7 Time-Tested Ways to Deal With Bullies

I know a bit about being bullied myself -- up until the end of Grade 11, I weighed about 45 pounds or so, and spent most of my lunch hours quietly reading Dateline transcripts beside my locker -- and have put more than a little thought into techniques to combat bullying. So, after poring through some of my old spite-filled Trapper Keepers, I synthesized those thoughts into something a little more coherent and less tear-stained. The result: a list of proven anti-bullying techniques, with their strengths and weaknesses listed below.

But this only works if you stand a chance of blending back into the background. If you're dealing with a persistent bully, or have some condition like red hair, where the bullying is likely to persist, it's possible that no amount of grinning and bearing it will help.

In general, tattling effectively requires some foresight and understanding of how the world works, and what the consequences of tattling are likely to be. Is the bully going to get a meaningless punishment, some verbal warning, warning of more verbal warnings to come? Or is there a harsher, more permanent solution in store for the bully? Suspension? Expulsion? Propulsion?

And perhaps most important of all are the consequences to the tattler. For kids and teens, tattling is of course a very grave violation of the code of the schoolyard, which, sort of like Santa Claus, exists solely by the power of children's belief in it. At the heart of this "code" lies the premise that children should be able to handle their own problems, because fuck adults, that's why. Whether this is reasonable or not (as an adult, my thoughts on the subject are compromised), the fact that it's so widely believed is what's important here. By tattling, victims thumb their noses at the code, only isolating themselves further. Whatever relief they might feel from the tattling will quite possibly be trumped by worse bullying down the road.

But there's no reason to be so literal-minded and make yourself look actually bigger. Instead, just make yourself less of a target; figure out what's making you stick out, and change that immediately. Wear better clothes, get a haircut by a person who cuts hair for money and stop talking so much about Justin Bieber, who sucks now, and talk more about One Direction, who are the best.

And this is actually where we run into an interesting problem with bullies and the bullied. One of the problems people who are getting bullied likely have is that they're not very good at realizing how they look to others. And when that lack of perspective is left to simmer for weeks and months in a stew of molten rage, it's possible to end up with someone who looks at fire and wonders, "Hey, why not?"

I'll take a stab at explaining why not, for anyone who happens to be getting bullied right now and has some fire ready to go. This is a path that will end with you in jail, or burned, or dead. And if those options don't sound that bad to you, well, you're wrong. Those are always the worst options open to anyone, at all times. Take another hard look at tattling, because if things are bad enough that you're about to set fire to something, then things are sure as shit bad enough to make tattling have some actual results. Someone out there is on your side; the Internet just barfed several hundred thousand dollars over someone who didn't think she had anyone on her side.

And assuming you do manage to steer you way through this without involving fire, you'll be pretty surprised to learn that life gets better. Nothing is worse than being a teenager, and although you may be having it worse than most, the simple passage of time is a guaranteed escape. Before too long you'll be something bigger and better, like a car owner, or a president. And even if those options don't pan out, you can always get into comedy writing, which seems to be a pretty popular path out of this type of mess.

Though honestly, I've looked into this, and there's just no way to make a pile of loose foliage look inconspicuous in a school hallway.

"You say Billy Scunthorpe has a lovely wife, two kids, makes $75,000 a year and is thinking of buying a small boat? RAAAAARRGH. THIS FEELING IS SO MUCH WORSE THAN BEING ON FIRE!"

It turns out that one of the side effects of living a good life is that it helps turn you into a psychologically well balanced person who doesn't actually need to get back at the bully, or even think about him at all. In between all that wife-getting and boat-purchase-considering, the fact that you got mocked mercilessly for liking the wrong Pokemon in Grade 4 simply doesn't seem that important anymore.