Dave Shoemaker
Contributing columnist
You’ve all read about the national initiative on bullying and all the recent cases that led up to it. It seems everyone’s being bullied these days. Bullying at school, bullying in the workplace, and we even had a case of bullying in the National Football League a few years ago.
Am I nuts or did bullying used to be limited to children? When I was young, I don’t recall any grown men or women being bullied. Now? Everyone can be bullied. It’s a national epidemic.
Because of all these nationally publicized cases of bullying, we now have a National Bullying Initiative, aimed at creating laws to stop the madness. So, at the risk of going against the grain and being politically incorrect, please indulge me for a few minutes. If I offend you in any way, please take no offense, as this isn’t intended to hurt your feelings.
To start, don’t we already have laws that protect people from being harassed, intimidated, and terrorized? And isn’t it a waste of time and money to try and pass laws that are attempting to turn people into saints? Children and adults are always going to make fun of each other on one level or another. That’s never going to change. And you can’t have laws protecting hurt feelings, for God’s sake.
It seems a lot of this stems from a few celebrated cases in which a young man or woman took their own life and bullying was singled out as the cause. But the truth is, there is no scientific evidence that bullying causes suicide. The fact is that people commit suicide because of mental illness. It is a treatable problem with a preventable outcome. Bullying, on the other hand, is defined as “an ongoing pattern of intimidation by a child or teenager over others who have less power.” Taking one’s life is almost always the end result of a much bigger problem, and almost never results from being bullied. In fact, from what I’ve read, suicide is rarely, if ever, caused by a single factor like breaking up with a girlfriend or boyfriend, getting bad grades or being bullied (or cyber-bullied, another problem that’s been grossly exaggerated). It’s much more complicated than that.
It’s sort of like back in the 80s when rock lyrics were being blamed for a few well-publicized suicides. Listen, if this happens, the problem goes much deeper than the fact that some kid was listening to some Ozzy Osbourne or Marilyn Manson records.
I bet every single person reading this was bullied in one form or another while growing up. Sure, we were upset, we may have cried or been afraid on some level. Still, we persevered and did so without mom and dad running to our defense, trying to get the “bully” arrested, or God forbid, try and take our own life.
Amazing, really. How did we make it without their help?
I’m going to throw out a wild idea here, but don’t you think that maybe, just maybe, if we raised our children to be more independent and self-reliant they might be able to deal with their problems a little more effectively?
Just a thought.
Sometimes, life isn’t easy. There isn’t always going to be an adult around to protect us, no “anti-bullying” law to magically save us from harm. Oftentimes, we have to face our problems on our own and deal with the consequences. By facing our problems head-on, we grow and earn that precious self-esteem that adults nowadays seem to want to simply hand over to us.
So why are we teaching are kids to run away from adversity?
Note: Remember when TV and movies were filled with those awful bullies? That Bugs Bunny dude was picking on poor Daffy Duck and Elmer Fudd constantly. And don’t get me started on The Roadrunner and his horrible treatment of Wile E. Coyote. Rudolph? Man, he wasn’t allowed to play in any of the reindeer games. Angelica on Rugrats? Get that bully out of here. And how about Biff from Back to the Future? We all know that George McFly dealt with that bad boy the old fashioned way, meaning he punched him right in the grillmix.
Dave Shoemaker is a retired teacher, athletic director and basketball coach with most of his professional years spent at Paint Valley. He also served as the national basketball coach for the island country of Montserrat in the British West Indies. He lives in Southern Ohio with his best friends and companions, his dogs Sweet Lilly and Hank. He can be reached at https://shoeuntied.wordpress.com/.
