Everyone is different. If you look around you when you are out next, no two people are the same. Whether it is our skin, hair, or eye colour that differs, the way we walk, talk, or the shape of our hands, we are all very different from one another.

So why is it that we pick on each other?

Like all the other kids in the school yard, I too was different. Taller than the rest, I was a bit of a freak because of that. Having pretty much hit my adult height by twelve years old, one can imagine, being 5′-10″ at twelve made me significantly taller than my peers in fourth grade. I was also overweight, so they picked on that too.

I also had seriously boy short hair. My dad did not like women and girls with long hair, so we always had short hair. Furthering the pick-on-me issues, I had dandruff. No matter what I did, it was ever present, as was my oily hair (no amount of washing helped that either). Being a preteen is hard.

Of course, my peers noticed this, but none more so than one particularly terrible neighbourhood bully. No matter what I did, this kid was always there to pick me apart and put me down. Back when I was that age, parents used to feed us the “if a boy picks on you, it is because he likes you.” That was not the case. This boy spit vitriol at me, and to this day, I really do not know or understand why.

I just remember dreading every moment of that year. He lived near us so there was no escape. He rode the school bus with me, we went to the same school, though he was a year ahead of me, so I only encountered him at recess and lunch. Then I got to enjoy his torture again on the bus ride home. This continued through grades four, five, and six (though grade four was the worst).

It came to a boiling point in grade six when I finally had enough. Telling him to stop, leave me alone, and to quit picking on me hadn’t worked. It was time to end it. I don’t recall how it came to a fight, but it did. We met one recess in a secluded spot. Our school was a circle with spokes off it that were the classrooms, creating private areas where kids could hide. Or fight. Or kiss.

I was not a fighter. I didn’t even know how to make a fist properly (I thought the thumb went on the inside). We squared off and did the dance around one another. He hurled insults. Picking on my size, my hair (which was now a bit longer, dandruff gone, less oily), but I just ignored him. But I was done with his picking on me. He threw a punch, I threw one. I think we both missed.

I do not recall if either of us landed a punch, but I do know when the teacher found us, we were locked in some kind of wrestling hold. They pulled us apart and tried to get the bottom of what happened. And of course?

We lied. Oh, how I wanted to tell them he’d been picking on me for years, taunting me, being mean, and insulting me. But this was 1986 (maybe the fall of 1985), bullying was still ‘cute’, and we were in the ‘boys would be boys’ era. We were told to work it out and to not fight. While I was tall and had slimmed down some, this boy was still taller and bigger than I was plus he had an entire year on me!

With the fight broken up, we wandered away. I wish I could say I remember definitively if that was the end of his bullying. All these years later, I don’t remember. I do know at the end of the year, he moved to the junior high and after that, even when I moved to the junior high myself, he was no longer a problem for me. I am sure he still made the odd comment, as nothing magically changed, but I was no longer the focus, and I was okay with that.

Being different is hard but picking on one another for it certainly does not make anyone any better for it. It is too bad that even after all these years, and all the anti-bullying campaigns we see, it still happens all the time.