Bullies in my life

His name was Dickie Mitchell and he was a ferocious bully.  I was about seven or eight and he used to lie in wait for us along the walk home from Crichton St. Public School in the dead of winter, a pile of ice balls at the ready.  I always made sure I was with a group of other kids, otherwise he would attack me. 

He died in a crash up deadly highway 105 when he was about 18. 

What did anyone do about Dickie Mitchell?  Absolutely nothing.  In the '50s bullying was an accepted part of life.  Mike Fisher, a columnist for The Herald, wrote a piece about it today and says the same thing.  Bullies existed and everyone knew and accepted them.  When we had to go to Lowertown in Ottawa for grades seven and eight we had to steer clear of the French girls who didn't like our crossing their territory.  One day I was beaten up on the streetcar by their ring leader in full view of the conductor, who did...absolutely nothing.  Did I tell my mother?  Of course not.

B tells of being bullied by one of the brothers in the private catholic school he went to.  When he got the chance, B kicked him in the you-know-where's during a hockey game.  The bullying stopped.  Years later B heard the brother had become a biker with the Hell's Angels.  Much better fit.

"Your daughter is bullying my step-daughter," I said when I telephoned the mother of a bully who was picking on S in grade five.  "It better stop."  It did.  "Our boys bring out the worst in each other," was another call I made to prevent one boy I didn't like playing with my son.  It stopped temporarily, but they took up again a number of years later with predictable results.

The one good thing about bullying is that it prepares you when you run up against them in later life.  Bullying isn't restricted to children and teens.  How many of us have worked for bullies?  Most of us.  I painfully remember Helen Beauchemin, Monica Jones-Kisil and Sue Wormington.  Bullies all.  Tellingly, they were all women and didn't like me because...........fill in the blank.  The only male boss who ever bullied me was Larry Gordon at Customs and Excise -- subsequently fired from the federal government, a feat few achieve.

Politically incorrect as it now is, bullying isn't likely to stop.  It's human nature.