Bullying

—I learned early on in life, there are people out here who are willing to hurt you if given a chance. I have devoted my life to being prepared to face them.—

US Army Lt. Colonel Vietnam Vet

     Life demands proof of strength and throws constant challenges at us. Our response to the challenge is the key to self defense.

     My relationship with bullying is intimate. I grew up in a home of constant physical abuse—its main ingredients were surprise, fear, and pain—beyond the scope of reasonable discipline, from a father with alcohol and anger issues. Trauma was a parent.

Fast forward through my teen years into adulthood: I became a father myself. By the year 2000, Royce Gracie had won a few UFC tournaments using something called Brazilian jiujitsu. Soon after Gracie’s victories, I walked into Jay Dennis’s Relson Gracie Jiujitsu storefront school. I was that ego-driven, former Marine weightlifter guy with some fighting experience. I could have been a bully. After I expressed doubt about this brazilian jiujitsu working on me, Jay allowed me to test a short, solid purple belt. Joe, who was much smaller than me, was like a raging chimpanzee who choked and arm-barred me countless times. No matter what I tried, no amount of strength worked. This innovation—mixed martial arts and vale tudo—was being shared on a world stage. At this time Japan had PRIDE fighting league, and America had UFC. I had finally found what I had been pursuing all my life! No longer was there a question of which  fighting style was the best or which martial art could handle a bully in any discipline. Martial science had finally given us a system of techniques to handle all systems. 

     By  the time I discovered Brazilian jiujitsu, I was a father of three and recently employed as a graphic artist at a mom-and-pop print shop in the small town of Georgetown, South Carolina. Georgetown is the third-oldest city in South Carolina on Winyah Bay port in the Lowcountry: two funeral homes, a few bars, maybe five churches, two traffic lights, one newspaper. People went fishing on the weekends. Children’s laughter was as common as birdsong. Everyone spoke to each other on the street. Swaying pines of the Lowcountry fed the paper mill; trains fed the Steel mill. The dormant river ports once fed rice plantations. The free labor of the Gullah people, descendants of Africans from the west coast of Africa, produced America’s most lucrative crop: rice. Rice plantations made more money than cotton and sugar at a point in American history. The word “plantation” is and was a part of the cultural landscape. Restaurants, hotels, and actual plantation tours wore the name along Route 17. Reading the word “plantation” seventeen times before I got to work—was that bullying? Knowing the horrors that happened in these places was a constant mental bullying.

     The print shop I worked at had a small warehouse in the back where the toners, inks, paper, and hardware were stored. Above shelves of paper in the rafters, I saw a tight, neat hangman’s noose attached to a rusted I-beam. 

“Is that noose?” Obviously a dumb question. I was just speaking out loud so “Kee-alvin,” as he said it, knew I got the message.

     Calvin had a speckled, leather face and an anus-sphincter of a mouth. He was missing his middle finger from getting it caught in a printing press.

     I was stoic. I got that coping mechanism from childhood.

     “Un heh thar ain’coming down, neether,” Calvin’s baritone drawl came right out of an episode of The Andy Griffith Show. 

Georgetown was behind the times. Openly racist jokes were common in the office followed by a collection of laughs.

     I had mouths to feed, so I said nothing else. I appreciated not having to guess about the hostile environment. Racism by design is a bully. Racism isn't going anywhere any time soon—it took centuries to build: est quod est.

Every month I left South Carolina to visit New Jersey. The areas were a complete contrast in environment and people—Jersey was congested and smelled like industry. I was going to spend time with my first child, post-divorce from my college sweetheart. This was one of many visits while she was a first grader. And as a father, self-defense was paramount for a daughter who didn’t have daily access to me.

That day, her mother and I decided to take her to the river park along with my ex-wife’s friend and child, Marcus, who lacked discipline was historically a bully. I had been around him before I witnessed his bullying antics.

     The world, specifically American society, has made time and space for bullies. That is the reality, like it or not. If anti-bullying does not, first and foremost, begin with preparedness to handle a threat, it’s starting wrong. Bullying is a symptom of living around people. They are as necessary as the wolf or snake. Personally, I don't want to be around bullies 24/7, but I appreciate what they do. Their job is to test us.

While at the river, my daughter came running to her mother, crying and clearly upset.

“Ma mama, Marcus won’t stop throwing rocks at me!” Sniff, sniffle, gag, hiccup. “Is he an magician? He is making them out of thin air!” Sniff, sniffle, gag, hiccup.

“No.”

Sniff.

“So where is he getting the rocks?”

My daughter pointed to the ground.

I butted in, “Do you remember how to do a rear-naked choke from class?”

I insisted, when she visited me in South Carolina, that she be part of a jiujitsu kid’s class. One of the first techniques she learned in 2001 was a rear-naked choke.

As she sniffled, I gave her instructions I knew she could follow because I knew she had the physical fitness. She had to deal with fear and pain in class. “So when he bends over to pick up another rock, get behind him and rear-naked-choke him. When he screams, let him go.”

I sat back to watch it play out. I watch her manage distance from the threat. She never let him get behind her. Surprise and fear had left her little body.

Her mother shook her head at me. I grinned, a proud papa, once I saw her sink in the choke.

Marcus shrieked and went crying to his mother. Of course, his mother complained.

Manage your kid’s bully behavior so I don't have to. He learned a lesson that day: consequence.

Without a bully, she would never have found the strength to defend herself. She faced surprise, fear, and pain through fitness and technique. Simply telling your child to “hit back” is not sufficient to pass this kind of test. Prove to them they are not victims. Teach them to problem-solve in their environments.

Bullies exist and have to do their work. Bullying is as American as baseball and apple pie. How we deal with them is through anti-bullying. Bullies are demanding our proof of strength—a strength everyone has. Give it to them willingly.

Within Draza’s kid class, I will often say, “It’s okay to feel fear. It’s fear. Now here are some ways of dealing with a temporary emotion: your feelings are valid, absolutely don't ignore your intuition. Yes, you will be uncomfortable. Be uncomfortable. Comfort is around the corner. Surprise, fear, and pain are not comfortable.”