Why Kids Shouldn't Be Encouraged To Walk Up

                I’m going to say this once, for the people in the back.  As a former victim, I am going to be speak for those bullying victims that do not currently have a voice.

               Do not, under any frigging circumstances, walk up to us because there’s been a school shooting and you think we might snap.  Good God.  Whomever came up with this wonderful concept has no idea what it is to be bullied, has forgotten what the social dynamics are in schools, and honestly, doesn’t have the slightest clue.

                I know we all want to believe that the perpetrators of school shootings are bullied children rising up in outraged majesty to slay their tormentors.  We want to believe this because it’s a simple answer to a very complicated issue, and it represents a twisted sort of justice.  It also puts some of the blame on the victim.  Our society loves to victim shame, because it gives us the illusion of control.  We can feel safe that our kid isn’t going to be blown away in school on Monday, because we raised our kid right and he/she is nice to everyone. 

                Bullshit.

        

           The truth is, school shooters are not bullied children.  None of the perpetrators are black, Jewish, Muslim, 98 pound weaklings, gay, fat, disfigured by horrible acne or birthmarks, suffering from Asperger’s or other developmental challenges, in special education, or GIRLS.  This myth of the perpetrators being bullied persists, when in nearly all cases they’ve been the demographic that has the world by the tale…white heterosexual males.  Funny how, although a few academics have noted this, their voices were quickly squashed.  It’s the elephant in the room.

                Stop believing the hype.  The perpetrators are not bullied kids, who have struggled their whole lives to fit in.  No, the school shooters are bullies.  Their acts are the ultimate exertion of control over an entire population of victims.  They are bullies that were thwarted one too many times in their struggle to assert dominance. 

                Cruz, for instance, was expelled from school after beating his ex-girlfriend’s new boyfriend, a girl he physically abused.  He had a significant mental health history and was well known throughout his neighborhood for being a genuinely scary kid obsessed with guns, fires, and hurting small animals.  He was a psychopath, a serial killer in the making. 

                 Don’t kid yourself.  He wasn’t excluded in school because he was being bullied.  He was excluded because he scared the hell out of everyone.  

                Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris attended their prom, with dates, in the weeks prior to the Columbine massacre.  As a bullied, outcast student, I didn’t go to either of my proms.  I could have gotten a date to my senior prom, as I was acquainted with students from other schools through my job at a local supermarket, but I decided to skip it.  I didn’t want any of my work buddies seeing how unpopular I was.

                Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris were more included in the society of their school than I was, but I never fantasized about killing my classmates.  Instead, I dreamed of earning the respect and admiration of my peers by marrying Patrick Swayze after his divorce and then dancing together to The Time of Our Lives at our wedding to which they were all invited.  (Okay, that was eighth grade.  By ninth grade, I’d moved onto wowing them by marrying Jay Leno, who was only thirty-eight years older than me.  Could have happened.  And isn’t it a sad commentary on the way I was raised that my chosen method of earning my classmate’s respect was by attracting a rich, famous partner.  Hmm.  A topic for another day).

                Columbine happened nearly nineteen years ago.  Prior to that massacre, there had been other, smaller school shootings in places like Paducah, Kentucky.  This school shooting issue didn’t start with Sandy Hook or Parkside.  It didn’t start with the current generation of students in high school.  It started over twenty years ago.  Identifying this as a problem with this “everyone gets a participation trophy” generation is yet another smokescreen to obscure the truth.  It’s not a generational issue, or a bullying issue, or a lack of discipline. 

                It’s a power issue.

                Take a sociopath, add a dash of narcissism, raise him to believe he’s something special and then deny him everything he’s been led to believe is his due.  The result is rage. 

                My belief is Cruz, Harris, Klebold, all the others, were serial killers in the making.  They were born to kill, make no mistake.  But something went wrong, so instead of quietly murdering prostitutes while posing as loving family men, they exploded.  Maybe it’s due to our culture of instant gratification, demanding that their appetite for blood be immediately slated.  Maybe it’s because white males have been slowly losing their honored place in society.  Maybe it’s a whole bunch of issues that converged into a perfect storm.  I don’t have the answers.

                What I do know is bullied children, having spent so much of childhood as one myself.  And none of us want your coiffed, popular kid walking up to us, with the whole cafeteria watching us hunch over our overcooked macaroni and cheese, to ask if we’re okay.  That reeks of someone doing their civic duty out of pity and sense of responsibility, not someone who genuinely gives a shit .  No, we’re not okay.  Every day we wake up wondering what fresh hell we’ll face.  We don’t want to be the center of attention on Be Kind to Freaks Day.  Leave us alone, because then we can pretend, even if only to ourselves, that we’re normal.  We don’t want to be someone’s charity case.  Knock it the hell off already, it’s not helping.  It’s making the stigma worse.

                Do you know what would help, though?  Encouraging your child to include everyone.  When they’re having a party, invite everybody.  No one wants a pity invite, but if you’re being invited along with everyone else, you feel included, not like the freak of the day. 

                Teach your child to say hello and good morning and to treat everyone with respect.  Then they don’t have to “walk up” to the kid nobody likes.  

                Popular kids get a bum rap.  Thinking back, the truly popular kids weren’t mean.  They were genuinely liked by everybody.  They didn’t single me out for friendship, but if they chanced to be next to me in the lunch line, they’d say hello and chat.  The mean ones were the not quite popular ones, the toadies.  They targeted the unpopular, because the only thing that divided us was their ability to make us cry.  I think the reason popular kids are often blamed for kids being excluded is because they’re seen as having the power to bring an outcast into the fold.  Trouble is, with their classes, extracurricular activities, family responsibilities and social relationships to keep up, they’re already being stretched thin.  Popular kids are demonized not because they’re mean, but because everyone wants to be friends with them, and they only have so much attention to give.  They can’t be friends with everyone, thereby someone is always feeling rejected.  Being universally liked leads to being hated.

                Where does that leave us in the end?  Where it always has, with adults.  Schools are reflections of society.  If something is going amiss in our schools, it is but a mirror of what is happening with us.    We are the ones failing our children.  We need to stop laying blame, stop coming up with cockamamie theories that place blame elsewhere but where it belongs, and take responsibility.  There are no easy answers, but one thing I do know, the answers lie with us.  Not with our children.  Stop telling them it’s their fault.