"It gets better" message for bullies' henchmen

Patton Oswalt sends a message not to bullies or their victims but to "the bully’s little friends." His essay may remind you of how much school culture resembles prison culture: 

By the time middle school started, I had the Victim Kit firmly sewed on.   Cystic acne, headgear and braces, man-tits and a stupid haircut. Sixth and seventh grade were no fucking fun for me. Summer camp was torture, swimming pools were humiliation ponds, sports were a whirling wall of razors I didn’t dare approach.

 

By the time eighth grade rolled around, I’d adjusted my strategy.   Figure out who the biggest bullies and abusers were, use my nascent comedy skills to make ‘em laugh and hone their taunts, and become part of the asshole entourage.

 

It was a survival strategy. I had a hand in tormenting an awkward girl named Robin in my eighth grade personal hygiene class.   Also a fat(ter), asthmatic kid with a stutter at YMCA camp whose name I can’t remember and countless, faceless others as I glided painlessly in the wake of a trio of bullies whose names I also can’t remember.   I only knew they weren’t bullying me, and were actually glad to see me in the morning, ‘cause here comes a guy who knows seven crueler ways to call someone an asshole or shithead (beyond just “asshole” and “shithead”).

The pecking order in middle and high school can be brutal, and I admit that I tried not to end up on the bottom of it. My usual strategy was to be as inconspicuous as possible (hence, my running battles with my mother over my hair, which she wanted to keep in a crew cut -- extremely unfashionable in the 1970s). But I sometimes got on the good side of tough kids by helping with their homework, or just giving them answers outright, which was a kind of bribery similar to Oswalt's sharing his insult skills.

And in high school I did turn on one kid who was probably gay and was incessently picked on by bigger kids. He was short and skinny and had a high-pitched voice and was terrible at sports (as was I, but I pretended not to give a damn about it, so I got some points for the prized teenage quality of aloofness). He'd get shoved and kicked in gym class, and at first I was tentatively friendly toward him, maybe imaging imagining some kind of alliance.

Then one day in boys' gym class, I was crouching on the floor in an unwittingly unfortunate pose when the kid suddenly pointed at me and screamed, "I can see your balls!" Which was true, thanks to the combination of my loose shorts and my somehow pushing my package to one side when I sat down. Everyone turned to look at me.

It was all accidental, but I immediately feared that other kids would think I had exposed myself intentionally -- or, worse, had specifically "shown off" to the bullied kid as some kind of sexual overture. So I defused the situation (as best as I could tell) by standing up to tower over him and yelling, "Don't be such a baby!" I remember giving him a little shove and then looking around to make sure the right people saw it.

After that, the kid kept getting picked on -- nothing really violent, but enough to make him look like he was fighting back tears -- and I kept my distance from him. In my mind, he had tried to seize an opportunity to put me at the bottom of the pecking order (the kid who shows off his balls!) and so he wasn't entitled to my friendship or my defense from the bullies. He probably knew how I felt, since he hardly ever spoke to me again.

In retrospect and in an ideal world, he and I would have helped each other get through the hell that was high school. But as Patton notes, if you're not popular, a "survival strategy" takes over and rules your behavior.

Thank God it does get better after high school. I was hugely relieved to discover that prison exercise yard etiquette isn't the only option in the real world.