wow@matt being the only honest person on sen.
Something I wrote in 9th grade on bullying:
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Meet Billy, Billy is a little 8 year old boy, who is picked on and humiliated everyday by Roger, a bully that attends his school. Let's discuss Billy’s hopeless situation. Some would say he should just tell, but is it really that simple? There are some things Billy should not even consider. Most kids feel the overwhelming power in a tool to be the only way out.
Billy is a relatively shy boy who attends a public school. He does not bother anyone and maintains good grades. He has some friends, but he is still looked upon as a loner. There is another boy at school. His name is Roger. One day, Roger was bored. He decided to pick on Billy the rest of the day. Billy was small and skinny so he could not defend himself against the larger Roger. Roger would call Billy ‘stick boy’ while Billy hung out with his friends. His friends started referring to Billy as stick boy from then on. Roger throws spit balls and slaps Billy in the back of the head during class. When the teacher does rarely catch Roger in the act he either yells at Roger and Billy, or he purposely ignores it. In just one day Billy’s world has been turned upside down. It did not just end in that one day, no, it turns into an every-other-day ritual leaving Billy with very few options to consider.
Billy arrives home everyday with an illusory good attitude and a smile worn as a disguise. He tells his family that his day was good, but sometimes snaps if they try to dig any deeper. On one particularly bad day, he almost caves in, but what stops him is knowing what the consequences will be. If he does decide to tell the first thing he will get is a lecture on why he should have came to them sooner. He will then go through a grueling questioning of what exactly happened. He will strangely have trouble recalling what happened all those times. Roger will be talking calmly, collectively, and lying through his teeth. The administrator will equally punish them with a day of detention. All that crap he had to put up with comes down to a day of detention. It is enough to make a kid go insane. It is far from over though. When he goes to school the next day, everyone will make fun of him for being a ‘Tattle Tale’, and worst of all is that in a week the bullying process will start right back up again. This is what keeps Billy from telling. That is what keeps him from caving in. There has to be a better option than this.
There are some choices that are too dumb to even consider. Billy knows the two things he will never to do in this situation: Suicide and nothing. By killing himself nothing is accomplished. People will remember him, but no one will be grieving other than his family. It is a stupid choice if you are going for broke any ways. Would you not rather go out with a bang? Roger would eventually start tormenting another and all will be lost. Another thing he will not do any longer is nothing. Something has to be done, and Billy is not getting any where by just waiting.
Billy is left with the last option he could come up with. This option is a means of revenge. He is tired of being the push over. He wants to prove that he is a force to be reckoned with. He is going to make Roger and everyone else pay with a tool the size of his scrawny fist. The pushing, the beating, the words, and the laughing, most of all, the laughing will stop. In the end, Billy will be towering menacingly tall over Roger. Roger will be the one crying this time begging for mercy, and in an instant the score has been settled. He will not kill himself though, instead he will take a 10 year sentence. After that he might reflect on himself to see if the 10 years was worth the life of a boy, but with a memory dangling in his mind he remembers “This was my only choice?”
Sadly, many young boys and maybe girls have had the thought of a gun as a form of salvation in one way or another. Something has to be done in order to give Billy another choice. In Billy’s hopeless situation, some would say he should just tell, but is it really that simple? There are some things Billy should not even consider. Most kids feel the overwhelming power in a tool to be the only way out.
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