Reply #20: I was very reactive as a kid...

[hunter]

... flick me in the ear and I'd take a swing at you. Good thing I stopped while I was still a minor, because as an adult it's called assault.

Unfortunately I was also clumsy, so I was as likely to miss as to hit an antagonist.

I was always the last picked for team sports. Even one of my buddies who had Down syndrome and Coke-bottle glasses would get picked before me, because he was nice, and I was mean and sometimes threw rocks at people who tormented me.

In Junior High I was a skinny stick-boy just the right size to stuff into a locker or trash can. All throughout junior high and high school the most common taunt I heard was "queer bait" as in, "Get out of my way, queer bait."

It wasn't all hell, I had some friends among the odd kids; kids who weren't quite all there for some reason -- nerds, geeks, kids uncertain about their sexuality, a few protective jocks who were raised right and sensitive to injustice -- but overall, I hated junior high and high school.

At some point, I don't know how or why, maybe the scar tissue got thick enough, I became untauntable. I don't think this was entirely a good thing, but the bullies had pretty much backed off by the time I graduated from high school.

One of the last times I heard "Get out of my way, queer bait" in school, I whispered back "You want me," and got beat up for it, but it was sort of empowering. Still, I wouldn't recommend that sort of behavior -- a guy could get hurt.

Mostly these days I see attempts at bullying as some sort of random noise. The best thing to do is simply ignore it, but maybe that's just my personality -- getting bullied doesn't seem to be the sort of hurt that builds up in me until it bursts out in some explosion. But sometimes bullying is so odious that you have to deal with it, and I always try to do that with a very cold sense of intellectual detachment. If I'm getting bullied in a work situation (which hasn't happened to me in many years) I build up my case against the bully quietly, figure out who has the power and the inclination to do something about it, and then drop the hammer swiftly. I've had the satisfaction of getting bullies fired, and been praised by coworkers for that.

On the internet it's just words. I know it's more than that, that words can cut to the bone, but if you imagine the pipsqueaks who say hateful things as utterly inconsequential noisemakers of some sort, like maybe you are walking in your house in the dark, and you step on your dog's saliva soaked squeaky toy with bare feet, well it's startling, it's very unpleasant, but it's not the kind of unpleasant experience that stays with you.

Good luck to you, life's an adventure, and get some help from a professional if there are too many things "forever" haunting you and dragging you down.