A friend of mine was a young girl in grade school back in the 50s, when an older and much bigger boy, a “bully” roamed the school yard each day during recess. He routinely terrorized children of all ages by virtue of his size, attitude and actions. He pushed, he shoved, and he hit and punched. He yelled, he screamed, he threatened. Why? Who cares? That’s how he lived -- power through terror. And before playground aides and security cameras and cell phones, he got away with it day after day. Everyone was afraid of him, no one attempted to defeat him, and thus he had no reason to stop. Mostly everyone just tried to avoid him.
Until the day my friend was roller skating with friends and saw him go after her little sister. She watched, from across the blacktop, as the bully approached her sister. She saw her sister cower in fear as he yelled at her and stepped closer. In a flash of brilliant inspiration, my friend crouched and quickly unbuckled one of her clunky metal roller skates and ran/hopped to her sister. Standing in front of her and, holding the skate by its leather strap, she began swinging the skate above her head in wild vicious circles. Of course the bully had to back off. If he hadn’t he would have ended up with a gash to his head, a broken nose, or worse. While whipping the skate around and around in the bully’s direction, my friend shouted at him to go away and leave everyone alone. Of course he did -- and never bothered anyone on the playground again. Lesson learned. The result: everyone on the playground was safe......Read more
No comments:
Post a Comment