By Arturo Leyva
“In my time” a phrase that people who have been on this planet for some time use, Bullies were those characters to be defeated and who carried on their backs the hatred of all their victims. I suffered firsthand the snatching of my recess food, having the ball I was playing with taken away from me, and several pushes without any reason. My father lived in the USA for a long time and I spent very little time with him when he returned. He died when I was 12 years old if I remember correctly. For a long time it was just my mother and I who were in charge of supporting my siblings and I had to sell everything, Jellies, Chicharrones, Churros, Tunas and in all my projects I was a victim of the Bullies who repeatedly left without paying or they broke my Chicharrones.
The helplessness I felt at not having anyone to defend me forged my character and made me understand that in this life you are alone and you must get used to the idea of finding a way to survive, it is important to mention that I am the older brother and I am not from a Very large build, I'm barely 5.6 and I sacrificed my muscles for some intellectual power, I prefer books to the Gym. I understood from a very young age that diplomacy was vital to make your way in life and I used my intelligence to make friends and have strong friends who would stand up for me in case the bullies wanted to hit me.
The term Bully has been demonized in recent times and I believe from a very personal point these characters had a function in the school ecosystem, to begin with they gave you an idea of what the world would be like once you leave school, the Life is full of Bullies and some have weapons and power to destroy you. Some of us had the opportunity and enjoyed the taste of revenge which is a delicacy given to you by the gods of life.
One of the bullies at my school whose name I am going to change was Mateo, a muscular guy with the body of a Pitbull and the face of an ogre. He was always in a bad mood and smelled like urine. He used to grab you from the back and lift you up to make you feel his strength and at the same time his smell of a child who was allergic to bathing. One day he put Vaporub in my eyes and I was blind for several minutes until I washed my eyes with a lot of water and cried from helplessness. This was in the 3rd year of elementary school. A year later, Mateo brought a rare yellow balloon and he was showing off to the whole class his peculiar balloon, he inflated it and then deflated it and put the balloon in his mouth. The teacher noticed the rare balloon and told him: “Mateo, take it out of your mouth, that is a condom." The laughter of the entire room was one of the sweetest moments of my childhood when I saw that strong ogre being a victim of the classroom's ridicule.
There was another guy who was his cousin and this one was skinny and tall, we will call him Poncho. This was a more subtle Bully but equally lethal given his height, he would slap you in the head and he was always hungry so he would take away what you were eating and sometimes even steal from you. The hatred that I felt for Mateo and Poncho grew during our years in elementary school and one Friday while we were sweeping the school, a task we did every Friday so that the school would be clean on Monday Mateo was hitting me and my sister Sandra, who is not so diplomatic as me, saw what was happening and began to hit Mateo with the broomstick, Poncho came to defend his cousin and I was not going to let him hit my sister so I gathered courage and started to hit Poncho with all the hatred stored up from years of suffering his abuse. Mateo was crying because of my sister's blows to the head and he was no longer a danger, my sister Sandra then came to help me with Poncho and we won the battle, the teachers, as always, took a while to stop the fight and this time I'm glad that they did it. The circle of kids watching the fight and cheering on the Underdogs is something that still lives in my memory.
What I want to get at is that this life is a jungle and school is a mini version of what it will be like outside, far from taking away all the problems from your children you have to teach them to defend themselves or look for solutions to survive in this world that He will be cruel and implacable with the weak. The world is cruel and you don't have to be physically strong to survive, but smart to have strong friends who can defend you from the bad guys. Over time I found out that Mateo and Poncho were mistreated by their parents and were very unhappy in their lives, in some way those Bullies had their problems and their way of being was a consequence of their internal conflicts.
Thank you very much for reading this article. I will continue sharing my points of view. I thank this blog for being a window to share my memories. If you have comments or opinions about this article feel free to send me a message to my Facebook page.
