and I never did anything like that again. I was the little kid who cried easily and hated seeing people upset or made fun of. Granted I am a little hardier now, but I used to be quite sensitive. Making fun of people was not something I was accustomed to.

I was the kid who could talk to anyone, no matter how ostracized they were. And I did that. I would talk to anyone. I remember in middle school having a decent conversation with one of the most hated and ridiculed girls in school. I’m not trying to brag, but that really was something I was good at, talking to anyone. For that reason, I avoided making fun of people, and I tried to get to know as many people as I could, no matter what others thought of them. It didn’t mean that I was best friends with all the “misfits”, but it meant that while others would avoid certain people or laugh at them, I would try and talk to them and get to know them, if nothing else, at least on the surface.

I was that kid. I lived in a trailer park, had “free” (poor kid) lunches, lived on food stamps, lesbian mom, gifted program, fat. I guess it was in the cards.

Mostly I just tried to stay out of everyone’s way, but that’s hard to do when people come looking for you, or wait after school to beat you up. It eased up a bit in high school, but no one wanted to go out with me. Well, one guy did – the other fat nerd. We ended up being boyfriend and girlfriend, and we missed being Homecoming King and Queen by like 15 votes because enough people wrote us in as a joke. That would have shown them!

Later on, I married another supersmart loner-geek of the sci-fi variety. I hate to tell y’all this, but nerds really ARE better. ;)

I was the kid that was made fun of. Being shy and a thumb sucker didn’t help.:D Fortunately I evolved from that ugly duckling to the beautiful swan…..and lived happily ever after.

Because I was a loner myself, I tended to gravitate toward those who were ostracized. At least in elementary school and junior high. By high school, I think I was too overtaken by trying to fit into what was the “norm” to have associated with the truly “odd” ones. As an adult, I’m attracted to folks who don’t fit the mold.

I started school at age 3 in Alabama and the kids at that school were mostly very accepting of each other. There were moments where one of the kids would bite or hit, but the bullying was incidental, not persistent, so nobody was a target. This was an all-deaf school, so none of us felt disabled or different. Wonderful memories!

Then… I moved to Florida and became one of the first “included” kids in my district. I’m a product of the original IDEA law, that allows children with disabilities to be integrated into the mainstream. It’s a wonderful concept… the idea of allowing all children to mingle, reduce stigma, reduce rejection, teach kids to be included. They are put in their “least restrictive environment.”

I said concept and I mean concept. Because, in practice, unless a child happens to be at school with a high number of amazing, patient, caring, tolerant and understanding peers, staff and teachers, the utopic ideal is a pipe-dream. Everyone who’s been through public school knows how mean middle school kids can be, and how cliquey high school kids are.

I loved school and school’s always been my sanctuary, but there were moments growing up that the only lesson I came home with everyday was how broken and undesirable I was as a “disabled” kid (so much for ‘least restrictive’). I was in the TAG program and usually in the top 2 or 3 of my class, so I didn’t fit the stereotypical “dumb disabled kid” so that didn’t help one bit. That didn’t stop me though—it was my daily mission to “beat those damn hearing kids” in the one way I knew how—honors classes and grades. I made sure that I stayed in the top 10 of my class of +600 in high school.

I still got pushed into lockers, stared at, giggled at, or ignored, but I didn’t back down. One of my proudest moments was getting into an actual physical fight with one of the biggest girl in the school who was pushing my 89 pound friend into the wall, jabbering at her while her friends laughed, thinking it was funny to yell at a deaf kid. I preferred to fight than to be ignored—being nonexistent was worst than anything. I was also the neighborhood target—couldn’t go outside to play without a group ganging up on me- I knocked down a 15 year old boy when I was 9 for making fun of my friends.

So much of my energy was put into proving that I was capable that I didn’t have time or energy left to develop an identity until I went back into an all-Deaf school for my senior year. Suddenly, I was not disabled anymore, but could have a normal (least restrictive!) adolescence; be a cheerleader, class president, talk with my teacher and peers without an intermediary filtering my thoughts and words, flirt between classes, argue, make up, and just be another self-absorbed teenager.

But, at the deaf school… ha… I wasn’t ‘deaf enough’ so was not really accepted, plus I was a teacher’s pet and still very bookish, but it was a hell of a lot better than being “included.” Thank God for college!! THAT was fun!

XD thanks for reading my wall ‘o’ text!

I mostly kept to myself all through school, so I was usually above the fray. But there was a boy in my junior high who I had an odd acquaintance with. He was small, incredibly geeky, and crazy smart. Mostly I played chess and talked technology with him, but there were a few times when I teased him and roughed him up a little.

That was almost 40 years ago, but I had always carried a twinge of shame about those hazing episodes. I had completely lost contact with him, but I imagined that he had gone on to do amazing things with that brain of his.

A couple of years ago, an old school friend managed to dig up this guy’s contact info, and passed it on to me. I emailed him. He had indeed done well for himself in the aerospace industry, then as a designer of competition-grade golf equipment. He held many patents. I finally just dumped on him all of the guilt I’d felt all those years. Turns out he had remembered none of it. It did feel wonderful, though to unload that burdon.

[mod says] This is our Question of the Day!

I was that child.

There was one boy who was constantly picked on in elementary school. His name is Ian. I was usually the bystander but one day, while I was with my older sister, we both taunted him. He didn’t react. I walked away from that experience feeling an enormous amount of guilt (that I still feel to this day when I think about it).

The next day I went up to him and I apologized and talked to him.

I never teased another person after that. We moved and then I became the target of bullying. I just ignored them.

Some tried to made fun but I really didn’t care and after a while they stopped. But i was friend with most of them outcasts.

I didn’t bully others. I was nice.
I was a shy kid and some would try to bully because of that.That all changed during break one day when I was in the 6th grade.
I was challenged by a girl who was a sports nut to an arm wrestle. I nailed her fist to the desk in a matter of seconds.
I then had to arm wrestle every one in the class,girls and boys both.I put them down one by one and when I got to the last two,the biggest boys in class,I beat the one…barely, and then was beat by the last guy.It took him awhile though.
I will never forget that and I did not get bothered again in a bullying way. :)

In my school, it was the “poor kid” who everyone made fun of. But really, I should say it was the poorest kid. The richest kid in the school was still in the dead center of the middle class. What I always found strangest was that it was the not-quite-as-poor kids who picked on him the most. Sometimes he was made fun of just for being poor, sometimes for his clothes, and sometimes for things that had nothing to do with money. He had just become a target for anything. I didn’t really have anything to do with him. I didn’t make fun of him, and I didn’t stick up for him. He was just there.

Then I came out, and he and I traded places. I became the most acceptable target, and he just sort of disappeared from people’s minds. He didn’t make fun of me, and he didn’t stick up for me. We were just two people who were aware of one another, but weren’t in the same grade and we weren’t around each other much.

@Uberwench concisely put, that blows.

I was teased on and off for various things, but it all came down to not being cool enough. Being fat was the reason for a couple of years, then it was being shy, then smart, then it was not joining in the mainstream crowd when my friends switched to the in-crowd. The popular boys in the grade above me especially liked giving me hell. They would call my house and pretend to be a boy from another school who wanted to go out with me, or they would call and say hateful things, or just call and hang up over and over.

I was never mean to anyone as far as I can recall. Mostly I was so uncomfortable, shy and nervous all the time that I tried to avoid everyone. I got embarrassed very easily. Given the right circumstances, such as being in gym with a couple of uncool kids and getting to know them, I would become friends with them. I was ostracized for that as well.

There was a boy with Turret’s and I was an aide for the learning disabled teacher for one period each day. I ended up helping him with his homework every day. Then I was put beside him in science to help him. I did finally stick up for him.

Everyone finally left me alone around 10th grade. Somehow I managed to float around on the edges of all the groups, accepted but not really part of the clique. I got along with almost everyone.

Watching someone’s face fall in devastation because they aren’t considered good enough is one of the saddest things I’ve seen.

I was teased a bit, from about fourth grade to sixth. I wasn’t the kid everyone made fun of, though, not by a long shot. But I was still called “nerd”, “faggot” or “fat” by a couple classy individuals. I’ve since thinned out. Seventh grade was roughly when all that stopped happening, and I saw kids who really got picked on. I tried to stick up for them whenever they got teased, but in hindsight, I didn’t do nearly as much as I should have. At that point, I guess I was just glad that I wasn’t the one getting bullied. Sadly, one kid in particular was picked on so much that he ended up just going to cyber school. I still feel like there was something I could’ve done.

She was my best friend for 10 years…..

In elementary school, I was the picked on kid. I was (relatively) smart, quiet, loved to draw. Despite playing baseball for years, I wasn’t really into sports. I became the target of a couple of kids and it snowballed from there. I would take it and take it until I’d finally snap and break something or lash out. The school sent me to a counselor as a result. It was so horrible that by the time I got to middle school, I stopped talking to everyone, never rode the bus (opting instead to walk three miles to school alone).

But then, everything changed. The summer before highschool I met a whole different group of kids from a neighboring town who (surprise) liked me as I was. What’s more, a couple of them actually looked up to me and asked me advice. It was liberating.

But when high school started, I was back with the old crowd and was a nervous wreck.

Two unexpected things happened the first week of high school though. First, I saw one of the kids who had picked on me for years getting bullied by older kids. This helped me understand the whole bullying cycle better. Then some random kid (I didn’t know) was taunting me at the top of a stairwell. He wouldn’t let me pass and was stabbing at me with a pencil. I got really upset, but instead of snapping (as I did in the past), I grabbed the pencil from his hand and tossed him down the stairs – in front of a bunch of other students. I felt horrible, but No one ever picked on me again.

I managed to avoid the whole thing, for the most part. Sure, I’ve been called gay and a fag before relentlessly by a certain individual who turned out to be gay. I was also labeled as a goth in middle school by the same guy, it never caught on, but was intended to be insulting. Instead it was mildly amusing at first and then just annoying. Aside from that, though, I never really noticed it and was pretty much oblivious to it except for the extreme cases, probably because I was very much an introvert and had a tendency to ignore most of my classmates I don’t actually recall, though...

I was a background character for most of my k-12, though I did get some low-grade bullying in 3 and 4. I enjoyed a sort of celebrity status in 7–8 for being The American Kid At School. They stopped using me as a mobile English class supplement in high school. During my junior and senior years of high school I spent lunch either with my books or with the nerds/outcasts.

I’ve never had a lot of friends. My best friend in high school was very popular. She was a cheerleader, played softball and did all kinds of extracurricular activities. The other few friends I had were the misfits, the ones that got teased, made fun of and called names. I always hung out with them. Sat with them at lunch and in class. In 6th grade, a boy tried to tag me with a nickname but it never stuck. I’m not sure why. I was definitely in the lower class, I’m average looking and have always been curvy (minus the boobs, they’re average too LoL) I was free game by association but for some reason, they never picked on me.