I didn't know you dated girls as well.

Just one, before I was certain of myself. Even then at the time. I was starting to question myself and we only got together because she was highly interested in me. There were questions I needed the answers to I guess.

Doesn't really play out too well if it's a girl.

The shitstorm that followed that little interlude will stay with me for a long time.

Despite being a very obvious black sheep, I have never been subject to any serious bullying, besides a couple of slightly insulting jokes, which oddly seemed to befall on other people more often than me.

Hoping next year will be equally peaceful.

I've fought girls a few times in my life. My grandpa, who was my father figure, was all about chivalry and treating women with the utmost respect. But when I was in third grade, a fourth grade girl named Casey Minks started picking on me. I told my teacher and mom about it, and they just chuckled and said that she had a crush on me, and I should try spending time with her. Of course being in the third grade I really had no romantic interest in girls, so the idea grossed me out. When I saw her, I'd run. She'd chase. Being small and wiry, I could haul ass. Eventually she'd always corner me. At first she'd just do something like shove me down and laugh, but it escalated.

She eventually took to beating the snot out of me. Seriously. I came home with a black eye and ripped jeans, and my grandpa asked me how big the other boy had been [remember, I was always under height and weight for my age], and when I told him it was a girl, he asked if I hit her back. I told him that I hadn't, because he had told me it was never okay. He told me he was proud of taking a licking and to try to run faster or give her flowers next time.

Well, she made me eat the flowers. And bloodied my nose. This went on for weeks. Finally, I don't know who got more tired of it, me or my grandpa, but I remember him telling me, "She doesn't like you. She's doing this because she's mean, you're small, and she's getting away with it. Hit her back."

So I did. I only hit her a couple of times, but that was enough. She left me alone.


My grandpa then told me that while a man should never strike a woman out of anger, there are certain situations in which a man simply must defend himself. He explained the difference between a warranted and unwarranted ass kicking being delivered by a woman, and when to simply lie down and take it.

Years later in my last year of high school a friend had a monthly party/kegger at his house. At some point we started a fight club of sorts in which the participants would put on boxing gloves and duke it out in the back yard to settle any grievances that they didn't want to handle on campus to avoid suspension/legal consequences. Anyway, one night I squared off with this miserable prick who had been irritating me for months. He initiated the fight, but I trounced him. After the fight when the gloves were off he kept running his mouth, which was against league rules, so I slapped him and escorted him out of the party. When I got back in, his girlfriend attacked me. Badly. She tried to hit me with an empty vodka bottle but missed my head and broke it on my shoulder. I still have the scar. She then clawed my face and tried to fish-hook me. So I slapped the piss out of her, put her in a full nelson, and tossed her mangy ass out of the front door. Not my best moment.

The other broad was just some crazy coked out skank my friend was banging. I made an off-handed comment that offended her way more than it should/than I intended, and she threw a plate at me. I ducked, it hit the wall and broke. She came at me, picked up one of the pieces and started slashing at me/the air. Grazed my forehead and cut me from my hairline down into my eyebrow. No slaps that time, I just punched her in the face. Crazy bitch could have stabbed me in the neck, and turning my back on her to run didn't seem like the smartest thing to do.

Oh, the company I've kept.

In my opinion bullies are the scum of the earth, funnily enough sometimes I wonder if I am a bully towards one of my friends...I mean he really brings everything that he gets on himself but nevertheless...can you even bully a friend?

Yes. And it's one of the worse kinds because the victim feels they can't speak out or it'll jeopardise the friendship.

Being the dominant one in a friendship kicks ass, but the power shouldn't be abused.

I'm not the dominant person in the group of close friends I am in, I'm near the top but I'm not at the top. And it's not just me, so I suppose it might be bullying...but what if he deserves it because usually he's an annoying prick who we allow to be around us because he doesn't really have any other friends?

This this this

Describes like five years of my life.

Also fucked me up emotionally because I was in love with him.

Wait you received abuse or you dealt it?

Just stop letting him hang around with you. I've been in the position of both host and parasite in groups of friends, and the relationship doesn't really benefit either party.

The guy you don't really like probably doesn't have that much in common with you, so he'll keep holding you back from doing what you really want to do.

He himself will be both a) rather bored when he finally gives in to the group and goes with you to do something he's not that interested in, and b) get really miserable when you ditch him in favour of someone you like more. And I'm not talking abandoning him in the woods here, it's small scale stuff like being asked to move from his seat next to you so someone you like more can sit down. That used to happen to me a lot until I finally buggered off to find a scene that fitted me better.

Also, when he finally cottons onto the fact that your friendship was a sham it's going to really fuck up his self-confidence.

Well, we do have things in common with him, almost as much as I do any one else but it's how he acts, it isn't sociable to be seen with him and in fact it lowers our 'image' if you'll excuse that disgusting term, I don't have much of an image but keeping away from him or slagging him off improves it. I know it sounds horrible but I'm trying to be honest. I don't think we should leave him by himself because he won't have any friends at school really...I don't think. More extreme members of my group would though.

I have never abused anyone in my life.

I'm a bully magnet, or at least I used to be.

I always thought of refusal to publicly acknowledge a relationship as a form of abuse.

No particular judgement on you, school social systems are tough, but it's just not very nice.

EDIT: WoF, that's the second time you Speedy Shit'd me!

D=

I am very sorry to here that! It disgusts me that people will abuse other people who wouldn't do anything of the sort to them or any one.

I went through the same thing aswell :(

I was victim to a couple of "keggings" where someone would try and pull both your trousers and your boxers down in front of a group of people. It happened nearly all the time in P.E when everyone was wearing looser jogging bottoms/shorts. The protection to this was to tie the string as tight as you could (I didn't have this string for quite some time) and shove your hands into your pockets and grab as tight as you could to stop them being hauled down. The first one to me was feeble, by this extremely large, oafish twat while we were waiting outside the changing rooms, and he only managed to pull them down a little, and didn't get the boxers, so I was lucky. The second time I wasn't so lucky... We were playing Basketball and this evil crap came up behind me and pulled both my trousers and my boxers down. I don't know how but no one witnessed this, which I was very glad of. I don't think I've ever been so scared in my life. :p Because I've been a big big pussy over the years, I did nothing to defend myself, which I regret oh so much.

HAHA! For some reason I always reacted to that very very quickly and nobody ever successfully managed to get my trousers and boxers down to my ankles.

That's sort of...Weird. I don't get why that would be embarrassing. I mean you guys are all in gym and have to change in front of each other anyway, right? Or was this done in front of the girls in the class? Either way, I still think it's odd.

We never had to take our underwear off, so showing our dicks to one another wasn't a normal thing to do. :p

I hated that part when doing swimming.....................

And to believe that a few days ago I was walking down the street naked with friends at 1am.................

EDIT: I was the only one naked

Back in high school, I had a friend who was pretty shy. She was a very nice, normal girl, intelligent, but not particularly annoying or uppity or anything.

But there was this other girl, let's call her Kara. She was also normal, intelligent, seemingly nice. But she had a hard-on for books. And not just any book.

Yup, Twilight.

So after Twilight was getting popular, Kara, who was a huge huge fan and read it "before it was popular" was basically evangelizing the thing to everyone. My friend wasn't a reader, but since she was on good terms with Kara, borrowed the book from her and said she'd try it.

So for the next few periods, my friend was basically harassed by Kara who wanted her to read it again and again, and eventually my friend basically said to hell with maths and read it during class. She made it about half a chapter and it bored her to tears, so she smiled at me and asked if I wanted to read it instead. I, having already read it, declined, and we went back to math problems. (teacher in this class was a total lazy fuck by the way).

So, it's afternoon, and we meet up with everyone to wind down. Cue Kara evangelizing to my friend, expecting another triumphant convert. My friend smiled, then handed to book to her.

"It was pretty boring."

Not the best choice of words.

Kara's face puffed up and her eyes practically bulged. She looked a little purple. She said okay and took the book away, and that was the end of it, we though.

But over the next few weeks, turns out Kara had moved the group's lunch spot without telling us. She'd spread some nasty rumours about my friend. Then we found out from the IT teacher that she'd posted something nasty on some now-defunct twilight forum. My friend didn't take this very well, as she was a pretty wimpy person. Me personally, I was just fuming at what a bitch Kara was. After this, apparently there were some other reactions, especially among some of our male friends, who also disagreed with Kara's antics, and my friend, myself, two guys and two girls basically had a talk about what to do. My friend decided the best thing would be to confront her directly and try to work it out....

So we did that. Kara flipped her shit. She took her fucking hardcover and thumped my friend in the head with it. After my friends pulled her away, I took my friend to the nurse's office for some ice. She watched as I then ran all the way back (bout half a K to senior school fucking layout) to the recess area with bloodshot eyes.

I kicked her in the shins and bashed her in the head with her own book. We were both dragged in to the principal's office. Principal is an idiot and the head of senior school was a pedantic fuck, so I texted my mother and refused to say anything until she arrived. My mother, as I've said before, is a workaholic scary black-wearing semi-sociopathic terror, and my friend's mother also backed me up.

So the two of us somehow got off with a detention!

But that wasn't the end of it.

Kara's boyfriend from another school approached me about a week later when I was walking home alone, and threatened me with a bunch of nonspecific things. I could see Kara glaring at me from his car up the road. The guy was kind of stupid, so I just said "Oh, you want my seester! she in school in school" is a fake-asian-accent. He even started to walk back down to the school before Kara furiously texted him. By that point I was waiting in line for the bus. So he runs at me, I kick him in the balls, and ride home.

My friend wasn't the only one though, I found out about a year later that Kara basically peer-pressure/bullied most of her friends into reading that fucking book. About half of them just played along, which my friend later told me we should have done in the first place.

Oh well, live and learn. At least I wasn't shot with a paintball gun again.

I avoided bullying through most of school, until the second year of middle school. He was a typical jackass who was held back a couple times, so he was big, ripped someone in their mid teens, and proud of his rather pathetic facial hair. I don't know what I did, but I pissed him off royal during lunch one day, and he spent the next few weeks constantly harassing me in school, and usually attacking me afterwards. It thankfully never went too far, worst that happened was a bloody nose and missing the bus home a few times.

Unfortunately, the following year and first two of high school I ended up becoming a bully myself. Unfortunate that I ended up starting the cycle again since a transfer student we used to pick on went on to harassing people himself the final year.

There was a little twat when I was in year six, the only year I was bullied proper and I managed to make him cry just by laughing at him when he threw a football at my face. I wish my parents hadn't gone to the teachers though because it alienated me from my small class for the remainder of the year really.

You guys don't have showers in your locker rooms? I know most schools don't have mandatory showers in gym class any more, but since it got into the triple digits in the summer, most of us would shower anyway. I don't know, just never seemed like that big of a deal.

Because some kids don't like to get undressed in front of other kids. Especially when so many kids are retarded and incite such intelligent comments such as, 'if you have a shower you are gay', it can put people of I expect.

I'm straight and I never shower.

Well I can understand the mentality if you're a kid, but I'm talking high school. Which I guess still makes you technically a kid, but puts you well into your mid-teens. I don't know, by the time I was in high school I was plenty interested in girls and chasing my fair share of tail, and nothing puts the brakes on that faster than smelling like armpits and sweaty balls after you get out of gym. So I showered. As did most people. Sure, you had a few people who would try to talk shit, you know, make comments about how 'gay' you were for showering, but it's like, "Hey fuckface, I'm cleaning myself up FOR THE LADIES. You want to smell like shit, by all means, improve my chances." And the retards who would try to talk shit about the size of another guys penis? Well, that actually DID seem a little gay. I mean...Why are you checking out another guys junk in the shower? And even if you're doing it just to see how you compare...Why are you talking about it...Loudly?

I don't know, it's the same thing when I go to the gym now. I shower there. Well, I have to shower there because you need to shower before you get into the jacuzzi and/or sauna, and you do see the odd weirdo in the communal showers in his bathing suit, but I personally just feel like we all have the same equipment to some degree, and it's just skin. Just get in, wash up, and get out. It's not like it's a social convention where you have to talk to anyone. It's only as awkward as you want to make it.

But I also really like hitting the sauna and jacuzzi after I work out, so.

No one in my year group showered, and as far as I know no one did in other years. I think it depends a lot on which school you go to (whether they made you or not) and whether the shower facilities were decent enough. The most people used the showers for in our changing rooms was to chuck people's bags under them and get them wet. It's weird I know, but it's just something our school didn't pick up.

Maybe the aversion to doing it in British schools is because you're there since you are a kid (11/12) so you never really change the habit, whereas in the US you go into high school at around 15 right? Less baggage.

Well our facilities were shit any way...they were good that is until the kids made them shit. And I agree with you DI in the respect that I really didn't care about being nude but everyone else did so in turn I never really went about in the noddy. Especially since the teachers might pop in at any moment.

Also, saunas are swell, jacuzzi's on the other hand...are the breeding ground of festering infections and diseases. I mean you are literally in an incubator containing all the right chemicals for viruses to take hold. Toe jam!

That's why you shower before you get in, silly.

Yeh but some people don't man. I just don't like them. I'd rather relax with a bath at home or sit in the sauna and bake in the quiet and relative privacy that they offer. Especially since everyone in a sauna seems to prefer to keep their heads down and shut up rather than talk to anyone who makes eye contact for a split second.

I went in a sauna when I went on holiday once. I hated it, the air made me uncomfortable. That was most likely because I was pretty young at the time. But because I itch like crazy when I get hot I doubt my feelings towards them will have changed.

In Strabane, which is about less than an hour from where I live, there's a sauna that has a reputation of being the 'gay sauna'.

Guys routinely go there to bone each other, and the owners either turn a blind eye or join in. I went there once before I was aware of it's status, I was completely oblivious to everyone's advances. I just kept thinking, "My god, everyone here is so great!"

So are you coming our or what?

At school they were like, supposed to be sunsmart so you needed a hat to do sports.

I just folded up my hat and shoved it under my shirt and skipped the whole deal.

For the most part, Australian schools don't have shower facilities, except for a few older and private institutions.

It was such a shame :(

Alcar...

We only used the showers after swimming, and even then we kept our shorts on. When getting changed the goal was to keep yourself covered otherwise somebody would vocally acknowledge that your treasure was on display which would then be followed by mocking. It was rather embarassing. But these days I wouldn't care.

We only had some really manky and not very good showers that in my entire time at the school (with it being the only school I ever went to before college) I never saw anybody use them.

And hoo boy did I get bullied. First had 1 guy who was bigger than everyone so would rough some of us up. Gave me an egg on my head for about 6 months. I found that if I retaliated he backed off so I started retaliating more, and not controlling my temper. Then, after 1 guy beat up a mate of mine over something very trivial I got in his face about it & shoved him, he retaliated by grabbing me by the neck and throwing me into a wall. This led to my becoming alienated slowly, and if I did lose my temper I'd just get picked on more.
For a period of around 4 years there wasn't anyone I could call a friend at that school, god knows why I didn't leave or tell someone. I mostly just recieved very large amounts of verbal abuse, but if I tried to stand up for myself I'd get shouted down, or if I tried to resist being physically excluded it'd lead to minor altercations. Thing was even if I came out on top it didn't stop it- I had 1 guy bigger than me on the ground in a guillotine choke hold that I only let go because I saw a teacher wasn't too far away and I didn't want to choke this guy in front of the teacher. He gets up after I let go, punches me and says not to piss him off, then struts off as if he won with everyone siding with him. People would conveniently forget having ever said certain things to me. 1 guy bullied me, and his best mate, who I was okay with, didn't have a clue why. Me neither.

Anyway the moment I took up a martial art, as a hobby more than anything, the bullying dropped off rapidly to just snide backhand comments. Still had no real friends, but there were a few guys I was okay with and a few who would be civil when the ringleaders weren't around. Of course I was too affected by it to properly make friends at college, since many of these people ended up going to my college, but I made some friends there, and since the fresh start of university have been fine. That said I did encounter an unpleasant character here, but we've brushed things over now.