A Post About Bullies/Bullying, Serious, Probably TMI, So What.

Two notes before proceeding:

A, this is a touch personal, not my usual rant when I am merely homicidally annoyed with the universe, but something I feel like saying. Feel free to blow it off here if you are looking for boats, cats, and bigfoots.
And 2, this is a TED talk about bullying. Before you watch this video, warning - at least in my case, it dredges up some bodies I thought long buried, drove me to pissed off, where I caught the bus to infuriation.

A poet/performance artist named Shane Koyczan:


An old friend from high school sent this to me, said it would resonate. It did. I should re-watch, I don't know what to think about it, but right now, I am in a decent mood and don't really want to watch again. Nothing against the artist, or the presentation, it was very well done, but the topic, something I've known.

I was bullied in HS, in retrospect maybe not as bad as some, but especially for a couple years I was ulcerifically miserable. I had a peer group, but was not really a peer, one or two friends from then I keep track of at all. Sort of a big round nerd, band geek, not really into sports, too damn smart for my own good and not afraid to show it, very shy, metalhead.
A Catholic high school - naturally, I had already started to think about such things*, and my senior year I flunked the first semester of Religion, primarily for arguing with the lunaticinstructor - boy, was I gonna fit in. One of my parents has since apologized, saying I should have gone to the public HS, with the science classes, CAD labs, and some blessed anonymity.
A school that purchased a basketball player, then when he got on a three wheeler, got maytagged, and got paralyzed, he got a handicapped accessible van. A school where one of the A-listers in my class, a couple years after graduation, got drunk, got on a jet-ski, got in the way of an oncoming boat, got Buster-ed, and got a memorial fund. A school where one of those bullied, far worse than I, never recovered, ended it a couple years later, no one mentioned a damn thing, I only found out about it years later through family. 
A jockocracy, bullyocracy, and we all know how well those seem to work out. The only thing I want to hear about my HS class is that at a reunion, someone went all Carrie White, leaving a debris pile I could urinate on.

My solution is simple. Make bullying a capital crime - 3rd strike and you, and your parents, get a fair trial and a first class hanging. End all high school and college athletics as we know them - if the pro leagues want farm teams so badly, let them do like baseball and set up minor leagues. Save athletics for students, who attend classes, real classes, who get actual good grades. No more $6 million dollar a year coaches. Make booster clubs illegal, punishable by 5-10 years, no paroles. School is important, the most important activity your kids will ever have - let's make interfering with schooling come with the punishment it deserves.

As for me, I was a bit screwy for a long time. I'd happily verbally/mentally beat the tar out of myself for any real or imagined transgression, and unfortunately will still do that - ugh. Beer and theoretical pharmaceutical studies helped, making true friends helped more - I remain very bad at making friends, but for those I have, I'll help hide a body. Took years, travels, and travails, for me to realize that I like being a geek, I like being one of the smartest kids in the room (even if too much brain matter is dedicated to things what go bump in the night as opposed to stuff making me wealthy and powerful, with a hot-and-cold running scotch dispenser).

Last night I sat with my wife, my quirky, wonderful, occasionally messed up, geeky-as-I-am, incredibly beautiful wife, watching Firefly and answering her questions about characters. I have a mansion, a yacht, and a drum machine. Well, working on the drum machine. I bleedin' win. But I am in no mood to forgive.

In conclusion, fuck 'em in their big fat goat asses.

*and had come to the conclusion that, although the red words were pretty cool (a statement I'll stand by), actually, the Old Testament and the New Testament were bullshit, their god a terrorist, their rulers and superheroes terrorists, and St. Paul a complete human whack-a-mole game. Much like almost every other religion ever. At least the Flying Spaghetti Monster and Discordianism allow free will. And in the case of the FSM, a beer volcano and stripper factory.