Bullied. Bullied. Bully. – Guest Post by Nathan Gross

In kindergarten, I was the only kid still crying when my mum dropped me off—a month into the year. Result: the other kids laughed at me, or worse, asked me what was wrong, and I just wailed, “I want my mummy!” That meant I hardly ever got invited out to play. And the odd time I did, I’d just cry. The whole time. Till my mother came and got me. Embarrassing, huh. A kind of self-induced bullying.

Primary school was all about pushing and shoving. Ganging up on some poor individual for the way he looked. For the pants he wore. How he tucked his shirt in or how he wore grey-rimmed glasses and had no style. Read that: Me. Me. Me and me.

High school saw me starting to stand up to bullying. Getting beaten up for no other reason than some kid thought I was (correctly) Jewish used to piss me off. I’d hit back even if the kid was bigger. I refused to take shit. I’d stand toe-to-toe with anyone no matter their size, clench my fists, and threaten to hit them back if they hit me. Sometimes I’d throw one before they did. Sometimes I’d cop some back. And sometimes I’d be beaten and wouldn’t get in even one hit. But eventually people stopped bullying me.

Somewhere in all that though, I became somewhat of a bully myself. Sometimes I picked on the “geeks”, on the “nerds”, or on the kids who annoyed the shit out of me for no particular reason. My bullying tactics weren’t violent. They were usually just verbal. But I regret them. Bullies are wimps. Picking on other people, for whatever reason, is weak. I’d always made a point of not bullying because I knew how it felt, but those times in high school, I lapsed. In those moments I became a wimp. I apologize to those that I bullied: I was a dickhead. I am sorry.

Anyway, my point is, did being bullied contribute to me becoming a bully? Did I, when the opportunity arose, take out my frustrations at being bullied by becoming a bully myself? It’s not an excuse, but is it a reason?

Coming from Australia and living in France, I often look in at America and the number of mass shootings, many in schools, with shock and dismay. I think there is a gun problem in America. I can’t believe that there is not more gun control, and after each new mass shooting, I can’t believe there is still no gun control action taken. In Australia, strict gun control laws were introduced by the government with bipartisan support in 1996 after the Port Arthur massacre, where a lone gunman killed 35 people and injured many more. Mass shootings since then in Australia have been rare. The laws worked. I don’t understand why America won’t enact similar laws.

Enacting guns laws is one thing. Taking guns out of the hands of potential murderers would prevent many mass murders. But then the real question is, why do these people want to take such a drastic and horrific action in the first place? Does bullying play a part? And if so, are these people bullied so much that they turn to such drastic bullying tactics themselves in the form of mass shootings? Do people who are bullied actually turn into bullies?

Using mass shootings to try to illustrate this point is an extreme example of course. In my book My Daughter, My Assassin, when Mina is bullied, she also reacts by killing her “attackers”. It is an extreme reaction. Do the moments where she is bullied in some way shape the person she becomes? Perhaps they do.

Bullying in all its forms, big or small, physical or verbal, face-to-face, or cyber, has its repercussions. But it shouldn’t be the gravity of a response that stops us from bullying. It should be enough that bullying demeans us all.

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