Bullying, Fear, And The Full Moon (Part Two)

Schoolyard Bully

On the drive home, in early November 1964, from Christ the King Seminary in Mission, British Columbia, after the rector had informed my parents that I was not yet ready to pursue a vocation to the priesthood, my father announced that he had enrolled me in Cartier College (not the real name of the school), a venerable boys school run by the Christian Brothers of Ireland, and that I would begin classes there the next day. I was thirteen years old and in grade nine, and I had been in the seminary for only two months.

I was familiar with the “venerable institution” as I had been a student there in grades four and five and in those two years was introduced to the brutality of the brother-teachers and the general penchant of boys to bully their weaker or more sensitive peers. A sensitive, timid, shy child, afflicted with an eye condition that causes one to appear vague or mentally challenged, naturally I was bullied by several of the “stronger” boys in my class. I do not recall that the torment they inflicted was physical; it consisted more of name-calling, taunting, and of course, ostracism. Boys who are bullied in this way are all aware of the ever-present, if only imagined, threat of physical violence, however, and live in constant fear of it.

So when my father informed me of the arrangements he had made for my post-seminary schooling, I was less than happy at the prospect of returning to an environment I remembered as a hell. I had spent the first three grades and the last three grades of my elementary education at the school attached to our local parish, and while the Sisters of St. Joseph and lay women who taught us could be strict and stern, this small school, close to home and filled with my friends, was a vacation in Disneyland in contrast to the cold and terrifying halls of Cartier College.

The return engagement at Cartier College, which lasted two years – for grades nine and ten – turned out to be more terrifying and traumatic, and far more miserable, than the two elementary school years I spent in that venerable institution. I was still the sensitive, shy, timid child I had been in those earlier grades; I was still being bullied by my older brother and by my peers at school; my father remained a remote, fearsome figure; and the teachers at College were, for the most part, even more intimidating and threatening (unregulated corporal punishment was the norm) than they had been when I was an elementary student there. But suddenly I was experiencing the heightened emotional reactivity of adolescence; thus the fear was more intense, the loneliness more acute – and both of these were now sharing the stage with surly resentment. The emotional turmoil was rendered even more disturbing by a growing realization that my sexual attraction to other boys was a secret that had to be maintained at all costs, causing me to become even more fearful, withdrawn, and isolated.

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I believe that I was a naturally sensitive child; for better or worse, sensitivity was a characteristic I brought with me into this world, most likely along with my homosexuality. I am not convinced, however, that I was innately shy or timid; these traits were “learned.”

The learning process began early as my brother, three years older than I was and larger and far stronger, determined that I was an easy and convenient target and commenced a campaign of bullying that lasted well into my teenage years. I learned early on that to try and fight back was useless because had I earnestly attempted to do so, my brother would not have hesitated to break an arm or shoulder and claim that the injury was inflicted accidentally or in self-defence. There was a meanness in him in those years: he enjoyed tormenting me and knew that he could do so with impunity because my father believed that I should learn how to stand up for myself. Apparently my mother concurred as she did not seek to mitigate the bullying in any way.

Experts who study bullying, like University of Warwick psychology professor Dieter Wolke, have determined that parents’ relationships with their children are the most significant factor in the degree of sibling bullying that occurs in a family. There is less sibling bullying in households with parents who are “warm, who are fair, who had very clear rules in the family.” This was certainly not the case in my home. Parenting expert Barbara Coloroso (The Bully, the Bullied, and the Not-So-Innocent Bystander) would refer to my family as a “brick-wall family, that very authoritarian family, who often will use verbal or physical restraint or shame a child…. [Such a family] is at high risk for bringing out two kinds of kids in that same family, and one would be the bully, who realizes ‘I can mimic Mom or Dad’ with a younger sibling and the targeted kid who feels like they can’t be safe anywhere.”

The torment inflicted by my brother was physical and psychological, and he got better at it as we got older. Physical assaults included headlocks, arm twisting, punching, slapping, and sitting on my chest (he knew that I was claustrophobic and this type of constraint caused me great distress). Psychological torment consisted of ridicule (especially in front of my younger sisters); the taking of various possessions, usually while I was using or playing with them; confinement under threat of physical retribution if I attempted to escape; and numerous other acts calculated to make my life miserable.

While these forms of bullying may appear somewhat benign when compared with the abuse some children endure, the fact that they were carried out with almost psychopathic calculation, that they often came suddenly (in many instances immediately after some friendly act or interchange), that they persisted for a number of years, and that my brother appeared to derive immense enjoyment from the suffering he caused me and expressed no remorse or regret for his actions kept me in a state of fearful distraction for several years.

My father, without being overtly violent or abusive, was a fearsome man; one of his withering looks would paralyze a charging bull with terror. He was neither warm and affectionate nor communicative; there were no father-and-son outings to the baseball stadium, no family afternoons at the movies (except on our birthdays), no pleasantly inquisitive conversations about how we were doing, what we were interested in, or what might have been bothering us. There were, however, expectations, especially of our doing well in school, respecting elders, and completing chores at home, and stern disapproval if these expectations were not met.

My father once issued a warning, shortly after my brother and I began attending Vancouver College, that we had better not come home whining about any corporal punishment we received there; if we did, we would receive the same at home.

(None of this is to say that we were not well cared for. My father worked hard and provided faithfully and generously for his family; we had new clothes, delicious and healthy home-cooked meals, a beautiful home, wonderful vacations, and rich Christmases. Our family ate dinner together every night and my father was home for nearly all of the weekend – he did like golf.)

Professor Wolke points out that “the worst outcomes we found [were] for those children who were bullied at school and bullied at home. Just imagine the child: you go to school and you get victimized there, and then you go home and the same thing happens there – because these are children who don’t have a safe place anywhere.” So at the age of thirteen, I was afraid of my teachers, afraid of my classmates, afraid of my older brother, and afraid of my father. I was a sensitive gay teenager desperately in need of affection and affirmation, and security. And whether I realized it or not at the time, as we drove away from the seminary that Sunday afternoon, I was in many ways utterly alone.

It was not long before I was to experience a subtler but equally frightening and ultimately damaging form of bullying.

Image Credit

“Bully” by Thomas Ricker. Creative Commons Flickr. Some rights reserved.

Recent Ross Lonergan Articles:

• The Film-School Student Who Never Graduates: A Profile of Ang Lee, Part Four
• The Film-School Student Who Never Graduates: A Profile of Ang Lee, Part Three
• The Film-School Student Who Never Graduates: A Profile of Ang Lee, Part Two
• The Film-School Student Who Never Graduates: A Profile of Ang Lee, Part One
• Bullying, Fear, And The Full Moon (Part Four)