Published on 12, July, 2020
Just interested if anyone else has met a person in adult life who bullied them at school.
My father ran a small coach business, the yard had an office and occasionally people would book a coach in person. One day I was on my own in the yard, I would have been about 35 then. One of the school bullies turned up to book a coach. He was one of the worst ones, anyway he greeted me like an old friend, it shocked me and I was like a rabbit in the headlights. He really was after ‘mates rates’, I really didn’t know how to deal with him, had he forgotten or thought it was just a bit of fun, I couldn’t work it out, I started to wonder, did the years of abuse actually happen? But they are too vivid, they did happen. Another thought was, he’s pushing me for a cheap price, is he trying to bully me again. I so wanted to ask him why he did it but couldn’t. My father luckily came back to the yard and dealt with his enquiry. Has anything similar happened to anyone else?
Once, but I didn't buy into the crocodile smile, whichever way you wanted to look at it, even if we are to be generous and consider the possibility that they genuinely thought it was all just a laugh without any intended malice. That means they put their having fun as a priority over ours with no thought of "oh _____ isn't having as much fun with this as I am I should stop". When teasing becomes torment they crossed a line, banter only works if the other person is in on the joke and knows it's not serious from the start. And you can't allow yourself to be gaslit like that either. You didn't just imagine it, it really did happen like you think. They can't just roll up in your life again like they did nothing to you just because they want something from you now.