Have you ever been bullied or are you a bully?

I have never bullied anyone, but yes, I was seriously bullied in middle school.
My father was an Architect for the BIA and built schools and hospitals all over the Southwest.
We moved to Albuquerque for a 2 yr. project from CA. when I was in 7th & 8th grade. I was the only little blonde, blue eyed gringo girl in a school of hispanics and native americans and I was bullied to the point that I refused to go to school and was sent back to CA. to live with my grandparents for the remainder of the project length.

The hispanic and indian boys were attracted to me and the girls wanted to kill me. It was a very traumatic experience and goes to show that racism is a multi-colored coat.
Marcia Brady did not fit in on the reservation. haha

@Coloma It sounds like a clear case of jealousy, your experience sounds very traumatic indeed but you seem to have got through..Bullies always find something, anything to pick on that’a what they do.

@Safie It was, but ancient history now. Unlike a lot of kids today though it never crossed my mind to commit suicide, I just wanted out of that environment. It was major culture shock and having led a pretty sheltered life it was my first experience with bullying. It made a lasting impression.

I never got bullied….mostly because I had no problem with hitting someone for talking shit.

There was this one time when a little kid said if I didn’t give him my sweets, he was going to beat me up.
I refused & kicked him so hard up the arse, he now wears it for a hat.
I was 27 at the time, but don’t consider either incident as bullying, just two dudes seeing who could piss highest.

When my family moved to the US my English was passable, but not on par with the rest of the kids at school. I was the first Asian in my school district and it was during the Vietnam conflict. I was often bullied and beaten a few times. When my Mother went to the school to complain, she was laughed at, but when my father went in things got better for a time.

I was both, I think?

When I was 9, me and a friend made fun of a girl in our ballet class over a physical characteristic of hers. I didn’t realise how bad we made her feel until she cried and went to the teacher. I felt awfully guilty after that (when I thought about it and realised I was kind of a scumbag.) There was a similar incident a couple of years later – I guess I was a very immature and thoughtless kid.

As a teen, I was sorted into a class where most of the girls were vastly different – very into boys and fashion – while I just wanted to read books and play videogames and wear baggy pants. The bullying was very subtle. They excluded me and made me feel like I didn’t belong. There was a terrible time when I had to do a project with my biggest bullies; a meeting was arranged at one of their homes and they went shopping instead, leaving me waiting outside the door for hours because no one was home.

@majorrich That is just terrible. but it was some consolation that things got a little better when your father went in…Bullies are actually cowards to say the least, Thanks for sharing your experience.

I was horribly bullied my junior year in high school. This one boy (and his group of cohorts) would make noises every time I walked down the hall past them. They tormented me for the entire school year. Then, in the spring, our school did a computer matching dance. One of my matches was the bully’s lieutenant. We came face to face with other, turned on our heels and walked to opposite sides of the room never to speak of it again. I only got out of the situation because my Dad was transferred and we moved and I went to a different high school in a different state.

I was bullied in grade school and middle school for being awkward, quiet and shy.

I’ve never bullied anyone. I can’t even kill a spider.

I was bullied a little bit when I was in elementary school for being very small and for hanging out with girls. That did not last long and by the time I got to middle school, people saw my [lack of] size as something endearing rather than something worth mocking.

In elementary school, I was more of a bully of bullies. On two separate accounts, I pinned down two kids who were bullying my friends and made them apologize.
We actually all ended up being good friends. Ha.

In junior high, this one girl threatened to jump me after school. I laughed in her face. I asked her if she was going to try to do it by herself, because I was friends with the rest of the people in her “crew”.

Other instances, kids have tried to bully me, mimicking a foreign language. I laughed at them and said Yeah, I do speak that language and I also speak English better than you. I’ll tutor you some time.

My husband says I’m a bully when I deal with my family though. He’s probably not entirely incorrect. But I feel like they don’t respond to a gentler method.

I was bullied in school, mostly for being dirt poor. And at work a few years ago. But I’m the kind of person who if you bully, you’ll just look like an idiot since I don’t react. Unless it gets physical, then fuck that, I’m not gonna just sit there and take it.

I was pretty much an unashamed nerd as a kid. Looking back on photos of myself I don’t think I brushed my hair ever and my fashion sense was pretty questionable. I was aggressively true to myself and all my weirdness and didn’t feel any need to hide any of it. This started getting me bullied around age 10, exclusively by “popular” girls. I had several very mean pranks played on me and was pretty much just the butt of their jokes for awhile.

This launched me right onto the opposite end of the spectrum and as a preteen I cared about what people thought of me more than I cared about pretty much anything else. I craved acceptance and I wanted to fit in and be “normal” but I started recognizing how socially awkward I was and got insecure about that.

Not proud to say that I swung over into being a bit of a bully myself for some time, in an attempt to fit in, I guess. There were a few kids who were weirder than me at my school and I guess I thought if I could put somebody else down it would raise me up. Wish I had turned to them with friendship instead.

By high school I had found a new strategy which was to be as quiet and small and unremarkable as possible. I pretty much just flew right under the radar through high school.

I have never been bullied. But every fight I ever got into as a young person was fighting a bully. I was always taught by my mother and father to help the weak and to stand up for people that couldn’t stand up for themselves.

I am now close to 60 years old, and still hate a bully. And my son’s were raised to be the same way.

I was bullied. Now I find trace evidence of that in my own MO sometimes. It has taken a lot of work to get rid of some of the ways I would talk to my own wife. I’m still not all there – but what floored me was years ago when she told me that verbal abuse was worse than physical abuse. I, of course, thought at first – “What? Who cares? Kids know about the whole sticks and stones thing – what’s the big deal? Why are people pansies?”

Over the years I’ve realized the damage that can be caused – and in many ways it is far worse than physical abuse.

I’m not comfortable with hitting enter and telling you how horrible I’ve been, but I’m in a stage in my life where brutal honesty is one of the few things I’ve got left – so there you have it. =)

I was the easy target. 6’ and 120 pounds in high school. And I have big ears.

The bullying started in the third grade. There was a dude that wore a some fancy tour de France racing hat. Used to physically assault and berate me when cool kids were around.

Didn’t help that I got pushed off into GIFT

Long story short this went on through high school. In high school it was pretty much a daily thing to be slammed into a locker or wall while a future frat boy screamed “faggot”..

I can’t say that I miss high school.

I’m kinda really mean to my brother sometimes… but he’s also mean so it’s probably just sibling rivalry.

I never bullied kids in school, but I think in grade school kids attempted to bully me? That’s because I was really annoying and pissed everyone off though. I never really cared about what they had to say, it made me laugh. To be honest I kind of deserved it haha

Not physically, but I think everyone is bullied to some extent. I went to a school that didn’t have a lot black people, so I was made fun of for being black, and also made fun of for being black while having white person demeanor AKA being a nerdy white-black guy.

I was bullied in high school, but not in a way you know it.

I was considered non-existened. In my class I belonged to no group, not even a group of two. Whenever there was a class discussion, I was only assigned to a group one everyone had settled down since they were all reluctant to take me in. During lessons, whenever I answered questions of the teachers, they tried to act as if they didn’t listen. In any activity, I was always assigned the worst job, just to make sure everyone had something to do, like recording the class’s play with a classmate’s phone so that she could post it on Facebook (I had no role in the play whatsoever). You can never find my face in any class photos, no matter where I stood.

Makes me glad I’m out of that place.

I’ve never been a bully. All the bullying I saw in school was a major concern for me, and I still cringe at some of the things other students or teachers did. I was bullied a little, from age twelve to age fifteen.

I could copy/paste @Mariah‘s first paragraph, as it describes my childhood self perfectly. Only difference: I was bullied by a group of boys, and okay with the girls. I also did not go on to try and fit in. I still don’t care much for make-up, fashion, drinking and partying. I did, however, get much better at making friends. I highly doubt I’d be bullied today, if I was still in school.

I was “bullied” in the way most kids are “bullied,” with an ocassional mean comment from asshole kid, but nothing that went on for an extended period of time or involved anything awful.

I was never a bully.

Bullying is one of those things that I really despise. I don’t recall being successfully bullied as a child, but I do remember successfully challenging kids who tried to bully me. Similarly, just a year ago someone at work tried to bully me into taking on more work. It didn’t work, and it wasn’t a good look for them when I took it and their bullying behaviour to my boss. I didn’t accuse them of bullying. I didn’t need to. I just explained what was said, done and why I wasn’t prepared to accept that behaviour. I will not put up with being bullied and I can’t bear to watch it. It’s one of those things that will always make me come out to defend the person being bullied.

I was bullied by a group of girls for two years at school. I never did find out why but it was the stereotype “mean girl” type of bullying. When they got bored of me they started doing exactly the same to another girl and then another after that.

When I was very young (6 or 7 years old) I was part of a group of kids on the school bus who would bully a boy (we would make fun of him and generally wind him up by poking him, pulling his hair and stealing his glasses – little shits.) The bus driver reported it to the school and our parents were all informed. My parents made sure I got my comeuppance!