Bullies

Greetings.

A few weeks back I went on a rant here about a kid in my math class who is Army ROTC and who is also more socially inept than Bobby Boucher (you know, The Waterboy). I went on and on about how annoying this kid is, and how I had to explain to him the purpose of the strict military rule he was under. Well, today I kind of went full circle.

The kid is still annoying, don't get me wrong, but I was ready to fight to defend him earlier today. He came into class and told me that he thought of a joke. He proceeded to tell the joke, which was too dumb for me to repeat here, and then said that he thought it should be on a Laffy Taffy wrapper. I politely listened, but didn't really respond to his joke.

A few minutes later he told the same story to another guy who had just walked in. As he started, a bully in the row in front of me said "Shut... Up!" several times, just loudly enough so that everyone could hear him but not loudly enough to be directly speaking to the kid. The kid either didn't hear him or was just ignoring him and went on with his joke (almost word for word the way he told it to me). After he got to the Laffy Taffy part, the bully said something like "I'm gonna' put your mom's face on a Laffy Taffy wrapper." This whole thing had me fuming.

I hate bullies.

This idiot bully is about 19-20 years old. He walks into class every day with a black bandana around his neck - you know, outlaw style - and his all black hat turned backwards with the bill straight. He tries really hard to impress the girls he sits next to by making fun of the professor all the time, and by acting dumber than he really is (which is actually quite difficult, I imagine).

Today, his sole aim was making himself look like the big cool kid in the room by rudely pointing out how socially inept the kid is. It was bullying. Plain and simple. And what's worse, it was passive-aggressive bullying. The guy didn't even have the balls to speak his mind to the kid's face - he just had to say it loud enough so that everyone else could hear it - especially the girl next to him.

I was fuming over this. I was waiting for him to actually say something to the kid - then I was going to let him have it. I was going to point out exactly how immature and ridiculous his little passive-aggressive routine was. And after that I was going to wait for him to puff up even more and threaten me - at which point I would mock him some more (making sure to let him know that if he so much as laid a finger on me I would destroy the rest of his life). I do this kind of thing in my head whenever conflicts arise. I always like to have a plan, and I HATE bullies.

Fortunately, nothing more happened. The kid didn't hear the rude comments and the bully didn't press the issue - which meant that I didn't feel like putting my neck out there to press the issue.

Then the irony hit me. A few weeks ago I was ranting about this kid, and now I was preparing for physical violence in defense of him. What the hell? Am I a bully, too? Well, no. I'm not.

For those of you wondering what kind of mental gymnastics I had to go through in order to arrive at this conclusion, fear not. I will tell you. When I went on my rant about this kid, I also had an actual conversation with him in which I said all of the things to him that I was ranting about. Therefore, the differences between me and the bully are:

1. I said my peace TO THE KID'S FACE! Not to the air in hopes that he might hear it and wonder who said it.
2. I said my peace POLITELY! My goal was not to make the kid look stupid (he does a fine job of that on his own) and myself look cool. My goal was to help him out by letting him know the flaws in the things he was saying. There's just no need to be rude.

So there you have it. I still feel like I can hate bullies - being fairly confident that I am not one myself. If any of you have any thoughts to the contrary, please be sure to let me know immediately, so that I can kick my own ass and knock myself down a peg or three.

I am the Reverend Humpy and I have approved this message.