Detail of Sculpture of David with the Head of Goliath, Andrea del Verrocchio
“He’s not supposed to fight back, he’s supposed to have thick skin.
He’s supposed to lay down and die when his door is kicked in.”
I got bullied a fair bit when I was a kid. Nothing horrible. A bunch of name calling. Some banal Jew hatred. The occasional shove. Every once in a while, some kid would get more physical.
In junior high school a small kid, probably six inches shorter than I picked me out to get hostile with for reasons I never understood. He started confronting me in the hallways. I wasn’t afraid of him. He was a tiny thing, but I didn’t want to fight. Well, maybe it wasn’t that I didn’t want to fight, I had no idea how to fight, having been raised a pacifist. I tried to flee but a school is a small place. There was nowhere to go. One day he decided to pursue me. I ran into the principal’s office, and he followed me in.
The principal talked with each of us separately. When I expressed complete bewilderment as to why this kid had it in for me, the principal told me that the kid had said I had called him “no neck.” When I continued to be confused, the principal explained that the kid had a deformity and had a very short neck. I hadn’t noticed this much less made a comment about it. The kid wasn’t on my radar. I couldn’t have told you his name. We had no classes together. We had never spoke a word to one another as I recall. If I had spoken to him, I certainly wouldn’t have insulted his disability and as I said, I wasn’t aware he had one.
The principal suspended us both. The other kid got three days off from school; I got one. The principal told my mom that he knew I had done nothing wrong, but he would be perceived as unfair if I got no punishment. I thought it would have more fair if I also had gotten three days off from school!
This kind of thing wasn’t too common. I am not claiming victimhood or blaming my current neurosis on the fact that I was bullied. But it did happen. Why? Who knows? There was something about me that attracted unwanted attention. I liked to read. I was uninterested in sports. I generally preferred hanging out with teachers to other kids. Maybe it was the fact that I didn’t seem to care that I was different that signaled to others that I thought I was somehow special.
If I am honest, I kinda did think that.
Fast forward a few years. I was 16 years-old and in high school. Another kid whose name I don’t remember (I think his last name began with a T) decided he didn’t like me and made me well aware of the fact on the bus, at school, and around the neighborhood. One hot summer afternoon I was walking to Jeppe’s Comic World in Catonsville to pick up the Marvel literary universe monthly haul when I saw T slouching toward me on the sidewalk of Edmondson Avenue.
I don’t have a great recollection of what happened next. It was nearly 50 years ago but I am pretty sure I didn’t start it. He blocked me or maybe shoved me and I, to my own surprise, did something I rarely or never did.
Perhaps it was nascent levels of testosterone racing through my bloodstream. Perhaps the heat of the day had made me irritable. Maybe I was channeling my favorite Marvel superhero the Hulk. Maybe, I’d just had enough. I shoved him back as hard as I could (which was likely not very hard by any objective measure). We ended up in a bit of a tussle right there on the sidewalk. I had taken wrestling for a few years at the J and I tried to get him in the forbidden full nelson head lock. I failed miserably. I was a lousy wrestler. Plus, he had the advantage of me in size, strength, and without a doubt fighting experience.
Then it was over. He got up. I got up. He looked at me for a moment and laughed. Then turned around and continued his way as if nothing had happened.
I was physically unhurt. No black eye. No blood. Not even a bruise that I recall. I dusted myself off and continued to the comic bookstore and picked up the stack of comic books, The Avengers, The Fantastic Four, and X-Men and walked home.
I don’t think I ever told anyone what had happened. It was too humiliating. Not just being bullied, though certainly that. But also, the fact that I had been drawn into his filthy squalor, his moral vacuity. I felt sullied by being forced to brawl with this excuse for a person. T was not someone I hated, didn’t even dislike really. He barely registered as an entity on my mental map of the universe. I had understood that I had no choice but to fight back but I didn’t feel great about it nor did I feel I had acquitted myself well enough to serve as a deterrent to any future harassment.
But here’s the funny thing. T never bothered me again. I don’t remember him ever saying a single word to me or even making eye contact with me again. Nor was I ever in another fist fight. In fact, I have no recollection of being bullied again after that day, at least not physically.
It has become a cliché to point out that bullies are cowards, but it is, of course, true. Bullies generally aren’t looking for a fight. They just want to appear tough. They want to push around those who won’t resist. They want others to fear them. They want to strut about and make themselves look big and important without putting in the work of gaining respect through courage, discipline, and virtuous behavior (understandable since being virtuous is a poor predictor of being respected).
Most of the time just appearing to be ready to stand up to them is enough to discourage aggression. But occasionally, you will meet a bully who finds your very existence to be an affront. One who thinks that the fact that you are different means you think you are better than they. Who is willing to consume resources that they need for their own subsistence if it will make you suffer. Whose story of identity is grounded in destroying you at all costs. Who sees your existence as the explanation for all their failures. And who is itching to fight with little or no provocation.
Bullies of this sort understand only the use of force and sometimes even need to be roughed up a tad until they are forced to consider that maybe, just maybe God is not on their side.
So, when that kid like that comes toward you as if they own the sidewalk, be ready to throw a punch if but only if you must. And if you do have to take a swing, hit him as hard as you can. Even if it sullies you to do it. Even if it is at odds with your story of the essential good in everyone. Even if you know the bully and his buddies will claim that you started it and that lots of folks, even well-meaning ones, will believe him.
When it’s over get up and go on your way. Maybe you won’t need to do it again. Perhaps the one bout will be enough to teach him the lesson: that you have as much right to walk around the neighborhood as he does, that you will stand up for yourself, that you won’t be intimidated, that fleeing is not an option. Especially if there is nowhere to go.
The world’s a narrow bridge; fear nothing.