As a robust child growing up I was picked on. I remember
saying “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.”
Years later I began to think about these words and figured out that words
actually hurt people worse than breaking bones. Broken bones heal; words leave
wounds that at times never heal. You remember things that are said about you or
to you for years after they are said. I
have noticed many references to bullying over the last couple of years. It
saddens me when I hear of kids who have been bullied and do harm to themselves because
they cannot face it. Personally it affected me in that I used self-deprecating
humor in order to deflect others from picking on me. I figured in my mind that
if I cut myself down before they could it would cause my antagonist to stop. I
took a pro-active (in my mind) approach to bullying. This worked in my time but
that was before the internet, and social media. I could escape to my home and
get away. Now days it’s not only at school and in the street, it’s on your computer
when you get home. In my day there was a
chance to escape not in the short term but in the long run when you could move
away. Now with cyber bullying there is
no escape.
