Feel free to raise your hand if you saw this coming, I know some of you did.
I figure Selkie's warmed up back to lucidity but she'd still really like some heat pads please and thank you.
Feel free to raise your hand if you saw this coming, I know some of you did.
Go figure. She kicks the boy in self-defense and she gets suspended. School rules suck.
Happened to me when I was in 7th grade. :/
When I was in middle school I had finally gotten a chance to eat with some kids I really liked hanging out with, not because they were popular, but because we all liked playing 4 square together during gym. I hurry to catch myself a seat, and then a kid standing on the opposite side of the table says I took his seat. I told him they weren’t assigned and put my tray down. He then slams his onto the table and pushes my food all over the floor. By now I’d been in trouble for swearing, and I barely managed to bluster out ‘you stupid…little idiot!’, instead of what I REALLY wanted to say. A gym teacher is nearby and decides to give me lunch detention, because that was ‘not how a lady was supposed to act’. The boy never got in trouble. I remember being so mad because it was cheeseburger day and I’d finally gotten one that wasn’t over done, I’d gotten one of the better desserts so on and so forth. I was mad alright, but more for the loss of food than for the gender double standard that just played out.
I hope Todd has the backbone my parents never did.
Having been in Selkies position I can fully relate. However I do not disagree with the punishment. I’m pretty sure the teachers are smart enough that tank didn’t just start the fight on a whim and Selkie isn’t telling the whole truth
Yeah, but by that standard, they’re leaving out Tony and Georgie. Tony, for obvious reasons, Georgie because he literally started the whole thing. Yes, what he started was an innocent specifically sport-like event that everyone agreed on, and it was mostly Tony’s fault that things got out of hand, but we’re talking about the logical extreme of an idiotic policy designed to placate the parents of bullies.
I absolutely disagree with Selkie’s punishment. Truck repeatedly threatened Selkie, providing her with no way out of the bullying except physical violence. Truck was actually threatening her life, even if he didn’t realize it. The sad part of this is that the principal is one of two people there that knows this and he is still hiding under the SHIELD that is a “Zero Tolerance” agenda.
This might be funny if “Zero Tolerance” wasn’t so real.
It makes me wonder why Selkies species wants anything to do with ours…
As someone who was bullied a lot as a kid and fought back, this kind of thing happened to me quite often. I wasn’t happy with it at the time, and a fair part of me still isn’t. Sure, decked the guy across the face, but he jumped me with some of his buddies. Why am I being punished for defending myself when the bloody teachers were nowhere to be found? Violence may beget violence, but when you’re in danger I can’t see anyone being willing to just sit there taking punches while yelling for help. You can be damn sure that I, at least, am going to be fighting back. Mom and dad told me to never start a fight, but I am allowed to finish one.
Hear hear.
Once I was on the playground hanging upside down by my knees. A girl two grades above me came over and held me down so I couldn’t get down or swing upright. I started freaking out (I’m pretty claustrophobic) so I whipped around and bit her leg.
We both got in trouble. Not fair at all.
When I got bullied in second grade, my father, who ran the local Juvenile Hall for the county, asked me why I didn’t fight back. I told him that I didn’t want to get in trouble.
He told me, if you get in trouble for defending yourself it is because the rules are wrong. If you have to beat the crap out of someone to be safe, do it.
Do kids nowadays actually mind being suspended? Isn’t it basically getting a week of vacation from school?
Only if the parents do not care. If they do, then it is a punishment.
Here’s how it always worked for me:
The bullies would get a vacation. They didn’t care about school, and neither did their parents, so it was just time off.
Even though I acted in self defense, I was beaten at school (corporal punishment was still a thing), and suspended, forcing my parents to come pick me up, leading my (then) stepdad to beat me again at home. Never mind that I never acted with malice; since I inconvenienced my parents, I was the wrongdoer.
Also, I was never allowed to complete the schoolwork I missed during my suspension, while the bullies were always allowed to do so.
Yes, I’m still bitter about this.
And who could blame you for feeling that way?
I certainly don’t.
My thinking is it is called “wronged” for all the right reasons and I hate that that happened to you…
At my school, it had adverse effects on grades as well. Work due could not be handed in or made up. Class participation grades were also marked as zero. Its why skipping school for one day could easily drop a kid’s GPA down. Granted, elementary school grades usually mean nothing in the long run.
It did bother me. Not the fact that I was being suspended, but that punishment was unjust.
I was punished in year 4 because I tried (and failed) to kick a kid off my back when he pinned me to the ground. He left me with a bald patch for weeks.
The main reason I don’t completely disagree with these policies is that they discourage bullies from trying to get away with things by saying, “they hit me first” or something like that.
It’s not fair, but nothing is, and I’d rather take a suspension for defending myself than see the bully get off free AND take a suspension, just because s/he can convince the teachers they felt unsafe.
My middle school had a similar policy, officially. However, they never actually enforced it. That’s why I kept getting suspended, while the bullies got off scot-free.
Why?
There were three bullies. Two of them would beat the shit out of me, while the third would be the ‘witness’ that backed up their claim that I attacked them. They rotated roles. Either the administrators were really goddamn stupid (this was a small mountain town, so it’s not *entirely* out of the question), or they hated me as much as the bullies did.
I used to have Columbine-style revenge fantasies (before Columbine), mixed in with the fantasies of simply not existing anymore. Schools really are the closest thing to hell that exists.
I can’t understand why people in charge of an education system would be unaware of that sort of tactic and/or not account for it. I mean, are the defendant’s buddies REALLY a credible witness, ever? And no pattern of the same three kids continually being brought in on accusations of attacking other kids would ring suspicious with anyone….
Sorry it happened to you. Clever bullies are the worst.
My conclusion is that they were perfectly aware of the tactic; they simply looked the other way. They got the ‘revenge’ they wanted (for making their incompetence obvious) and they got to keep their hands clean.
Dave,
Rationality goes out the window when you have incompetent bureaucrats doing a job that SHOULD be done by someone who CARES about their job.
Called it. Welcome to the world of ‘zero tolerance’ (zero thought).
Honestly, if you are going all out against violence, the whole group should be suspended (not that I advocate that, I think our ‘zero tolerance’ system is foolish and as faulty as much of the rest… but back to the comic…) due to throwing the snowballs. Yes, I know that’s fairly mild. Snowball fights, however, are much akin to a war game. I’m not surprised at this result, and won’t be if a blanket punishment is tossed at the children.
Been there, done that, refused to write the “punishment essay” for defending myself against 3 kids beating up me in the bathroom.
Honestly, Todd’s got good reason to pull some serious mojo here. His kid’s been assaulted 2x, and now she’s being punished for defending herself. I hate zero tolerance policies. They’re thoughtless, they’re stupid, they don’t help, and they can be manipulated by smart bullies against the people they’re supposed to protect.
Suspend kids for chewing a poptart into the shape of a gun. Felony for mixing up chemicals that accidentally combust. Expelled for realizing your hunting rifle was still in the truck, calling mom to get come get it and being overheard. Banned from receiving your diploma until you pay a fine for using a swearword in a graduation speech. All real incidents, and all helped along by these kinds of policies.
And yet the rate of violence and bullying in schools hasn’t dropped. Go figure.
Hear, hear!
“Felony for mixing up chemicals that accidentally combust.” Really? O_o
Hoo boy, good thing I don’t live in the States, then. Half of my lab tech class would likely have ended up in jail for (intentionally or not) getting things wrong. Though we never caused anything big explode, we did lose some glassware due to “oops” moments.
And the biggest oops was a full storage bottle (think like a gallon’s worth) of highest concentration H2SO4 (sulphuric acid) broken (thankfully within a ventilated space or the whole building would’ve had to have been evacuated!). Sulphuric acid + water = bad idea, so cleaning it up was difficult, but it was used as a teaching moment, since it’s something we might end up having to do at work. Wearing a gas mask with glasses is a no-go, so I fortunately didn’t have to be one of the ones doing the initial damage control. 🙂
Expected but still infuriating. A desperation move from a child near death (or at the very least some kind of torpor) gets the same treatment as the bully that put her in that position. I really hope Todd fights this for her. And wins.
Something kind of like this happened to my sister when she was in 2nd grade. Some kid pushed her line while waiting to go back to class so she pushed him. Teacher only saw her, so she got like three detentions.
My sister told my Mother the story and she went to the school pissed off and told the school off and informed them my sister wouldn’t be attending those detentions.
The next day, my sister was brought down to the office with like three other teachers where they forced her to call my Mom up and tell her she was lying and that the boy never pushed her. My Mom asked her if they were making her say that and through crying and sobbing told her that was the case.
Well needless to say, the school had to deal with my Mom. She simply took her out of school for the three days she had detention and took her to the zoo and stuff.
Stuff like this really sucks because most schools refuse to change their policy or look the other way, these sort of cases are not black and white and I’ve heard of this policy far too often.
When that being said, Selkie lied about being given permission to go outside and she was kind of partially responsible for the ruckus caused. Further, in my school, throwing snowballs was an automatic detention.
From Todd’s perspective, I’d be pretty upset about the entire thing, Selkie would already be in trouble with me for willingly putting herself in trouble.
At the same time, the school has messed up twice now and the ignorance of her situation at the school is less then acceptable and is going to continue to cause future problems as long as it isn’t addressed.
Teachers not “in the know” about Selkie should have been, at the very least, informed that she was deadly allergic to cold weather or something.
Everyone is at fault here, but I blame the school more because they are the adults and they are supposed to be her care takers. I’d be having seriously having a discussion with the higher-ups about the school’s track record.
Actually, if you look back to the call between Mina and Todd, you’ll see that Todd gave her permission to decide to go outside, so Selkie didn’t lie.
They dragged her into the office and co-erced her to rescind her story? Makes you wonder who the REAL bullies were… 🙁
This is why Zero tolerance is the stupidest decision ever made regarding schools
Not sure if I told this story here…
When I was in school, I knew a girl named Liz – short, blonde hair, pretty, a real sweetheart. She was also a lesbian.
The quarterback of the football team was a typical jock – strong, good-looking, macho…and an egotistical Neanderthal.
Well, one day he decided that Liz was a lesbian simply because she hadn’t had a “real guy”. And he put the moves on her in front of some of his jock buddies. She told him no.
He grabbed her breast. She broke his nose.
His buddies lied him up. That lasted until it hit the grapevine. Then some witnesses – real ones, who had seen it but kept quiet – came forward. Her punishment was rescinded and he was expelled.
It kinda has a happy ending that I got to be there for. When the reunion happened, he sought her out and apologized in front of the class. She forgave him and they made nice the rest of the night.
My Daughter got groped the first day of 9th grade.
She slugged the guy…twice. Then told on him.
He got suspended, put on a watchlist, and kicked out of JROTC.
She got ice cream when she got home and a high five.
Good for her. Give her a high five for me.
And another high-five from me too.
Your daughter is awesome.
Be angry not at the authority figures in this story, but rather, be angry at those situations they are based off from. Schools why you so dumb some times? QQ
I remember when something like this happened to me. Bully was picking on me the entire school year, had his friends “stand as witnesses” when I couldn’t take it anymore and all I did was stand up, block and prepare to swing. Only then did the teacher’s “step in” to stop it. They tried to suspend me. My mom stepped up to the plate and tore the assistant principle a new one because her response was “he shouldn’t have fought back” which my mom used as leverage because it meant that the assistant principle admitted I didn’t start it.
That and I think my mom probably intimidated her. I was in the office waiting area with the secretaries and everything went silent for a second when we heard from behind “closed” doors the start of the conversation which went “You fat, f*****g, civillian b***h” and slid downhill from there.
I’d like to clarify that my mom never threatened her, she just didn’t hold back about her opinion on the entire staff, the school, their policies or the phrase “boys will be boys” which was apparently also used.
Ugh, I wish there were some way to heap all the emotional hurt of all the bullying victims on the person who ever was the first person to think “boys will be boys” was an adequate way to defend a bully. That phrase was used in my case all too many times. (Mind you, those particular boys stopped bullying me after I did attack and hurt them physically, promising worse if they continued. No teachers were around at the time, but I doubt they would’ve cared either way.)
Given what happened the kid should be expelled as Selkie was not merely attacked her life was put in danger.
I’m not one to jump at legal action in most cases, but I can confidently say if this happened to my kid I would press criminal charges and depending on the schools response absolutely take them to court. This goes far beyond kids simply fighting, so far beyond.
In this particular situation since its the second assault AND it was so severe this time I hope Todd goes ballistic in the next comic.
I hope so too. I agree with you on this one completely and there is a distinct possibility that Todd could take legal action. “Truck” didn’t even stop when teachers were present and life endangerment is a viable case for fighting back to the point in killing in self defense in many states. Would it make an awkward court case? Yes, but I wonder what Agent Brown would say…
To be fair, they are in the third grade. Is truck even capable of understanding how serious his actions were? Expulsion seems like a bit much.
Yes, he is. Even my four year old is capable of understanding those kinds of things. And, no, expulsion is not too much. A lot of times that’s the only way the parents get off their butts and get their kids help.
One of my daughter’s classmates was expelled last year. He kept hitting (or trying to hit) the other kids. The teachers had a wonderful system to deal with it where they take the aggressor and put them at the quiet table and redirect them and the victim (placed at another table) with crayons until everyone calmed down and they could talk to them to find out what happened (totally appropriate for preschoolers as many of them are still learning to use words to express their feelings). Every day they’d talk with the kid’s mom and do things to try to get him to change (like give him stickers and lots of praise for good days). Sadly, it didn’t work and they had to have his parents take him out. I like to hope the parents invested in trying to find out *why* their boy was using aggression so much and get him help to change, but who knows. All I know is my daughter and her classmates aren’t being victimized by this boy because the teachers and the administrator took it very seriously. We interviewed 4 preschools that folks raved about and ours was the only ones who gave us a real answer when we asked about how they handle bullying (one of the main reasons we picked them).
BTW, I don’t think kids who bully are evil. I think a lot of them need serious help. They either are kids who have developmental issues that need extra care, grow up in dysfunctional environments or need a healthy dose of boundaries. Sometimes it’s something as simple as making the kid get extra sleep (I’m very serious) or the parents learning how to lay down rules. A lot of times it’s way more complicated. The “punishments” from the schools are supposed to be more to protect the other kids and get the parents to take action. At least that’s how it *should* be. A lot of schools are very stupid on knowing how to deal with these kinds of things as situations require individual remedies that need people who are actually paying attention in the first place—not an easy thing to find in over-crowded classrooms and/or burnt out staff.
There are some that are “evil” (psychopath or sociopath). Not many, but some.
Man this brought back memories of 4th grade. My teacher was useless, he’d watch as this boy and girl, cousins, would say things to me and when I talked back and didn’t step back they would punch me in the face. He watched them as they PUNCHED me in my face and did NOTHING. Those two would just get a talking to but nothing else.
The only time one of them got caught was when a different teacher came to take a group of us out for advanced lessons and he said something to me about me going saying that I was too stupid and shouldn’t be leaving. I just called him jealous, he got up and decked me in the eye in front of that other teacher and was FINALLY suspended for it.
The only reason the bullying stopped that year for me was that one boy who was friends with him learned that we were related and he started standing up for me.
Teachers at times are just useless.
Sounds about right for most school policies, unfortunately. Bully choking you out? You better damn well find a teacher to help you or talk him out of it, or you’re suspended too! Oh, you couldn’t breathe or escape? Sucks to be you, now take your punishment. I hope Todd uses this week-long suspension to take Selkie on an AWESOME trip. I’d do the same in his situation!
Sorry, I think I missed his name. Is it Principal Stupid?
Buttface. Pronounced Boot-Fah-Se
It’s the Principal’s job to make decisions with his brain rather than “policy”. If he insists on letting “policy” decide an outcome that he knows is inappropriate, then one can (and should!) argue that he doesn’t need to be paid more than minimum wage.
Btw, will Truck’s parent(s) be called in, too?
Not always. Sometimes it’s the principal’s job to enforce policy from higher up. Maybe he can sweep some things under the rug and pretend they never happened, but with something this public, he may have to follow the rules or risk losing his job.
Sadly using his brain doesn’t work out. He wasn’t there to see it and he already knows that Selkie kicked Truck with these facts his hands are tied. It sucks but that’s the way it is.
If he doesn’t do this then he can be accused to favoritism, the bully could lie and his friends could lie for him (the way the other kids are angry at the orphans for pulling that crying act I could see that happening because basically that is what the orphans had just done, lied), parents will get upset that even though their child may have done something the other isn’t punished as well for committing a violent act as well.
I believe that when the circumstances are clear as crystal then they should hold a meeting to decide on lessening the punishment or revoking it all together, but that takes time many can not invest in.
Just to add to a long string of stories about why the suicide rate among teens goes up and down according to school leaving age, dropping sharply the younger kids are allowed to quit, I want to add an anecdote about what happened to my daughter.
She was a good kid. Not a teachers’ pet although she would have liked to be one but she was too forgetful and stubborn to be one. And the bullies picked on her a lot. Frequently. Not always when the teachers were out of sight. One day in the school yard she lost it. One of the boys was hitting her. Just as the teacher came into sight she grabbed him by the hair and punched his head into the brick wall as hard as she could with intent to kill.
There was blood in his hair. My daughter burst into tears.
The teachers were sympathetic. Consoling even. The boy got first aid. And… and…. not only did neither of them get punished but I only heard about is some seven years or so later! No zero tolerance in that school. More like complete tolerance. You’d think I would have heard from the bully’s parents if not the teachers but they evidently shrugged off the entire incident. The teachers kept saying, “Why didn’t you tell us?” to my daughter which infuriated her because she had, many times and they had witnessed many incidents.
If I ever learned something in primary schooling (which over here is 9 years), it’s that they don’t stop bullying until you physically hurt them so that they start fearing you. Probably not the best lesson to learn, but there you have it.
Selkie looks good in green.
Yup. Saw that coming. Welcome to the world of zero tolerance.
I was seriously bullied in school. A lot of it was I was raised in a horrible home environment that set me up to be the “perfect victim,” but it got pretty extreme. The teachers tried to change it, but the classes could be large so they could be limited as many things went beyond their radar. One teacher actually contributed to the bullying. Thank god I was only in that school one year (I heard she got fired the next year, but I still have dreams of finding out where she lives and keying the sh*t out of her car). I know this sounds lame, but I mostly blame my parents. If you see your kid being beat up regularly and do nothing, you are nearly as much to blame as the children hurting him/her. Maybe worse if you minimize the situation to your child. My kid is pretty confident and popular with her peers, but I would not hesitate going mamma bear in a heartbeat if I was in Todd’s situation (and I can tell he’s not going to take it—good dad). I’d be looking into homeschooling (very hard for a single parent—I know), private, or moving to a better district. This, I understand, would be very difficult on Selkie as her friends are all at that school, though. Maybe not a bad thing to look into investing in self defense classes. It’s not that they just teach the child to defend his/her self, but good ones can really help raise self esteem.
I got my kid yanked out of a math class where the teacher was, basically, bullying her. A kid with Asperger’s, who doesn’t have the same emotional controls as her age-group, is much like a kid born without a leg, who doesn’t have the same ability to run around as other kids. You wouldn’t mock a kid for not running around, with one leg; you DAMN WELL BETTER NOT MOCK MY KID FOR CRYING EASILY, IN FRONT OF THE REST OF THE CLASS.
I feel bad for Todd right now. My first reaction would have been to move her to find her a new school, since she’s been accosted TWICE at this one. Then again, Selkie’s only friends in the world are at this school. It’s not an easy situation, that’s for sure.
well, I really don’t have a say in here, seeing as those kind of things usually don’t happen in schools over here…
These things happen everywhere that large groups of kids are educated together. You might not have seen it, but bullying (physical and mental) happens.
If and when this happens to my children I plan to charge the district with assult and battery. If they seek to prevent my children from defending themselves they are guilty of assault, it doesn’t matter if the physically restrain their arms while the bully beats them up or they seek to do so with a “policy” it amounts to the same thing. Hopefully I will never have to find out.
While third grade is old enough to know about life-threatening situations, since when is picking someone up and shaking them life-threatening? It was to Selkie, but ONLY because her heat-pacs fell out. If they hadn’t fallen out, she would’ve been fine. Does Truck know about her problems with cold? Even if he did, could he know that her life was dependant on those orange things that he probably didn’t even notice falling out of her coat?
Yes, what Truck did is horrible, but I don’t think he was trying to kill her, just make her stop. Don’t call for criminal proceedings because of that!
1: He totally noticed that they were falling out of her coat, because he commented on the fact that she needed them when it “isn’t that cold”
2: Even if he wasn’t trying to kill her, if she’d died, it would count as manslaughter.
He absolutely did notice them falling out — strip 313, “what do ya need all those heat pads for? It’s not that cold, you sissy.”
Incidentally, did Amanda get suspended for picking a fight with Big Tammy — and did Big Tammy get suspended for hitting back?
and if not, why not?
Here’s hoping every child involved gets punished as well.
I’m glad I’m too old to have experienced that kind of discipline in school. However the teachers explain it, it isn’t just to punish the victim as hard as the bully.
Tommy is gettin a full week suspension versus Selkie’s “rest of the week.”
Ah, yes, that old chestnut. The greatest excuse known to administrative personnel who have no idea how to handle children fighting in self-defense.
Oh, this old bullsh*t. Grr… Thank goodness my parents always believed me when I said the other hit first. My parents, though pissed at the administration for suspending me, never grounded me for self-defense. Those couple times I got suspended for self-defense, my parents just treated it as a vacation for me, usually taking me to Country Buffet immediately after picking me up.
Something like this happened to me when was a kid and my dad explained why I was being punished too this way: ‘You always have the right to defend yourself, but this is how you’ll learn when to.’
Actions, and inaction, always have consequences and knowing you’re going to have to face them makes you think more about how much of either you really should do. Tommy is gettin a full week suspension versus Selkie’s “rest of the week.” She’s getting the least amount of punishment for using the least amount of force reasonable for that situation but imagine what she would have got if she had bit him. If Selkie imagines that – lesson learnt.
What I see is the “Zero Tolerance ” is in order to train kids to let authority figures to settle disputes. Sadly it is as flawed as Communism. In school bullies learn quickly to act when teachers are not looking. All this policy teaches is don’t get caught.
Personally I don’t think Selkie did anything wrong. Most bullies act that way because they think they will get away with it or no one can stop them. Saying you can not defend yourself is a government thought that dose not work in real life. The people who believe in it are lying to themselves as well as the rest of us.
…I’m going to let the “communism” thing slide this one time, just because I don’t feel like typing out a full rant right now, but unless you actually know what you’re talking about, which I doubt, please refrain from using Communism as “the” flawed ideology in the future, because that literally (and ironically) makes me see red. (You’re in essence trying to bully/troll/flamebait anyone who knows anything about the political spectrum.)
*facepalm* Dave, can you fix the broken code, please?
Sure, that right?
Like
There’s a lot that’s already been said, so I feel like I don’t have to repeat what everyone else has been saying.
Maybe Todd will look at this as a good thing later on; Selkie won’t have to go out in the cold and the snow for a while, and as we saw in the shirt-stealing arc, he can work from home, so he can look after Selkie for a while without needing to be reassured by someone that she’s safe and sound.
I do, however, agree that it is total bullsh*t that they’re suspending her as well. Zero tolerance has never been stupider. There were four incidents where I was punished in school for doing something wrong, and only in two of those situations were I and the other party both punished. But my parents aren’t stupid. They know I didn’t go around picking fights for no good reason. My father taught me how to fight to merely defend myself if I were ever attacked, and I use it well. Hell, he made sure I knew how to punch correctly. Hell, they were never even mad at me for sticking up for myself, especially when one of the incidents involved a dickhead in 7th grade, who was once a friend to me and my brothers, actually, who started making fun of me because of my diabetes and had other kids joining in and laughing about it. What really hurt the most about that was after being diagnosed with it just that year, I started to gain weight as a result of insulin and blood sugars.
So yeah. My parents didn’t take CRAP from ANYBODY when any of my brothers and I got in trouble at school. Especially my mother. Whenever the teachers or administrators try to tell her that something was all our fault, or we had a psychological problem, or that they suspected we were being abused (also, complete and total bullsh*t; they all just thought they were smarter than us), she wouldn’t listen to them, she would lay down the line, and THEN they would listen to what the real problem was.
Hell, they didn’t even address one of my brother’s bullying problems until he stuck up for himself and socked the kid one day. They tried to suspend him, but my mother wouldn’t allow it.
And really. Nowadays suspension isn’t even much of a punishment. My parents let me treat my suspensions like vacations simply because they knew I was sticking up for myself and sticking up for what was right.
Sometimes it really does still bother me that only twice out of four times were both parties punished when I got in trouble. Bullies are bullies, but it always turns out more often than not that the victims are punished instead of them. Which, in conclusion, is complete and utter bullsh*t.
Word-for-word response after my Dad told me I was being suspended for 1 day after my first fight in grade 7: “It’s like they’re rewarding me!”
My bully had smeared paint all over a jacket my mom had made for me and I snapped. I’d been dealing with her shit for months and that was the last straw. I spent the entire next day hanging out at home playing video games and eating junk food. They also started letting me go home early at the end of the day and skip ‘music class’ (read: 60 unsupervised teenagers shoved in a room with recorders as loud as physically possible) so I wouldn’t have to be near that psychopath and avoid a repeat.
Middle school for me was the lowest point of my entire life, and the beginning of the clinical depression I’ve been suffering from for over a decade. There is absolutely nothing I would love more than to not go to school. Selkie is bullied, but she still has Georgie, Sandy and Wu. I quite literally did not have even one single ally at that school, or even in the entire town. I had a couple of ‘acquaintances’, who sat near me and were not actively mean to me, but they were not friends and would go out of their way to avoid spending time with me outside (or inside) of school. In the 2 years I lived there, I was never once invited over to someone’s house, and when my birthday came around my dad had to get his coworker to force her granddaughter to be my sole attendee. In fact, a couple years back I found out one of these ‘acquaintances’ had died in a car wreck. She was probably the closest thing I had to a friend in the entire town. I was not sad she was dead; I was disappointed I would never be able to tell her what a complete bitch I thought she was. I think I hated her as much as I hated the bully.
Truly, suspension from school was the greatest, most treasured gift I could ever receive. I think the only way I survived middle school was because for 1 hour a day, I could log online and talk to people who didn’t want me dead.
… I will say one thing for the experiences I suffered then; it made high school a lot easier to deal with. In actually made me stronger in a way. I’d been bullied in elementary school and suffered back then, but after what I experienced in middle school the early years really don’t seem that bad anymore. I had gotten so accustomed to how horrible people were to me, once I got to high school, I honestly couldn’t even tell you if I WAS bullied. I don’t remember being bullied in high school at all, and I don’t know if it is because I actually wasn’t being bullied, or if I just never noticed it because nothing they could have done could have even come close to what I experienced in middle school. I still hate my middle school bullies, and probably always will, but after dealing with them I realize that I pity my elementary school bullies, even moreso when I met them again in high school and they tried picking up where they left off. Sorry buttwipe, but after dealing with what I’ve been through, your attempts at insults are not even worth my time to pay attention to. I’ve experienced abuse fifty times worse than what you’re dealing out, you could never hope to compare to the level of pain they inflicted upon me, and your insignificant attempts to do so simply make me realize how truly pathetic you are.
Not sure if I’ve mentioned it here, but spring 2012 I finally managed to deal with the school bullying shit in therapy – it still makes me ****ing angry to think back to it, but my anger and loathing is no longer directed at myself at all (such as thinking I should’ve been stronger, etc.), which is just as big a deal as it sounds like!
I’m very happy you had the Internet to escape to – I went to school before Internet was around (it’s not as old as people often think it is), and I escaped my dismal reality into books, reading at recess (as close to a watching teacher as possible) and on the trips from school (that bus driver wouldn’t tolerate any s**t at all from nasties).
This happened to my little brother when he was in 6th grade. What was worse was he didn’t even hit the kid back he was suspended because he was in a fight. Period. Even though he was the victim and didn’t even defend himself or retaliate. Needless to say my mother had some words for the administration.
“So if I go out into the corridor now, and punch someone, will you suspend them too?”
I heard that in schools in the Chairman Mao days of Communist China, students got grades based on whoever was doing the worst in their classes. Maybe this is more of the same. Or it could just be another zero-tolerance policy run amok. Makes it hardly worth going to school at all.
Personal note: I was bullied in school—something that sometimes surprises people who know me now at my present height and size, but I was a lot smaller then—I was bullied, constantly, and the final incident culminated in my switching schools.
Kudos Dave, this is quite an interesting conversation that Selkie’s story has opened up.
My grade school days were in the rural 1960s; moving was not an option.
I had no recourse but to become a volatile and vicious, loose canon when provoked; which, fortunately, was as overlooked as the initial behavior of the provocateurs.
It did the job, but it scared the non-combatants so much that they also avoided me. It was a lonely time.
To repeat the question: was Amanda suspended for attacking Big Tammy?
Oh woops, meant to answer that, sorry.
Yes, Amanda would have been suspended, but it wasn’t pertinent to mention outright at the time. She has a past history of aggressive behavior explicitly mentioned in that scene which suggests to me she had no hope of getting off the hook for it. I feel, though, that nothing about Tammy’s celebratory mood upon leaving the classroom suggests SHE was punished for hitting back, however…
Self-defense is a natural and moral right that no one can take from you. Not your parents, not your teachers, not the government. Your life is YOUR LIFE. Protect it all all costs!
More and more people are getting into home schooling or trying to get their kids into private schools these days. That makes sense. When kids are punished for having L-shaped poptarts… It is past the time for tar and feathers!
I hate zero tolerance. *face palm* It never really seems to help. I had a classmate who was apparently suspended because a friend collapsed in gym because of an asthma attack and she gave him her inhaler. It was classified as ‘sharing drugs’ and she was suspended for a few days. Her parents and the parents of her friend defied it and brought her to class anyways. “I heard you were suspended….?” “I was,” she grinned.
Also as a kid, I almost clashed with the policy but didn’t because I had an awesome teacher. There was this boy who always picked on me, took stuff off my desk when I wasn’t looking, pulled my hair, pushed me, and my parents always responded ‘maybe he likes you’. So one day I got fed up and when he ran up to me at recess, I pushed him first. (At the time, I was an athletic kid, just as strong as the boys in my grade, if not stronger.) My push sent him flying backwards a whole three feet. And naturally, he cried to a teacher. The teacher took me into the empty classroom and told me that what I did wasn’t appropriate for a young lady, and asked why I’d done it. “I dunno, miss, I guess I must like him or something.” She laughed so hard and then told me not to do it again or someone with less of a sense of humor might see and send me to the office. Sure enough, he never pushed me again. Never even touched me again.
ROFL like!
I’m not sure “and she roused around shortly ago” is natural speech. Perhaps “and she roused a short while ago”?
Poor Selkie, but I can kind of understand the school’s point of view, wanting to discourage any kind of violence among the kids.
Of course, back when I was in high school, I recall getting picked on by bullies, who were caught and suspended. Of course the twist was I got detention as well because “I must have done something to provoke the attack.”
Yeaaaaaah.
*Raises Hand*
Hey, I defended myself in school, and I was the one in trouble. The ONLY one in trouble. The bullies got off scot free. Once I got suspended, and my mother basically turned that time into solitary confinement and psychological torture…made me remove all my toys and books from my room.
It doesn’t always work out for the victim. Sometimes you’re just guilty until proven even more guilty in the eyes of authority.
If I would have been punished for defending myself using violence, I would have been sure to attack whomever decreed that punishment to make it worthwhile. What’s the big deal if a 70 pound kid punches a grown man, right?
I had anger issues as a kid. Luckily, that never happened to me.
Seriously, as a sophomore in high school, I was jealous of the 98 pound weaklings, as they had a good 8 pounds on me.
Zero tolerance rules suck. The people in charge who thought they were a good idea…. Just grrrrr!
What kind of school… no, wait. Exactly the kind of school I used to go as a kid. And my gosh, that brings back some ¤@%§?€! memories.
If I were in Tod’s place, I’d probably end up arrested for making verbal threats. >__<