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Essay: "Bullies"

by Pearson
As a child growing up in the alien world of Child Protective Services (CPS), I have encountered my share of bullies. Actually, I've encountered your share too. There are many reasons why bullies bully and I could probably go into the psychology behind that, but for now I'd rather just share an experience I had where I was the bully's prey and the bully. My first time in TYC (a juvenile prison environment - Texas Youth Commission) and my first day on my dorm, I met a tall black dude named David Elzey who just thought he was the shit. The way I met him was I walked into my room to put my jacket up and I caught him in the act of rummaging through my locker. He attempted to intimidate me with his size (I was a skinny 16 year old white kid then) and when I didn't back down he resorted to violence. Needless to say, I didn't come out of that alteration unscathed, and while neither did he. I was in worse shape than he was. For the next 3 weeks this was an everyday thing, he'd try to strong-arm my stuff and we'd fight. He'd steal my stuff while I was gone and when I saw it missing we'd fight. Out of 24 people on my dorm, only 2 people stood up to him, me and another young wood out of Austin named Josh Anderson. One day I decided I'd had enough of his shit, so when he next stuck his hand in my locker I grabbed then nearest thing (an electric pencil sharpener) and swinging it by the cord I slammed it into the side of his head. He was out, down for the count. I know that when he regained consciousness there would be more trouble, so I hog tied him with some bathrobe ties and dragged him to the middle of the day room where I left him. No one helped him, when he came back to, he got the staff's attention and was untied. We had a few more fights, but they petered out. However, he continued to intimidate the others, and they continued to be intimidated. I got with Josh, and we decided to band together and get some of the other kids involved in our little group. Hispanics and whites, about 8 of us altogether, as one entity, began to stand up to David. Being as he was so big we ganged up on him occasionally, and more and more often David began to leave kids alone. Well, we got caught up in a blood frenzy and we became much worse bullies than David ever was. He quit wanting to fight, began to stay to himself and rarely gave us problems. Still we kept at it, kept beating up on him, kept stealing his stuff (or more accurately our stuff back) and we got even crueler than he'd ever been. We began to force him to do pushups, made him talk his Ebonics, made him eat live crickets and drink fresh urine. It got to where David offered no resistance at all, and I realized that we had broke his will, his spirit. He was docile - no anger, no aggression. One day I was "supervising" David clean the shower stalls when I realized with a jolt that all I had been doing was no better than what he had been doing. I was a bully. My group was a bully. As a compassionate human being able to put myself in others shoes I felt exactly what David must have felt and I was ashamed that it was because of me, my little movement, that he had became the sorry sight that he was. I felt sorry for him, and while I still tell myself today that he deserved that, it is still cause for self-reflection. I washed my hands of David right then, and began to encourage others to leave him alone now too. I made him realize why he had been treated this way and examined his feelings on the issue. It doesn't pay to be a bully and it doesn't feel nice to be bullied. That was 10 years ago and in prison the bullies are of a different caliber, where stolen property is the least of out worries. The bullies here are after your minds, your will, and your body. Many end up lying in a pool of blood in the communal shower, having been stabbed 50 times with a 10 inch long piece of sharpened angle iron or expanded metal. This is prison, and no one can understand it quite the way we can, those of us who live it on a daily basis. It's a dog eat dog world and as the saying goes "only the strong survive." So all you bullies keep in mind, no matter where you're at in life, there is always going to be someone much bigger, meaner, and badder than you.