You have to realize that this is supposed to be ten or more years in the past. This also could be a day care center than a school. Restrictions and requirements, especially for “private” day-care faclities, weren’t as strict back then
Charlie Spencer
In 200x? Yes, they were, at least to the point of not having strip mines on the property.
But you’re close. It’s the memory and perceptions of someone nine or ten years old. What’s remembered as a gaping chasm may have only been a break in the side walk.
Nightsbridge
Willis was telling us on patreon yesterday how someone got a hole punched through their jaw on his playground in elementary school because of unsafe stuff in the playground. I think this is meant to be accurate.
Random832
Of course, he was in elementary school in the 80s, not the 2000s.
These days I don’t even think they’re allowed to use pea gravel anymore.
comic time though. they were in elementry school in the 2000’s AND in the 1700’s if someone from that time happens to currently be reading thanks to fifth dimensional bs
if this is at school they needed better fences or at least some fences. if it is their normal life stuff than it is kind playing out in the open. i went lots of random places when i was growing up
When I was in seventh and eighth grade in Florida, half of the school I was attending was still under construction, and the athletic fields had to be cleared of rattlesnakes and scorpions before we were allowed to use them. It sucked so bad it could have drained the Gulf of Mexico…and it probably is now.
Do we even know that this is at a school or daycare?
When I was a kid, if you hopped our backyard fence and cut through the woods a little ways there was a very wide creek that was usually totally dry in the summer.
I grew up in central Texas. Just in the woods alone we risked all kinds of snakes, spiders, scorpions, raccoons, opossums, feral cats and dogs with who-knows-what diseases. Then, the draw of the creek bed was:
1) going under the bridge where a fairly major road crossed it. The spring rains would wash all kinds of debris down the creek and a lot of it would get caught under the bridge for us to find in the summer.
2) There is a massive underground system of caverns and underground lakes just below the surface of much of central Texas. When the creek was dry, there were cave openings just big enough to maybe poke in our heads and shoulders. We’d stick our heads in and a hand or arm and swing a flashlight around to see around the little cave openings.
There was usually only a very small opening with trash or a thick layer of silt, but we always hoped we’d find buried treasure, an opening in to a massive cave, or a colony of bats.
Only as an adult did I look back and realize that waking a colony of bats while your head is plugging the only exit point likely wouldn’t have been as cool as we imagined. Also that as small as most of these spaces were, we could have unwittingly come across a rattlesnake den, or uncovered brown recluse spiders or tarantulas, or any of a number of other dangerous critters.
We also could have easily broken a bone on the limestone rocks or the concrete under the bridge.
Anyway, sometimes someone’s parent (why they knowingly let us play there, I’ve no idea.) or older sibling would come down there to tell their kid/sibling it was time to come home.
So, I guess all that was to say what if this isn’t a teacher, but an older sibling or babysitter? And maybe the kids are just playing wherever it is in their neighborhood that kids have room to congregate?
At a guess, it’s a Don’t Go Beyond The Fence situation, and Leland edged the conflict outside the fence. My elementary school didn’t have a fully fenced in playground until I was in…second grade, maybe? And there was no problem with the kids running off to play in the street that I’m aware of. Considering how old the school was by the time I hit grade 2, there’d definitely have been a fuss if the kids were wandering off.
I’m less concerned about the drop and more concerned about what looks like random pieces of sharp jagged metal sticking out of random bits of broken concrete. Marcie’s lucky she wasn’t just impaled.
When i was in school there was a really cool ravine nearby we played tag in at lunch. However, did it have hunks of concrete with rebar poking out of it? No.
Anyone else notice there was a good chance of her dying???
1. I totes think this park sounds fuckin’ awesome, though
2. the cast seems a bit young for it, besides that
3. “altercations” like this aren’t part of the appeal of the park
unrelatedly, if I don’t seem to comment on much other than first (or sometimes last) post, I seem to be having this issue where DoA *specifically* chokes when trying to post comments due to some plug-in failing and I can’t figure out for the life of me why
so far but there was one guy that seemed nice but was a rapist. plus this is a flashback while he might have stayed the same he also might have changed. assuming of course he will show up in the current time frames. also i wonder if he has any family connections to anyone perhaps a cousin.
Pat
Playing nice but being evil is easy.
The other way around is a touch harder.
thejeff
OTOH, being a bully in elementary school doesn’t mean you’re a monster for life either.
Some people grow up. Even by college.
Deanatay
I have known bullies from elementary and junior high who turned out fairly decent.
That said, DB Leland is on the Top Ten Worst Dumbing of Age characters. Haven’t decided his exact position, yet. Maybe if we see more of him…
thejeff
Someone pointed out his previous existence as a customer in Shortpacked!
I withdraw my objection.
I got some beef for calling the kid at the church a fuckboy, but this Leland guy is a massive fuckboy
ozzi
How can you his sexual preferences towards one night stands from his 10 year old self?
However I do wonder if we are getting a flashback to show why Sal is soo protective of Marcie. Also why Marcie has selective mutism.
Li
That’s not what fuckboy means. Fuckboy is AAVE and despite white people trying to redefine it as “the boy version of slut”, that is not correct.
Deanatay
I’m hardly an expert, but I think the ‘boy version of slut’ is spelled fuckboi. So, totally different word.
Deanatay
What makes you think Marcie’s mutism is ‘selective’? As an adult, I have never heard her speak at all. She does occasionally growl or sigh, but no actual words.
Now, AS A KID, she speaks, and many have expounded upon the reason for the change. If this is it, it hasn’t taken effect YET.
Is he new? When I first saw it, I thought that This was implying that Leland andthe person who drugged Joyce were the same person. Do we have a name for the rapist yet? And if we do, could he have just lied about it? Is this a moment for Sal and Amazigirl to put aside there differences and take down the real monster? NEXT TIME ON DUMBING OF AGE!
Yeah, Ryan the Rapist’s name has been known for a while.
That said, this comic tells us quite a bit. Marcie’s been bullied as a child – if this was a constant, pervasive thing, it may explain her interest in roller derby and security. She wants to be tough and un-bulliable.
It also further explains Sal’s history – she may have started getting into fights by attacking Marcie’s tormentors. Bullies are definitely a trigger for her.
Cybersnark
And she most certainly got in trouble for attacking said bullies, because That’s How Things Work, which also further explains Sal’s fatalism and cynicism.
Roborat
But, do we know his name is really Ryan? He is a rapist after all, he might have been smart enough to use an assumed name.
David M Willis
Ryan never gave his name in-story. He was only identified as such in the tags.
I’m going to put this here to make it easier to spot:
Getting mad at Walky when he’s also a victim here was really crappy of me, and want I apologize to everyone here for it.
Mr. Willis has created a wonderful safe space for people here and the thought that I might have tarnished that even a little is completely abhorrent to me.
I am truly sorry.
Leorale
That is very kind of you.
I can see your frustration, though. My older brother had a talk with my parents when the kids at school tried to turn us against each other. He was 5 or 6, I was 3 and just starting school. My brother was very concerned because he was loyal to his friends but also loyal to me. My parents told him siblings first, and he was relieved to know what to do. I doubt it would occur to the Walkertons that mini-David and mini-Sally ought to be a team, and that’s sad.
Leland is an asshole and a very confident bully. And Walky is obviously more afraid of being at the receiving end of his bullying than concerned with keeping his sister out of trouble.
No wonder Sal’s got so much hate inside her.
No, he’s a colossal asshat. I know most kids actually had some sense of self-preservation, unlike I did at that age, but I’m still a little disappointed in Walky
I do not blame Walky in the slightest. I had my own personal Leland from late elementary on through high school and he pretty much made it his mission to subtlely isolate me from all my peers throughout my middle school years. When I was in high school, I had the bright idea of telling him I wasn’t afraid of him anymore. He then grabbed a broom and proceeded to beat the fear back into me. And that’s when I learned that the whole “Bullies are cowards” narrative I had been fed was bullshit.
Prinnyramza
Bullies are like prisoners. All they got is their rep and they will cling to it.
Its just that the teacher is right there. Sure, I know she won’t be forever, but bullies like that are just something that just makes me viscerally angry. And I also remember just how much it would have meant if to me if to have someone do that for me when I was getting bullied.
Which is also the only reason I stood up to them when I was a kid. I wasn’t brave, just too mad not to. And yeah, even when I didn’t lose the fight it didn’t do much to discourage them.
So while I don’t blame him, I would have really liked it if he’d stood up for Sal here. Though I’m going to be seriously pissed if this teacher actually believes this with the kid visibly threatening Walky right in front of her.
Self-sacrifice and helping others are things that are a lot easier to say than do, sadly.
The thing about bullies that infuriates me more than anything is that real bullies, or at least the kind I’m used to, aren’t something you can “win” against; not in a way that they will accept as a loss, at any rate. And they will keep going, for as long as they can sustain themselves. React emotionally? That’s just what they wanted! Go to an authority figure? They’ll just bully you when the grownups aren’t watching. Don’t react at all? Well, that must mean you don’t mind if they continue! Fight back? You get in trouble too, which was definitely their plan all along! (it wasn’t, but they’ll pretend it was just so they can maintain a victorious image) They will twist reality itself to maintain a sense of superiority, even rewriting their own memories if they have to.
And your second paragraph is probably why I ended up opting to fight most of the time. If no strategy actually seemed to work, I might as well go with the one that’s at least satisfying, even in failure.
Then again, as a white kid in a suburban school in a nice area, I probably had a lot less reason to fear getting seriously hurt than Walky does.
Ethereal
I threw a desk at a tormentor in 8th grade. That guy never bothered me again. However, I do not recommend this course.
I switched which wrist I wore my watch on, so that when he punched me he tore his hand open. That seemed to do the job. (we sat adjacent to each other in class and he’d lean over and slug me in the shoulder as hard as he could whenever no one was looking…among other things).
ety
I am fully aware however that I was incredibly lucky that that was the farthest physical bullying ever went against me and that that was all it took to stop that particular incident. Plenty of kids end up with bullies who are far more physically capable than they are and who won’t back down from retaliation. In other words, some kids end up with bullies against whom they can not push harder than the bully can push them. Verbal stuff is another matter, but that didn’t bother me nearly as much.
kuroneko
I was bullied by this one super annoying girl who thought she was tough sh**, and let it slide for a while, but at one point she tried to slap me for supposedly calling her sister fat, so I shoved her onto the floor of the bus and started yanking her hair with my foot on her throat as she was flailing to try and scratch my face. When the bus driver separated us she tried to say that she planned the whole thing, but everyone was laughing at her for getting her butt handed to her. She never bothered me, or anyone else that I know of, again. She was suspended for a week and I got 2 paddlings from the principal. Totally worth it.
My point here is, if you fight them and shrug off the fact that you got in trouble, bullies do tend to leave you alone. To the girl who was hit with a broom: I would have found something to beat that bully back with! Self-defense!
If you fight them and win, sometimes that works. Assuming they don’t just come back with friends. It depends entirely on the type of bully.
I almost always fought back, and I sometimes even won, but I still had a set of regular bullies who would pick fights with me, because they just liked fighting and hated nerds.
And there were the times were a kid I never met before would just punch me in the gut while passing by in the hallway. I was well known as an uncool spaz, so mistreating me earned you popularity points!
There was also an incident I remember from 7th grade where I some much larger 8th grader decided I was in his way while everyone was crowding through the main entrance to the school. Having no sense of self-preservation, I shoved him right back. So he punched me. Then I kicked him in the balls, and attempted to make my escape, only to run into two of his also very large friends.
I ended up blacking out briefly and coming to moments later in a heap on the floor.
I’ve no regrets about it, but fighting back is definitely NOT always effective.
Paul1963
That’s exactly the situation, as I can attest to from my own personal experience from about second grade through the end of high school (a couple of incidents in middle school and high school should have led to criminal charges, but of course nobody saw anything). There are people I grew up with who I could watch drown, plunge to their deaths or get hit by a bus and not shed a single tear for. And this is 35-45 years later.
“Ignore them and they’ll go away” is something useless adults say to comfort themselves when a child is suffering and they don’t know how to stop it.
Different bullies, different methods, but I have a fond memory of when – in 8th grade – I stopped persistent bully cold. She said she’d beat me up after school. I told her loudly, in front of everyone, that “Yeah, you can absolutely kick my ass and I can’t stop you.” Then, to her, I said “that’s why I’m going to go for your eyes as hard as I can on the way down.”
She told everyone I gave up and I never heard a peep from her again.
Pat
The teacher who’s currently restraining him and Sal, barely concerning herself with the actual attacker, and apparently entirely unconcerned by the severely injured child right in front of her?
Walky should be braver because he’s being backed up by that teacher?
Needfuldoer
Sounds like most of the teachers I had in elementary school. They gave no shits unless something happened right in front of them. “Don’t believe any stories you didn’t directly observe, because they’re ‘just kids’ and they’re probably making everything up. Their little problems are unimportant anyway (which may be true, but it’s their entire world so it’s important to them). A little roughousing is fine, boys will be boys.”
And what did they tell us to do about bullies? “Just ignore them, they’ll get bored and go away.”
Paul1963
The single biggest lie told by teachers is “Just ignore them, they’ll get bored and go away.” The worst possible advice to give to a kid who is being tormented constantly by kids who have as much as ten months’ growth on him.
Slartibeast Button, BIA
Well, that strategy can work sometimes. Learning and applying “the cut direct” is probably the reason I am not dead or in prison now.
But my problem was more people goading me into attacking them than being attacked. (The bigger problem was honesty and believing society’s lies about justice and fairness.)
391 thoughts on “Landed”
Ana Chronistic
nooooooooooooooooo
I was not prepared for this
the fuck are they playing next to an open ravine anyway
Dave
Indiana schools must not keep their playgrounds clear of hazards or else recess has gone in some werid direction I hadn’t heard of
All that said, OW
Bicycle Bill
You have to realize that this is supposed to be ten or more years in the past. This also could be a day care center than a school. Restrictions and requirements, especially for “private” day-care faclities, weren’t as strict back then
Charlie Spencer
In 200x? Yes, they were, at least to the point of not having strip mines on the property.
But you’re close. It’s the memory and perceptions of someone nine or ten years old. What’s remembered as a gaping chasm may have only been a break in the side walk.
Nightsbridge
Willis was telling us on patreon yesterday how someone got a hole punched through their jaw on his playground in elementary school because of unsafe stuff in the playground. I think this is meant to be accurate.
Random832
Of course, he was in elementary school in the 80s, not the 2000s.
These days I don’t even think they’re allowed to use pea gravel anymore.
Who Izzy
comic time though. they were in elementry school in the 2000’s AND in the 1700’s if someone from that time happens to currently be reading thanks to fifth dimensional bs
miados
if this is at school they needed better fences or at least some fences. if it is their normal life stuff than it is kind playing out in the open. i went lots of random places when i was growing up
Stephen R. Bierce
When I was in seventh and eighth grade in Florida, half of the school I was attending was still under construction, and the athletic fields had to be cleared of rattlesnakes and scorpions before we were allowed to use them. It sucked so bad it could have drained the Gulf of Mexico…and it probably is now.
Annie
Do we even know that this is at a school or daycare?
When I was a kid, if you hopped our backyard fence and cut through the woods a little ways there was a very wide creek that was usually totally dry in the summer.
I grew up in central Texas. Just in the woods alone we risked all kinds of snakes, spiders, scorpions, raccoons, opossums, feral cats and dogs with who-knows-what diseases. Then, the draw of the creek bed was:
1) going under the bridge where a fairly major road crossed it. The spring rains would wash all kinds of debris down the creek and a lot of it would get caught under the bridge for us to find in the summer.
2) There is a massive underground system of caverns and underground lakes just below the surface of much of central Texas. When the creek was dry, there were cave openings just big enough to maybe poke in our heads and shoulders. We’d stick our heads in and a hand or arm and swing a flashlight around to see around the little cave openings.
There was usually only a very small opening with trash or a thick layer of silt, but we always hoped we’d find buried treasure, an opening in to a massive cave, or a colony of bats.
Only as an adult did I look back and realize that waking a colony of bats while your head is plugging the only exit point likely wouldn’t have been as cool as we imagined. Also that as small as most of these spaces were, we could have unwittingly come across a rattlesnake den, or uncovered brown recluse spiders or tarantulas, or any of a number of other dangerous critters.
We also could have easily broken a bone on the limestone rocks or the concrete under the bridge.
Anyway, sometimes someone’s parent (why they knowingly let us play there, I’ve no idea.) or older sibling would come down there to tell their kid/sibling it was time to come home.
So, I guess all that was to say what if this isn’t a teacher, but an older sibling or babysitter? And maybe the kids are just playing wherever it is in their neighborhood that kids have room to congregate?
Sionyx
At a guess, it’s a Don’t Go Beyond The Fence situation, and Leland edged the conflict outside the fence. My elementary school didn’t have a fully fenced in playground until I was in…second grade, maybe? And there was no problem with the kids running off to play in the street that I’m aware of. Considering how old the school was by the time I hit grade 2, there’d definitely have been a fuss if the kids were wandering off.
LeslieBean4Shizzle
I’m less concerned about the drop and more concerned about what looks like random pieces of sharp jagged metal sticking out of random bits of broken concrete. Marcie’s lucky she wasn’t just impaled.
TParadox
My elementary school in Indiana had ditches like that bounding both playgrounds.
Willoughby Chase
I’m thinking a head injury from Marcie’s head hitting that rock just above her head might be the cause of her muteness.
Have to wait and see.
Hoop
This is Indiana. They consider big open pits like that “a park” – haven’t you ever been to Pawnee?
slicey
I also went Noooooooooooooooo but was the for teaching fail! That’s not what you do teacher!! I send you back to school!!! With the monkeys!!!!
Craig
When i was in school there was a really cool ravine nearby we played tag in at lunch. However, did it have hunks of concrete with rebar poking out of it? No.
Anyone else notice there was a good chance of her dying???
Ana Chronistic
I should be clear that
1. I totes think this park sounds fuckin’ awesome, though
2. the cast seems a bit young for it, besides that
3. “altercations” like this aren’t part of the appeal of the park
unrelatedly, if I don’t seem to comment on much other than first (or sometimes last) post, I seem to be having this issue where DoA *specifically* chokes when trying to post comments due to some plug-in failing and I can’t figure out for the life of me why
Fart Captor
I’d been having that problem in firefox here and some other sites, until I switched the flash plugin to “Ask to Activate”.
Weirdly, even though I then clicked “Always Activate” for the site, it stopped crashing
miados
oh a flashback. and a new character leland. i wonder whats his story.
Kernanator
His story is that he’s a tool.
miados
so far but there was one guy that seemed nice but was a rapist. plus this is a flashback while he might have stayed the same he also might have changed. assuming of course he will show up in the current time frames. also i wonder if he has any family connections to anyone perhaps a cousin.
Pat
Playing nice but being evil is easy.
The other way around is a touch harder.
thejeff
OTOH, being a bully in elementary school doesn’t mean you’re a monster for life either.
Some people grow up. Even by college.
Deanatay
I have known bullies from elementary and junior high who turned out fairly decent.
That said, DB Leland is on the Top Ten Worst Dumbing of Age characters. Haven’t decided his exact position, yet. Maybe if we see more of him…
thejeff
Someone pointed out his previous existence as a customer in Shortpacked!
I withdraw my objection.
KKoro
Eh. Some bullies stop doing what they did, precious few ever make it right.
Pat
The violence of this particular bully seems rather extreme.
Wheelpath
I got some beef for calling the kid at the church a fuckboy, but this Leland guy is a massive fuckboy
ozzi
How can you his sexual preferences towards one night stands from his 10 year old self?
However I do wonder if we are getting a flashback to show why Sal is soo protective of Marcie. Also why Marcie has selective mutism.
Li
That’s not what fuckboy means. Fuckboy is AAVE and despite white people trying to redefine it as “the boy version of slut”, that is not correct.
Deanatay
I’m hardly an expert, but I think the ‘boy version of slut’ is spelled fuckboi. So, totally different word.
Deanatay
What makes you think Marcie’s mutism is ‘selective’? As an adult, I have never heard her speak at all. She does occasionally growl or sigh, but no actual words.
Now, AS A KID, she speaks, and many have expounded upon the reason for the change. If this is it, it hasn’t taken effect YET.
Marie
^ would upvote
HMRC4EVR
He’s such a tool his middle name is Stanley and last name is Craftsman
ety
okay.. I love that one.
Ellegos
Is he new? When I first saw it, I thought that This was implying that Leland andthe person who drugged Joyce were the same person. Do we have a name for the rapist yet? And if we do, could he have just lied about it? Is this a moment for Sal and Amazigirl to put aside there differences and take down the real monster? NEXT TIME ON DUMBING OF AGE!
No Name
Ryan. So, sorry to disappoint.
Deanatay
Yeah, Ryan the Rapist’s name has been known for a while.
That said, this comic tells us quite a bit. Marcie’s been bullied as a child – if this was a constant, pervasive thing, it may explain her interest in roller derby and security. She wants to be tough and un-bulliable.
It also further explains Sal’s history – she may have started getting into fights by attacking Marcie’s tormentors. Bullies are definitely a trigger for her.
Cybersnark
And she most certainly got in trouble for attacking said bullies, because That’s How Things Work, which also further explains Sal’s fatalism and cynicism.
Roborat
But, do we know his name is really Ryan? He is a rapist after all, he might have been smart enough to use an assumed name.
David M Willis
Ryan never gave his name in-story. He was only identified as such in the tags.
Ryan and Leland are two different dudes.
Orion Fury
Well that’s a fact I didn’t know.
nicostrat
I thought the same!
Nono
A new challenger for worst character approaches.
Hilzabub
He’s got a way to go before he truly challenges.
miados
that is very true. the trust of that statement can easily be stated. for it is not a lie. it is a trustworthy statement of events.
Fart Captor
Oh, Walky, you little turd.
Leorale
He can’t help it, Leland is bigger than he is.
Fart Captor
I’m going to put this here to make it easier to spot:
Getting mad at Walky when he’s also a victim here was really crappy of me, and want I apologize to everyone here for it.
Mr. Willis has created a wonderful safe space for people here and the thought that I might have tarnished that even a little is completely abhorrent to me.
I am truly sorry.
Leorale
That is very kind of you.
I can see your frustration, though. My older brother had a talk with my parents when the kids at school tried to turn us against each other. He was 5 or 6, I was 3 and just starting school. My brother was very concerned because he was loyal to his friends but also loyal to me. My parents told him siblings first, and he was relieved to know what to do. I doubt it would occur to the Walkertons that mini-David and mini-Sally ought to be a team, and that’s sad.
Valerie
I love you. <3
Kernanator
Yes. Walky is the turd, and not the kid who is threatening to bodily harm him if he does not support him.
CJ
Leland is an asshole and a very confident bully. And Walky is obviously more afraid of being at the receiving end of his bullying than concerned with keeping his sister out of trouble.
No wonder Sal’s got so much hate inside her.
Emperor Norton II
Sure you don’t mean Leland, the kid making a very unsubtle threat of violence towards Walky?
Fart Captor
No, he’s a colossal asshat. I know most kids actually had some sense of self-preservation, unlike I did at that age, but I’m still a little disappointed in Walky
Kernanator
I do not blame Walky in the slightest. I had my own personal Leland from late elementary on through high school and he pretty much made it his mission to subtlely isolate me from all my peers throughout my middle school years. When I was in high school, I had the bright idea of telling him I wasn’t afraid of him anymore. He then grabbed a broom and proceeded to beat the fear back into me. And that’s when I learned that the whole “Bullies are cowards” narrative I had been fed was bullshit.
Prinnyramza
Bullies are like prisoners. All they got is their rep and they will cling to it.
Fart Captor
Its just that the teacher is right there. Sure, I know she won’t be forever, but bullies like that are just something that just makes me viscerally angry. And I also remember just how much it would have meant if to me if to have someone do that for me when I was getting bullied.
Which is also the only reason I stood up to them when I was a kid. I wasn’t brave, just too mad not to. And yeah, even when I didn’t lose the fight it didn’t do much to discourage them.
So while I don’t blame him, I would have really liked it if he’d stood up for Sal here. Though I’m going to be seriously pissed if this teacher actually believes this with the kid visibly threatening Walky right in front of her.
Kernanator
Self-sacrifice and helping others are things that are a lot easier to say than do, sadly.
The thing about bullies that infuriates me more than anything is that real bullies, or at least the kind I’m used to, aren’t something you can “win” against; not in a way that they will accept as a loss, at any rate. And they will keep going, for as long as they can sustain themselves. React emotionally? That’s just what they wanted! Go to an authority figure? They’ll just bully you when the grownups aren’t watching. Don’t react at all? Well, that must mean you don’t mind if they continue! Fight back? You get in trouble too, which was definitely their plan all along! (it wasn’t, but they’ll pretend it was just so they can maintain a victorious image) They will twist reality itself to maintain a sense of superiority, even rewriting their own memories if they have to.
Fart Captor
Yeah, that’s true.
And your second paragraph is probably why I ended up opting to fight most of the time. If no strategy actually seemed to work, I might as well go with the one that’s at least satisfying, even in failure.
Then again, as a white kid in a suburban school in a nice area, I probably had a lot less reason to fear getting seriously hurt than Walky does.
Ethereal
I threw a desk at a tormentor in 8th grade. That guy never bothered me again. However, I do not recommend this course.
saltchocolate
Still, i applaud you, given those circumstances.
ety
I switched which wrist I wore my watch on, so that when he punched me he tore his hand open. That seemed to do the job. (we sat adjacent to each other in class and he’d lean over and slug me in the shoulder as hard as he could whenever no one was looking…among other things).
ety
I am fully aware however that I was incredibly lucky that that was the farthest physical bullying ever went against me and that that was all it took to stop that particular incident. Plenty of kids end up with bullies who are far more physically capable than they are and who won’t back down from retaliation. In other words, some kids end up with bullies against whom they can not push harder than the bully can push them. Verbal stuff is another matter, but that didn’t bother me nearly as much.
kuroneko
I was bullied by this one super annoying girl who thought she was tough sh**, and let it slide for a while, but at one point she tried to slap me for supposedly calling her sister fat, so I shoved her onto the floor of the bus and started yanking her hair with my foot on her throat as she was flailing to try and scratch my face. When the bus driver separated us she tried to say that she planned the whole thing, but everyone was laughing at her for getting her butt handed to her. She never bothered me, or anyone else that I know of, again. She was suspended for a week and I got 2 paddlings from the principal. Totally worth it.
My point here is, if you fight them and shrug off the fact that you got in trouble, bullies do tend to leave you alone. To the girl who was hit with a broom: I would have found something to beat that bully back with! Self-defense!
Fart Captor
If you fight them and win, sometimes that works. Assuming they don’t just come back with friends. It depends entirely on the type of bully.
I almost always fought back, and I sometimes even won, but I still had a set of regular bullies who would pick fights with me, because they just liked fighting and hated nerds.
And there were the times were a kid I never met before would just punch me in the gut while passing by in the hallway. I was well known as an uncool spaz, so mistreating me earned you popularity points!
There was also an incident I remember from 7th grade where I some much larger 8th grader decided I was in his way while everyone was crowding through the main entrance to the school. Having no sense of self-preservation, I shoved him right back. So he punched me. Then I kicked him in the balls, and attempted to make my escape, only to run into two of his also very large friends.
I ended up blacking out briefly and coming to moments later in a heap on the floor.
I’ve no regrets about it, but fighting back is definitely NOT always effective.
Paul1963
That’s exactly the situation, as I can attest to from my own personal experience from about second grade through the end of high school (a couple of incidents in middle school and high school should have led to criminal charges, but of course nobody saw anything). There are people I grew up with who I could watch drown, plunge to their deaths or get hit by a bus and not shed a single tear for. And this is 35-45 years later.
Shadlyn Wolfe
“Ignore them and they’ll go away” is something useless adults say to comfort themselves when a child is suffering and they don’t know how to stop it.
Different bullies, different methods, but I have a fond memory of when – in 8th grade – I stopped persistent bully cold. She said she’d beat me up after school. I told her loudly, in front of everyone, that “Yeah, you can absolutely kick my ass and I can’t stop you.” Then, to her, I said “that’s why I’m going to go for your eyes as hard as I can on the way down.”
She told everyone I gave up and I never heard a peep from her again.
Pat
The teacher who’s currently restraining him and Sal, barely concerning herself with the actual attacker, and apparently entirely unconcerned by the severely injured child right in front of her?
Walky should be braver because he’s being backed up by that teacher?
Needfuldoer
Sounds like most of the teachers I had in elementary school. They gave no shits unless something happened right in front of them. “Don’t believe any stories you didn’t directly observe, because they’re ‘just kids’ and they’re probably making everything up. Their little problems are unimportant anyway (which may be true, but it’s their entire world so it’s important to them). A little roughousing is fine, boys will be boys.”
And what did they tell us to do about bullies? “Just ignore them, they’ll get bored and go away.”
Paul1963
The single biggest lie told by teachers is “Just ignore them, they’ll get bored and go away.” The worst possible advice to give to a kid who is being tormented constantly by kids who have as much as ten months’ growth on him.
Slartibeast Button, BIA
Well, that strategy can work sometimes. Learning and applying “the cut direct” is probably the reason I am not dead or in prison now.
But my problem was more people goading me into attacking them than being attacked. (The bigger problem was honesty and believing society’s lies about justice and fairness.)