One particular bully, Diane James.

I had a bully beating up on me beginning the first day of seventh grade. Her name was Diane James, it was 1963, and the school was John F. Kennedy Jr. High. I knew her name which was the same as mine, and that's all I knew about her, so I tried to be friendly. When I heard her name the first time, I smiled and said hello. She gave me a look of disgust and turned away.

Foolishly, I kept trying. I say "foolish" not because it was a bad thing to do but because I thought I could work on her and finally appeal to her enough to turn her into a friend. Though I had been bullied all my life, you see I had no idea how to deal with them. I was friendly, affable, and welcoming when I ran into her.

One day early in the year we had an assembly, I believe we were getting an orientation. Diane and her friend came in and picked the chairs immediately behind mine. Funny, out of all the other empty seats, those two looked the most appealing.

She waited till the lights went down and started kicking my chair. Silly me, I didn't recognize it as a hostile act, I just thought she was being a jerk and not paying attention to what rough treatment her feet were giving someone else's chair. Yes, I was that naive. I ignored her but she started kicking me harder and harder till it was actually painful. By this time she and the friend were rocking with barely-suppressed laughter.

I asked her to stop. She kicked me hard several times more. Again I asked, a little heatedly, and she kicked harder. So I reached behind me and pinched her ankle. I was not in the habit of telling a teacher about anything; their answer was always, "Quit making trouble. Go to the principal's office." But Diane James was, and she told a teacher.

I got in trouble, she walked away unscathed.

MEAN PEOPLE SUCK

Bullies are everywhere. And the problem just gets worse over time. I was a kid in the Sixties, and the bullying was godawful then, but it seems that the problem today is far, far worse. I could be wrong because I doubt that there were any statistics kept on the subject back then, but today it seems they do their bullying on twice as many targets per bully, twice as many bullies per target, and they pull three times as many incidents as in former times.

It's a favorite meme among idiots that children OUGHT to go to public school (where they're supposed to get picked on) so they can learn to be tough. I think no stupider thing has ever been said. You don't heal a broken bone by breaking it again; you don't get rid of a bruise by poking it over and over and over; you don't toughen up a sensitive kid by giving him third degree burns; and you can't teach a kid self-assurance with the daily reminder that he's someone else's garbage.

The terrible thing is that bullies can recognize bully-bait from a hundred miles off. And they know just what to do. Is this good? Is it right that 1/3 of the kids going to public school should use the place as a training field to become little Nazis?

Is it good for their targets? Are you really stupid enough to think that training young people to be doormats for the meanest people on earth is good for them?

If that's your position, I'm sure you used to be a bully yourself. And if so, you can join us in the discussion, offering insights to their mental processes.

What do I hope to achieve with this website?

I want to equip people with textual examples of how other people have dealt with their bullies so that with luck, their targets could learn how, themselves. Usually bullies pick out those who have no defenses. The targets get upset, they cry, they try to ignore the bully, or they try to reason with them, but in any case they don't know how to deal with their bullies. If they did, the bullies wouldn't come back for more.