Playground Bullies

Is it plain cowardice, trying to keep everyone happy?

(especially when it comes to my menagerie in a hall of mirrors?)

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3a/Gluehlampe_01_KMJ.jpg

Some news recently disturbed my otherwise singular preoccupation with the donkey’s tail metaphor that could be the basis of replacing all modern thought, especially mine.

The study about playground bullies going on to be successful in adult life. ‘Yes’, but are they happy?’ Wouldn’t it infuriate ‘us’ if they were joyfully bullying their way through, in an unfair world? We secretly want them to be racked with self-doubt and leading vacuous lives (more vacuous than ‘ours’, at least, please!).

I was badly bullied between ages eleven to 11 to 14. I was very tall, just under 6’ at ten years old. So, I became a target for ‘small’ boys with older brothers or boys two years older who wanted to show off to their peers how hard they were. I had had such a tranquil time in Primary school, so, didn’t know ‘what had hit me’ at Secondary. However, I had punched boys before, for the righting of wrongs, as far as I can recall, or that choose to recall. The belligerent entitled gits who sailed along embracing their ‘I’m a git’ needed bringing down, maybe reinforced by my cowboy and other heroes. ‘He hit me first!’ is probably the most common excuse offered since our emergence from the Olduvai Gorge. If only Abel had got one in first.

The gender dimension, more transparent to ‘us’ these days than then (mid 70s), still has the cloud of denial, but boys! Boys. The way we bring them up. How many times has this been hand-wrung or bleated about, but those bully varmints keep on coming. This is why all men should be feminists. Even though I claim to have been an advocate of this blandishment over the years, I would have to don a paper bag over my head, if videos were available of my mansplaining this very topic, over the decades.

Men, after surviving their puberty pummelling, are victims of alpha males whose parents were proud advocates of their sons’ bash, bash, bam their way to the top. I only get a sense of male solidarity with men who have taken one of the ‘lesser, kinder routes’; with me this has been a gravity toward musicians. All my male friends, bar one, are musical, can play or sing. Did it just happen that way?

Disband your department

In my assuredly arbitrary experience on the planet, people who jabber like me about self-delusion are the most prone to the very same. Highlighting a larger category within the ‘what’s it all about-ness’. That category covers anyone who sets themselves up as something / sees themselves as (---) and then may have the choice of recruiting other similarly inept people.  Essentially, we create an immediate Achilles Heal or Lacuna in the shape of our choices. Like projective anti-matter. Haven’t we all seen salespeople who shouldn’t be left to sell anything, social workers who need to do some work on themselves before social working, Teachers who cannot connect with their pupils, capture their imaginations, even with the famous ‘best will in the world’; let alone whole Human Resources departments that should voluntarily disband themselves as unfit to look after humans. What is this phenomenon?

Placating people

In the 5^th year (Year 11) dinner queue, PG (not Pete Gabriel) wanted to fight me. “Come on, Danny, hit me!” Looking back, it was an almost benign look in his face, as if he was providing me with a rite of passage that I had not recognised. “You haven’t done anything to me P! You’ll have to hit me first!” He never did hit me, but along with BM, and TG, PG caused chaos at Palace matches in the 74 – 75 season.

From age 12 I had discovered a ‘playground survival’ technique that I had got good at, BUT unfortunately, this was at the cost of letting rip with an outburst of indignation against a boy who daily kicked our ball over the wall of the school. The day before Mum & Dad had said “We can’t keep fighting your battles for you!” My indignation was more against them than the offending boy. The punch under his diaphragm was wrathful, let’s say.

Guilt, guilt! Yet that action received cheers and slaps on the back. Thence, a permanent divide between 1) patience and talking situations down and 2) “I’ve had enough of this! Destroy!”

You cannot be serious. True

Don’t you know anything that is not donkey related? Well, I’ve been quite good today. It reminds me of the question “Can’t you ever be serious?” which logically requires a serious reply. The legitimate question has pursued me throughout, BUT I certainly could only be silly with people who were infuriated by my humour. More bloody-mindedness but it can become self-defeating. I am mostly middling serious.

My Menagerie

Can we seriously be expected to speak on our own behalf? Given these ‘people’ that take over when we are at our ‘best’, ‘worst’, most morose, lively, cynical, celebratory. Who can really self-appraise and not have that deep sense of self blown apart by the inquisition hiding behind my garden fence.

Oh, tTey are there, all right. I can show you when you’re next round.

Next Time

Plato draws a donkey and are we pleased?