Why I won't be at my high school reunion

http://scienceblogs.com/goodmath/2009/07/very_off_topic_why_i_wont_be_a.php

by saurabh • 17 years ago

271 262 17 years ago

jacquesm14• 17 years ago

Wow, that could be me... I've also not gone to my highschool reunion, and my answer to the request was pretty much the same.

Funny thing though, I did help the people setting it up in tracking down all the other kids from the class, I still remembered each and every one of them, and where they had lived.

But I didn't feel like going there myself, too many (very) bad memories about that period.

cwan• 17 years ago

I can't disagree with his sentiment. Having been bullied myself and being part of a small racial minority, at least I ultimately had the good fortune of attending a public highschool in Canada that was flooded with geeks (relatively small town with the school next to two universities).

That said, I think experiences - both good and bad make us who we are. In a sort of sadistic way, I'm sort of glad that the bullying built up a certain level of resilience and has helped motivate me. I haven't delved much into the author's personal life but I can't help but imagine that while he may not want to friend these jerks on facebook, in some small part he owes some of the best parts of who he is to these people.

jacquesm14• 17 years ago

That's a good point, I never looked at it that way. The bullies certainly taught me how to stand up for myself, to the point where - and I'm not proud of this - I put one in hospital and got suspended for three weeks.

What really surprised me though is that the people that invited me to come didn't recall any of all this, whereas for me it was a constant source of real trouble at the time.

Funny how different viewpoints can radically change the perception of reality.

abstractbill• 17 years ago

Is this kind of recall common? I ask because I also had a not-fun time at high school, but I remember very little about it. Names get mentioned - especially on Facebook - of people who I apparently went to school with (and it was a small school), but I remember pretty much nothing about the people. I also have only vague memories of the school itself.

Sorry for veering off-topic, but I've been wondering about my memory lately, and just how much worse it is than the average.

jacquesm14• 17 years ago

I find that memory is strange, not 'bad' or 'good'. In general it will remember stuff for a while unless you concentrate hard. Bad stuff might get 'forgotten' a little quicker than good stuff, or the reverse.

Stuff that you really want to remember sometimes gets lost for no apparent reason.

I used to be able to remember just about everything that I wanted but lately (now almost 45) that is getting noticeably harder.

Traumatic stuff is in a class of its own. Some people will never be able to get away from it, others have it suppressed to the point where it might as well not have happened.

lanaer• 17 years ago

I remember very little of school (my experience was meh, not bad). Sometimes (again on Facebook) I’ll see a name that seems familiar, but I can’t remember the person. Some (few) other people I remember clearly.

An addendum:

I can’t even remember college that clearly. More clearly than HS, but I can’t remember the names of most of my instructors. Where by “most” I mean all but one, and I only remember his name because he also became a friend.

arghnoname• 17 years ago

I think you tend to remember the things you think about. I don't think about the past very often myself, or the 'glory days' of high school or whatever, so it's all a blur to me. At least that's how I hope it works because if it doesn't, I have severe brain damage.

w1ntermute• 17 years ago

From a comment on the post:

"For those who missed John Katz' essay on why high school is designed to suck the first time around:

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=99/04/25/1438249 "

shizcakes2• 17 years ago

Bad link, get rid of the * at the end.

shizcakes2• 17 years ago

I don't fully identify with this dude - I had friends, although I was picked on, and I still talk to a number of people from High School.

That said, I did like this read. Potentially it was the emotional reaction I had on his behalf, but I like to think that it was the realism of his scenario: "I don't think I had it particularly worse than a lot of others" and "here are the things that are entirely my problem that accelerated this treatment". While 'the system' is sometimes to blame, it's also the person. And he understands that. But since he works for Google, it's clear that he got it together in later life, and distancing himself from those who used to drag him down is probably a good choice. School reunions are often just people gloating about how awesome they think they are at life anyways, so why should he put himself in a position to potentially arouse jealousy?

tjic7• 17 years ago

"Got it together" ?

What the !@#$%^ ?

He was a smart productive kid, and he got picked on by imbeciles.

Now he's a smart productive adult.

He hasn't gotten shit together - he had it together.

The difference is that now he's in a free market, with other competent adults, instead of in a government-run Lord of the Flies style child warehousing make-work program.

To say that he "got it together" is to blame the victim.

jonknee6• 17 years ago

He didn't have it together, he didn't know how to manage social contact. He readily admits being awkward and unable to communicate. Being smart is not exclusive to having it together. It doesn't excuse what happened to him, but there are plenty of adults that get walked all over too.

tjic7• 17 years ago

Sounds like my middle school.

...which had much in common with another government run institution: prison.

* Violent and angry inmates.

* Unionized, apathetic officials.

* A shocking level of brutality.

* An institution run almost solely for the economic benefit of the employees.

I won't say that government never taught me anything, though.

It did teach me how to kick the ass of someone who started a fight.

sjf• 17 years ago

It's interesting that a lot of the things kids to do each other in high school, would if they tried them as an adult land them in prison.

jrnkntl2• 17 years ago

This guy totally missed the social bandwagon. Thinks that his kid is 'less of a loser' when he knows karate and 'totally kicks the crap out' of people who bully him. Dreaming the 'I will kick your ass' dream isolated from real friends. I wouldn't call that geekery but just a social loss.

tjic7• 17 years ago

> Thinks that his kid is 'less of a loser' when he knows karate

What he said was that the kid was going to be able to physically defend himself from assault.

Can you disagree with that assertion?

jrnkntl2• 17 years ago

I am a supporter of avoiding assault.

kingkongrevenge2• 17 years ago

I have yet to see taekwondo or karate training that isn't a total joke. Maybe good schools exists somewhere in the US, but anyone at these schools from the yellow pages is just going to get their ass kicked by the first guy who is stronger.

kingkongrevenge2• 17 years ago

Apparently his social skills still haven't improved much. What a whiny nerd.

tjic7• 17 years ago

Yeah. Folks who are punched, have their fingers broken, and are mocked in the hallways shouldn't harbor resentments.

biohacker429• 17 years ago

99.99% of kids are mocked and punched. Broken finger are extreme, but still. The fact is almost everybody is bullied and people grow up and things change. And most people get over their bulling.

Harboring resentments all your life just messes with your mind. Stop messing yourself up. You can blame that on the fact that you were abused, and that may be true, but you should still try to get passed it.

run4yourlives10• 17 years ago

Not for 20 years they shouldn't.

Gotta love the down mods... Seriously... as a person you can't harbour this type of resentment for that long... it defeats you.

keltecp113• 17 years ago

Part of growing up is understanding that people develop - People can change.

cracki• 17 years ago

but they don't get a clean slate for not being around the last 10 years.

they only get a chance to show that they changed.

jerf3• 17 years ago

Yeah, but... so what?

My experiences weren't the same, because I was geeky, uncoordinated... and six foot four, thank God. I've dealt with it and don't hold on to anger like it sounds like Mark has... but I didn't bother going to my 10th, because, frankly, why? I didn't like the majority of them, the ones I did like I'm still in contact with (or for one particularly notable exception, married to), and otherwise, they're just people, the majority of whom I still won't like, just for different reasons, and even if I'm wrong I could just step out, walk downtown, strike up a conversation at a coffee shop, and have odds just as good for finding a friend, if not better.

I think a lot of posters here are losing the thread here. All arguing about how wonderful people may be in theory after 25 years gets you back up to is "neutral" on the reunion... gosh, it might not suck as much as I expected? Sign me right up! cracki in a sibling comment says that they get a chance to show they've changed; I say no, not really. Who cares if they've changed or not?

If you don't have happy memories, if you aren't nostalgic for a time period where you had no rights and were stuck in a boring room seven hours a day, five days a week, there's no reason to care about the coincidence of who you lived near, so why bother?

(Every year of my life since I was about five or six has been better than the last, and I can't go beyond that simply because I don't remember. Some through circumstances, some because of health issues, some because I'm getting better at living well, which is itself a skill. I'm not much for nostalgia.)

Incidentally, my wife, who isn't particularly a geek and didn't have a bad time of it the way I did, pretty much feels the same. Her friends were mostly in the grade above anyhow, and we've kept in touch. (We'll be seeing all those again literally next week, at my son's first birthday party which has turned into quite the shindig.) Facebook has really eaten into the positive reasons for reunions, even for nongeeks.

keltecp113• 17 years ago

You do NOT need to be best friends with your old classmates, but they might actually now be real individuals who have real values and aren't all for that petty HighSchool BS. From a business standpoint and a life standpoint and a HACKER standpoint - the most important thing in my world is my network. Maybe you never got along with your old High School Crew, but now that they are older, they might be able to help you in numerous places in your personal and professional life. But simply ignoring them all together seems to be immature.

req2• 17 years ago

There are so many people in the world - why pick the ones you have to work hard, or suffer through, to get the same effect you could get with an easier connection? Just because they are "there"?

ChaitanyaSai• 17 years ago

Ouch. Reading about such traumatic experiences makes me wonder if this is more common in US schools (especially public schools; don't know if the author was at one). Growing up geeky in India didn't have any such downsides, but that might have been peculiar to the small school went to,but I don't think it fully explains it. Developing nations with a favorable regard for the sciences and engineering seem to inculcate a favorable outlook towards geekiness. How is it for people who grew up elsewhere?

The early and constant negative emotional feedback definitely shape one's view of people and nature, skewing it because of sampling (Most kids do grow up into reasonable adults, eventually, one hopes).

I also wonder if the massive popularity of organized school sports is a factor. Providing developing adolescents with a single hierarchy to place everyone on seems misguided. The world is more multi-faceted with a place for everyone, but that sort of a thing may be hard to impart in the limited aquarium that is school.

michael_dorfman3• 17 years ago

Setting aside the whole issue of geek abuse, and Mark's story in particular, for a moment:

I have to say that I find the whole Facebook experience very creepy in general. Anyone who can't figure out how to get in touch with me outside of Facebook is definitely not a "friend", so what's the point of pretending that they are?

Goladus4• 17 years ago

Don't pretend anything. It's not a matter of figuring out how to get in touch with you otherwise. Someone just decided that would be the most polite and convenient way to contact you. If you find that creepy, that's your loss.

michael_dorfman3• 17 years ago

I'm not sure it's a loss, really. Someone "friending" me, who is clearly not my friend seems more like an imposition. My real friends are happy to call me on the telephone, or send me an email. Facebook "friends" are faux friends, and a site dedicated to quasi-communication by faux friends seems, well, creepy.

donaldc• 17 years ago

It's probably best to think of facebook as a giant, self-updating rolodex. For most contacts one has, the term "friend" is a misnomer, and "acquaintance" or "associate" would be a better term. But there's no need to get hung up on the word.

jlees• 17 years ago

It's more whether they would bother to get in touch with you. I can reel off the school register from ten years ago, but I wouldn't actively seek out and send them all emails; seeing one name on Facebook led me to add most of the class and it's wonderfully voyeuristic (with a nice dollop of schadenfreude) looking at what they're all up to without the overhead of actually being friends.

wallflower• 17 years ago

I went to my 10-yr high school reunion. I had conversations with former jocks, geeks (the smartest guy IQ of 164 was now working for the government), some of the prettiest girls, others. Talked about their life now. It didn't really matter what we were in high school. The biggest surprise was a geeky girl I had known was now beautiful and helping produce records. Some of the jocks were very successful salesmen. Other than that, it was oddly reassuring to revisit old paths once tread. It was nice to talk to people at the reunion who I pretty much never talked to in high school.

It's not like we all became friends and traded numbers. In fact, we sarcastically said 'See you at the next one'.

We all grow up and change. And sometimes we don't but high school as someone wiser than me once said - high school is a geographic coincidence. Not because you want to be there.

ilitirit2• 17 years ago

> The biggest surprise was a geeky girl I had known was now beautiful

Is ugliness a prerequisite for admission into geekhood?

scotth• 17 years ago

I imagine he means that she was geeky, in the sense that she wasn't popular (and not in the sense that we all consider ourselves geeks). Girls who are beautiful in high school don't usually have this problem.

Alex39175• 17 years ago

I think so. It wasn't always, but geekiness has gotten ridiculously commercialized. In the early 70s geekiness may have been more authentic, but now it's more about companies convincing homely looking girls and guys with BMIs below 20 or over 27 to buy Star Wars t-shirts and WoW subscriptions. Basically geekiness today is about buying products designed to make you feel smart, even if you're not.

pygy• 17 years ago

It's usually a consequence of not caring much about one's appearance due to your lack of social skills ans poor self image.

Beauty comes in part from your attitude, too.

Dove• 17 years ago

It was for me. In high school and most of college, I refused to make myself pretty. It was a symbolic rejection of that whole social strategy, and I did think it was a dichotomy. I was going to be smart, and that was all.

It wasn't until I had been a professional for a few years that I changed my mind. I noticed that the women who I really respected as programmers were also all stunningly beautiful. I read up on it a bit and realized that it's just another skill, and not a particularly difficult one. Overnight I blossomed and became pretty.

But it didn't happen until I was twenty-six. And it's one thing to look beautiful for yourself and your husband; I'm not sure I'd have put in the time to compete with sixteen-year-olds.

il• 17 years ago

Too much generalization. Were all of you really abused and friendless in high school?

I was(and still am) a huge geek in high school, and I pretty much loved it throughout. I made great friends I still keep in touch with(some of them from when I was captain of math team and quiz bowl), I was never physically abused or ostracized, and even managed to date a couple girls who were way out of my league.

Sure, I wasn't invited to any of the big parties and I wasn't good friends with the popular kids- I was firmly entrenched within the geek clique. But I wasn't ignored or anything, everyone was pretty much friendly or at least cordial.

By the way, just like the author, I was a skinny 120-lb kid, so if anyone wanted to bully me they easily could have. I think it's the bitter the-world-hates-me victim mentality that contributes to bullying, not being a geek.

This article is rife with stereotype, are these really true? Is this story #1 because all of your high school experiences were similar?

iron_ball• 17 years ago

Yes. The generalization is generally -- by no means always -- true. That's why pg's essay about geeks in high school is such a rallying point: pg says "oh, don't worry guys, you aren't unpopular because there's something wrong with you, you're unpopular because you're too wise to play all their little games, which of course you could master instantly if you were willing to lower yourself." It's a very comforting lens through which to view a generally traumatic experience.

nostrademons• 17 years ago

Not in high school, but in middle school. I was reasonably popular in high school - had a decent group of friends, even if I wasn't in the "popular kids" crowd, and I was on good terms with most of the kids who were in the "popular kids" crowd. Occasionally see some of them, even.

In middle school, I was beaten up on a daily basis.

I think that a lot of this is an information cascade based on who the dominant kids are in your year. In my elementary/middle school district, the most dominant personality was a kid who I swear was a sociopath. He started tormenting everyone else in first grade. When we were 8 years old, we went on a field trip to an old historical house, and upon being shown the herb garden, his comment was "Is this where they keep the heroin?" My 3rd grade teacher mentioned privately that he thought this kid was mostly likely to end up in prison in 10 years. And sure enough, the last I heard of him, when I was about 17 years old and had long since moved to another school, was a notice in the paper that he had been arrested for assault and battery with a caribeaner.

My sister had no such problems, coming one year behind me, because there was no such person in her year. For her grade, the "cool" kids were all smart, diligent students, and so the culture of the class followed them. In mine, everybody kowtowed to this one sociopath because we were all afraid of what he'd do to us after school if we didn't.

The unfortunate thing is that it's all too easy for one bad apple to spoil the whole bunch, and school administration will all too often look the other way. If just one person with authority stands up and says "Look, this is not acceptable, quit threatening the other kids or don't come back to school," it stops. But a lot of teachers and administrators are so afraid of lawsuits that that rarely happens.

davidw3• 17 years ago

Gets a rise out of one, but not particularly interesting. I do wonder where this school is so that I can avoid the area (although it may well have changed in the meantime).

Alex39175• 17 years ago

I had my fingers broken in high school too, because someone wanted to see what would happen if they jumped off the bleachers and landed on my hand while I was stretching. The school nurse wouldn't even entertain the possibility that they were broken, so she just sent me back to class even though my fingers were twisted and I was throwing up everywhere. So as a result my fingers are still kind of messed up to this day, because they never got properly set.

noonespecial2• 17 years ago

The best revenge, as always, is to live well.

All of his "friends" will gather at a fake party and try to convince each other that their "careers" are huge successes. Kind of like what would really happen if you were to say, get a PhD and a sweet job at Google.

The rise of nerd culture has brought us the delightful spectacle of a thousand tiny Shawshank redemptions. See you in Mexico.

jonknee6• 17 years ago

Please. Many of the people he went to highschool have great careers and will actually enjoy the reunion. They've moved on, he's still holding onto anger from the 1980s. That's not revenge, it's just sad.

davidw3• 17 years ago

There are people I didn't care for in HS, who maybe treated me badly at some point... didn't invite me to a party or something. That's easy to move beyond, but breaking someone's fingers? Sorry, some stuff leaves memories that don't fade with time.

noonespecial2• 17 years ago

They've moved on, he's still holding onto anger from the 1980s.

From my purely biased perspective to be sure: Of course they've moved on. They had very little to more on from. The inflicted pain was purely asymmetrical. Tormenting him was just part of their day, like riding the bus, at worst or just the background noise of highschool at best.

It would be nice for them if he participated in their reunion to aid the perception that they were all just kids being kids, each playing their part, and now that we're all grown, no hard feelings, right?

King's to you, Fernand.

raquo2• 17 years ago

I don't think he has been holding anger on his classmates for 20 years. But you see, it's rather disturbing when people who were making you miserable for years suddenly act towards you like if you're old friends. You were never friends with them in the first place, rather the contrary.

oz2• 17 years ago

Zihuatanejo, here I come!

(Cue Thomas Newman soundtrack here)

biohacker429• 17 years ago

This is a meta-comment about what belongs on HN, so if you don't like those kinds of comments, just down vote it and stop reading now.

If you're not interested in completely off-topic personal rambling, stop reading now.

While I know a lot of people have had similar experiences, I doubt group therapy of this kind is healthy for anyone.

Even some of the people who used to beat the crap out of me on a regular basis are getting in touch as if we're old friends.

My reaction to them... What the fuck is wrong with you people?

They grew up. Everyone knows kids are evil. And a few of them grow up to be evil adults and eventually go to jail.

But most people do grow up. They stop being what they were as kids, and most nerdy kids grow up to be much more sociable.

Now I don't think this person is missing much by not going to the reunion, but I do think it's a shame he still has not gotten over his childhood.

Obviously his childhood was worse then average, but that's life, life is not fair, deal with it.

bluefish• 17 years ago

Your tough-love approach "...that's life, life is not fair, deal with it" is completely misguided and naive. I certainly hope that if you ever have children you don't use that mindset on them when they come home bullied, frustrated or upset.

biohacker429• 17 years ago

I wouldn't use that on children, but he's not a child anymore.

tc3• 17 years ago

Some people get over things by eliminating those things from their lives. He probably spends the vast majority of the days of his life over that whole experience. His rant was prompted by elements of that old world trying to intrude on the world he lives in now, which dredged up that negative energy.

Also, adolescents turn into adults, but they don't forget what passed before. So if you were evil to someone in high school, the adult thing to do would be to apologize if you're going to contact that person.

biohacker429• 17 years ago

Agreed. But I don't think that trying to forget something is dealing with it. It may be a way of coping, but it's no resolution.

lutorm• 17 years ago

That's exactly what happened to me (and a lot sooner than 25 years after high school). On graduation from Gymnasium (would be 12th grade here), my friend and I happened to run into this guy who would pester us in 7-9th grade. Worse for my friend than me, and nothing like broken fingers, but just random physical violence every now and then. We hadn't seen him for a couple of years, so we said hi and started talking and he says "I'm sorry I was such an asshole back then." It increased my respect for the guy immensely.

So yeah, you grow up and as part of that you realize you did some shitty things. So if you decide you really want to communicate with the people you were mean to, the first thing you do is straight up apologize. If they don't, I think his incredulousness is justified.

ilitirit2• 17 years ago

To everyone else, I was a geek for the first few years of high school. I was also bullied for a while. Till the day I fought back. Busted the fucker's lip. Nobody bothered me after that, and fewer people thought of me as a geek. I hadn't changed a bit though.

tjic7• 17 years ago

Amen.

I was picked on, and I learned to fight.

Everything in life is a cost/benefit trade off.

If it's fun to push you around, and the cost is low, people will push your around.

If it's fun to push you around, and you land a few dozen punches before the fight is over, the cost is too high, and the abuse stops.

9oliYQjP6• 17 years ago

I was a fat geek when I started high school. It was an all male school at that. I wouldn't say I was terribly pushed around, but at the start, I was easy prey for bullying. Towards the end of grade 10, I'd had enough. I used some of my savings to buy a $200 weight bench. I worked out 5 times a week. I started eating healthy.

Nobody really noticed my transformation toward the end of grade 10. They probably should have as I usually had to walk the whole damn warm-up run in gym class, and now I was actually finishing it in the middle of the pack.

But between June and August during summer break I made huge progress. I timed my transformation with a growth spurt and now I was a lean, well built geek. I distinctly remember the first week of grade 11 because it was the most peculiar experience of my life. Guys who were literally in gangs and who bullied the shit out of me came up to me with looks of shock and started being my friend. It was as if I was a friend to them before, at least in hindsight in their eyes. Teachers even stopped me in the hall and congratulated me.

And girls... I hadn't caught the eye of any girl until I was 17 and then boom, I had girls coming up to me and asking for my phone number. Since I had no experience with girls, I didn't know how the hell to respond. A part of me felt they were playing a practical joke on me. So I'd let them give me their number and I'd never call. This would drive them nuts but they seemed to enjoy the chase. I was still a geek, but any girl that dated me didn't have to know that at first because they wouldn't be able to attend my school.

I ended up dating my high school sweetheart who was a really popular and gorgeous girl in another school. She was really mischievous and always getting into trouble. When her principal found out that she had a boyfriend, he decided to investigate to see if this boyfriend was causing her behaviour problems (let's just say she was an artist in a math/science oriented school). He tracked down who I was, phoned my principal who never heard of me and had to get out my file. I would have loved to hear how that conversation went but basically my girlfriend was called into the principal's office the next day and told that maybe I'd have a positive influence on her.

In university I started gaining weight back from poor lifestyle choices. I was no longer treated like crap, but rather with indifference. I was clinically obese through my 20s and only now have I gone back to lifting weights and whipped my butt into shape. Again, I'm being treated a lot differently (better).

I'm not sure what the point of this was. But I suppose one take-away from this article and my story is that humans can be treated like crap for the most idiotic reasons one second. The people treating them like crap can change their ways all of a sudden and think nothing of it. This is a total mindfuck to the people being treated harshly. It's enough of a mindfuck that a well-adjusted father and husband can still be affected by experiences 25 years on.

jbrun• 17 years ago

Very interesting experience. Though I have no real comparison, my question is: Was getting in shape an easier solution than cracking down on the bullies?

I ask because of the original post, personal experiences and general thoughts. While bullying should not be tolerated by school administrations, does the individual not have a role to play in developing social skills and physical health to avoid being ostracized? You know, become the change you want to see.

The school administration could offer a 'self-improvement' class to students - targeting bullies with education on why it is bad and offering social and physical development tips to socially inept kids (who are often the brightest).

Perhaps courses such as these would help avoid disasters like school shootings, long term trauma and the jock culture that is so prevalent in the states.

mrbgty• 17 years ago

"...does the individual not have a role to play in developing social skills and physical health to avoid being ostracized?"

imo, the individual has a role to be who they want to be.

In other words, his working out, eating healthy, etc., should be because he thinks its a good idea; not because others bullied him into it one way or another.

alex_c2• 17 years ago

>Was getting in shape an easier solution than cracking down on the bullies?

I think it solves a different problem in the first place (health, energy, self-confidence, with the possible side effect of stopping bullies, vs. just stopping bullies).

Retric2• 17 years ago

What I think most geeks don't understand is most bullies don't hate you. It's done to show dominance and amuse themselves, but it's got little to do with the target. Granted, there are a few sociopaths out there, but mostly it's unfocused aggression that ends up focusing on people who don't or can't defend themselves.

If you watch young friends you see a lot of put downs and aggression, but with the right feedback it get's defused and everyone laughs. When you lack social skills and strength you are constantly on the wrong side of that aggression and it never let's up. But, change the interaction slightly and you are now part of the gang.

9oliYQjP6• 17 years ago

I'm in a verbose state of mind right now so bear with me. You're right in some twisted way, I owe these people for making me who I am. But let me explain.

I've looked at pictures of me when I was a toddler and while I wasn't a scrawny kid, I wasn't fat. Somewhere along the line I started getting labelled the fat kid and teased. Each school photo shows me progressively heavier than the last. Somewhere along the line, I internalized the idea that I was a fat kid and lived up to it by, well, being fat. I've never confused the teasing for being fat as a cause. But it certainly didn't help me get into better shape. The teasing sucked, but it was tolerable. Instead, a couple of incidents that actually had me feeling worried for my physical well-being really sparked the change.

The bullying in high school hit a low point when I was doing a science presentation in a class the teacher could not even control. Two of the guys in the gang I referred to in my first post started tagging my freaking presentation board with gang symbols. It's a hilariously stupid scenario in hindsight. Honestly, I laugh about it now. But at the time I was freaked out, and angry because this meant I couldn't use it for the science fair later. It wasn't them teasing me about my weight that prompted me to lose weight, but rather fear of physical harm from them. I had to sit beside these guys in class and I'd see them come to school with knives and pull them out and pretend to stab people with them. In hindsight, they wouldn't have been dumb enough to hurt me so long as I didn't give them a reason. But not giving them a reason to hurt me felt like such a cowardly thing. It was letting them frame the "debate" and to hell if I would let them do that. It was never about me, it was about them and their issues with their father beating them or something.

So quite honestly, I was partly motivated to start losing weight out of survival instinct. I wanted to be able to defend myself if it ever got to that point, so I started pumping iron so I would be stronger than them should things ever get to that point.

The thing is, I wasn't even really the primary target of these bullies. So as ridiculous as my account above is, other guys had it worse. They really did get beaten up. There's a fine line between being pushed to the brink and being broken. I wasn't France in WWII, I was Britain. I had options available and I responded accordingly.

To your point however, my gym teacher also had a part in motivating me to lose weight. He would never cut me any slack. Jocks would get remedial attention in math courses they were having problems with. There is no special education for gym. In gym, when we had to say do gymnastics on hanging rings or flips on mats, I never got any slack. My teacher would make me get up there and fail, very publicly, and in a humiliating way. He gave me a C for effort.

Bullying issues aside, I think my school did exactly what it needed to help me out. The gym classes included lots of talks by our gym teacher about how we would all gain weight as we got older, got office jobs, and became immobile. And some humility is good. I couldn't even hang off of the gymnastic rings let alone do what was required to get an A. If this were an Algebra course, I wouldn't have been able to count. If anything, they were a bit indifferent about my situation. It's one thing to point out to a kid that he has problems. It's another to give him options about how to solve them. I stumbled upon weight lifting as an option only because my older brother was a wrestler and I'd seen him do it.

As far as the worst bullies go, that's a whole other kettle of fish. The solution to treating those sort of bullies these days is to shuffle them around the school system until they either play out the clock and graduate or drop out. My school was considered a "good school" which had the effect of encouraging principals at troubled schools of sending their worst offenders to our school to discipline them. So 99% of the students were good but had to face 1% of the school population which were probably psychopaths. I don't think schools can treat these bullies. They simply don't have the jurisdiction. For a lot of those kids, you'd have to remove them from broken homes.

For your casual bullying, I'd say the best approach is to play both sides of the coin. Tell the bullies to get over themselves and tell the victims to do the same. If you're that hung up over getting bullied for being 120 lbs at 6'0" tall, maybe it is you that has an issue with your weight. At that point, the bullies are merely amplifying your discontent. You can either learn to accept it and let the comments slide off of you because they no longer hurt, or you can do something about it and gain weight.

One of these days I need to learn how to be more concise :-)

vaksel4• 17 years ago

Agreed, getting into shape is the best thing a person can do for their life. The self confidence it gains you, will open you a lot of doors.

And it's not like its a huge time commitment, an hour a day is all it takes to be in the best shape of your life

9oliYQjP6• 17 years ago

Yup, and eating right. What kept tripping me up in my 20s as I tried to get back into shape time and time again was learning that I couldn't eat like a teenager any more. I have to be really careful what I eat. I eat nutritious food now wherever possible. I throw in 3 1-hour visits to the gym during a busy week and 4 if I have the chance.

It does give me self-confidence. It also helps me think more clearly, handle more stress under pressure, and since most of my friends are at the same gym we get time to socialize during the week. It beats spending money on booze to socialize at a bar with friends during the week. Save that experience for the weekend :-)

zach• 17 years ago

Thank you for a heartfelt story from real life that does not segue into the opening rap of The Fresh Price of Bel-Air. I have been reading too much Reddit and am ashamed to say I got suspicious halfway through.

jules2• 17 years ago

How long does it take to get in shape? I know this is a difficult question: what's in shape? So how long does it take until other people start to notice?

9oliYQjP6• 17 years ago

In shape is a term you'll have to define for yourself. When I was younger, the definition seemed to revolve around appearance and weight. Nowadays, I also throw in exercise metrics.

For example, this time 6 months ago I was 10 lbs lighter than I am now. But I'm a lot stronger now. I couldn't even do 135 lbs back squats (bar plus 45 lbs plate on each end) back then. Nowadays my routine consists of a few sets of back squats that culminates in a 10 repetition set of 315 lbs (bar plus 6x45 lbs plates). Physically, my weight is 10 lbs heavier now, but I have a lot less fat and so I'm a lot more compact in size.

I'm trying to lose some more fat, but when doing this there is always the real risk of losing muscle along with it. The scale does not tell the whole tale. By keeping tabs on how strong I am with respect to certain exercises, I can get a pretty good back-of-the-napkin kind of estimate of whether I'm losing fat or muscle.

When other people begin to notice changes depends heavily on your approach to "getting in shape". You can go fast and hard (and incorrectly). This might have you drop lots of weight the wrong way (e.g., losing lots of muscle a.k.a. the Oprah 1990s approach). A lot of commercial dieting programs depend on this strategy, because people will notice fairly soon (e.g., 1 month after starting). The early congratulatory praise by colleagues is encouraging and motivating to the dieter, causing them to keep going. If you go for a more gradual approach, people may not begin to notice for many months. That was the case for me this time around. People really didn't begin to notice until I bought some new clothes.

Because I lost weight so rapidly in high school, it was much more difficult for me to keep motivated this time around. Luckily, my friends whom I train with kept me focussed on metrics that could indicate progress such as how much weight I could push in an exercise and for how many repetitions. The goal this time around was to pack on muscle first, even if it meant gaining weight, and then to begin a cutting phase where I'd adopt an extremely strict diet and different exercise routine for a one or two month period.

Let me know if you're interested in some good resources. I didn't adopt any one plan. For example, I enjoyed the Hacker's Diet and while I think it's a good start, I personally felt like absolute shit most days when I treated a "calorie as a calorie". Whether I interpreted this incorrectly, the book says not to worry too much about what you eat so long as you pay attention to your caloric intake. Well, until I started eating nutritiously, I felt like crap, performed like crap at the gym, and while I did lose weight, I just didn't feel very healthy.

I'm not sure if you're personally interested, but if you're trying to get in shape I would allocate a 3 month window in which you think your chances of being stressed out are low and in which you can get lots of sleep and rest. You're going to be forcing your body to make so many changes that it'll really stress your immune system and ability to stay committed. In the first month, cut out stupid habits like excess drinking (or switch to vodka/soda from beer), eating half a pizza on a Friday night, downing tons of non-diet soda, etc.. This will be enough of a shock to your system, but you'll need to plough through 3 weeks of this to kill the bad habits.

In the next month, start increasing your physical activity while refraining from your previously bad eating habits. I'd tell you to get a personal trainer if you can afford one, but honestly the quality varies so much that it's risky. Perhaps you can seek out a friend who has a similar body type to your target, who can show you the ropes. Again, really push through the first 3 weeks until working out becomes as much of a priority as ensuring that you've done your backups or checked your code into the repository :-) Don't feel like you need to join a gym. The activity can be a sport, riding a bike to work, hiking, etc.. It just has to be consistent

In the third month, come back to your diet and begin to adopt healthier eating habits. Count your calories in everything that you eat to figure out where you're going overboard. Then make changes so that you come under your caloric requirements. I'd suggest 2000 calories as a good daily target intake for your average young male trying to lose weight this way. Any less and you probably won't get enough protein. Any more and you're probably eating too well. Increase your protein intake: if your target weight is 160 lbs then try to aim for 160 grams of protein a day (chicken breasts and eggs are your friends). If you're like most westerners, your meals are probably meat/poultry/fish supplemented with carbs and then rounded out with vegetables/fruits. Invert this last allocation so that your meals are supplemented with lots of vegetables/fruits and rounded out with a few carbs. In fact, if you really like vegetables, go to town on them. The more you eat the better you'll feel (it's a subjective thing) and they're generally so calorie-sparse as to be a non-worry.

Estragon• 17 years ago

Her principal called her into his office to say that you'd have a good influence on her? I'm going to assume that's an egotistical embellishment, and not an indication that the whole story is fabricated. :-)

9oliYQjP6• 17 years ago

We both went to religious schools. Unlike public schools, teachers could and would comment on things that probably were none of their business. They'd also encourage and discourage certain types of behaviour outside of the academic domain. In elementary school, a teacher once kept me in at recess to talk about my older sister (she was 19, pregnant, and having the baby). Pissed me off...

edw519• 17 years ago

Wow, this was me. 5'1" in 9th grade, 5'10" in 11th grade, 120 lbs., total geek into math, science, and I even published my own magazine. If I complained about the bullying, I was called a whiner, even by my own family. (Either my father didn't care, or he was smart enough to know that I better figure out how to toughen up. I hope it was the latter.)

But that's where the similarities end. Even though I was socially ackward (and still am a little), I got an after school job and made friends. Good enough (and tough enough) friends that nobody fucked with me any more. I went to college, learned to program, and built a career and life.

Now I go to every reunion and have a ball. I've finally reached the point in my life where I really don't care what others think (for the most part). If I did, then I'd still be a victim of virtual bullying.

Last reunion, I was drinking and laughing and acting geeky when the captain of the basketball team came over and told me to shut up. I told him that he may have been hot shit 20 years ago, but he wasn't anymore and should just go away. I was surprised how good that felt.

I sympathize with OP and understand his reasoning. I'm glad I ended up going down a different path, although I don't really know why. I hope he finds a way to release the hurt and anger and move on. I know that I have.

bootload2• 17 years ago

"... I sympathize with OP and understand his reasoning. I'm glad I ended up going down a different path, although I don't really know why. I hope he finds a way to release the hurt and anger and move on. I know that I have. ..."

Hey ed, I haven't been back to hackernews for a while but I want to chime in on this topic.

Each person is going to respond in a different way. Also reading the article Mark has had a pretty rough time. Physical injury is one thing, psychological injury by people you know is worse. The dilemma is caused because the fact the person being abused (bullied, call it what you like) knows the attacker and has no control over the situation. There is no use trying to explain this to people who have not been in a similar situation.

As for me I entered school at 5'8", okay at sports and took the math/sci stream, same ineptness as most. I had a foot in 2 camps: sports & science. I think I managed to slip under the radar till the last couple of years. But unlike the experiences I've read here most have the crap for me didn't begin till the last couple of years at HS. The last year especially. A year bookmarked by tragic circumstances on top of all the crap in-between. I still don't know why people I'd known for years gave me the crap they did? I brushed it off at the time only wondering later why? But it wasn't all bad. I actually had someone come up to me late in the year telling me they'd under-rated me. Gee I wasn't as if I was a different person before I organised the emvac. Then there was the school leaders more worried about publicity and their hides than students welfare. Yeah I learnt a lot more than I bargained for that year.

So while I've graduated, moved on and had a good run since, I sure as hell make sure I pick my friends carefully and assert myself online. I don't take any crap. And as for attending HS reunions, No.

Besides the school has been torn down ~ http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/sets/72157620934091013...

trickjarrett• 17 years ago

High school is definitely a love/hate experience. Some come out of it on top while others get pulled down or tossed down. It's sad really.

I never had the bullying issue thanks to being a big guy and having played football for high school, but I also tended to be fairly accepted socially. I had friends who were jocks, preps, nerds, rockers, etc. I wasn't really in any of the crowds, but I could wander over at lunch and strike up conversations and chill, and then move on to another group.

dugmartin• 17 years ago

Wow. Its been 25 years, its time to let go of that anger.

TheSOB883• 17 years ago

Have you ever had your fingers broken by someone? Unless you're a Buddhist monk, I think you'd be hard pressed to forgive that and multiple similar transgressions.

biohacker429• 17 years ago

I'm not sure if only Buddhist monks are enlightened enough for this. But I am sure all that anger is not good for him.

mrtron• 17 years ago

Not that it is important to this thread, but I had a few broken noses during my childhood.

I used to be fairly angry. But there came a time in my life when I was about 16 where I was happy, and it didn't really matter. Let it go and live well.

As a small side note, it troubles me seeing him push his kid so hard into Karate. It is still influencing his decisions and impacting his child's life now too. (not that Karate is bad, but the reasons are)

redrobot50502• 17 years ago

I remember a bully that nearly tore my head off during one of his "roid rage" incidents in high school. In his high school yearbook, he said his goal was to become a state trooper.

Reading it, I literally shuddered at the thought of being pulled over in the middle of nowhere, PA, by this bully I had locked horns with. They would never find my body.

Guy friended me on facebook last year. Being an Air Force MP has apparently mellowed him. Also, me being a defense contractor doesn't seem so geeky to him. The fact that I also did 8 months of 5 days/week body building and went from the FTA's description to "normal looking" didn't hurt either.

I don't know what the psychology of picking on someone different that you is all about, but once everyone grows up, its time to get past it. I don't have any fears of the state trooper (former bully) killing me anymore. He probably doesn't even remember why I pissed him off so much.

Granted, it never came to blows, because his friends kept stopping him from pounding my face into the concrete at school, and I never went out anywhere where I'd run into "cool kids".

My point is that while this guy was definitely persecuted in high school, its likely the people aren't toxic anymore. Its been 25 years for them, too.

alex_c2• 17 years ago

How does the saying go? "Anger is punishing yourself for other people's mistakes".

run4yourlives10• 17 years ago

The point being however that the only person that it affects is you.

You need to get over the anger to affect yourself. To hell with the fool that offended you.

seertaak• 17 years ago

To fair, he's not saying he wants to go to the reunion with a baseball bat. Why should he make an effort to meet them when they were all callous jerks? Furthermore, a perceptive ex-classmate might have thought of the fact that the author had a really tough time, and said something to the effect of an apology. Given that that clearly wasn't the case, I'm 100% with the author: fuck 'em. There's plenty of friendly people in the world. Why try re-making friends with a bunch of jerks? Life is too short...

enneff• 17 years ago

I totally agree. Life is too short to waste time with people who've treated you badly.

kragen6• 17 years ago

It's likely that some of the same high-school administrators are now failing to protect geeks in the same or a different high school today. Maybe he should make an effort to generate some accountability for administrators for allowing bullying.

larrywright2• 17 years ago

I had a similar experience, though not as bad. And Junior High was worse than High School, but it was for the most part the same group of kids.

You don't forget it, ever.

lurkinggrue• 17 years ago

I got over my anger about high school, but there is no way I would buy a plane ticket to visit those jerks.

I moved on from my hellish HS life and also would rather not re-visit that past.

lucifer• 17 years ago

I think as children we occupy a much more primal social space than that which we occupy as adults. As adults, the spaces of interactions we occupy are highly regulated by internalized models of behavior. (We let loose when we feel free of such bonds, thus extreme online behavior afforded by the mask of anonymity.)

Beyond Karate, the most important tool that one can impart to one's precious little child is that human groups are dynamic systems that require various poles -- the group (I believe) seeks these poles to organize itself. The underdog or gamma wolf is not an individual -- it is a required 'position' in the pack.

http://www.mnforsustain.org/wolf_mech_dominance_alpha_status...

clistctrl• 17 years ago

Maybe times have changed? I just got out of high school about 5 years ago. I grew up in a small town in Wisconsin near Milwaukee which at one time was built around a tractor factory, now it sort of lies in limbo trying to find an identity. As an extreme computer geek I wasn't popular, but I never had anything particularly 'Bad' happen to me. I would say the worst thing that would happen on a regular basis is people would take advantage of my OCD like nature and create an absolute mess near me (which would drive me nuts... only encouraging them) The rest of the time I noticed people would try to get on my good side for group projects etc. Classes at my school (and I think its pretty common now) were centered around computers, so kids who normally wouldn't talk to me suddenly wanted to be "partners" with me.

darkxanthos2• 17 years ago

Wow. Bitter? Party of one? My highschool experience sucked too but we were all just kids. It's been 25 years so maybe it's time to forgve and forget? (rhetorical)

jimbokun• 17 years ago

"It doesn't explain the guy who broke my fingers, because he wanted to know what it would sound like."

plesn• 17 years ago

So the debate is: what's wrong with high-schools?

Is it the kids? is it the (lack of) discipline? is it because of social reasons?

I went to public schools in different ditricts in France, and it changes a lot... It's not surprising that a school in a more urban and "bourgeois" place has more emphasis on scolar success which makes it a little easier for geeky types, but there certainly are other kinds of bullying (sometimes more on social aspects).

Of course kids at this age are very "mimetic": they want to be in the mass and do like popular ones, they suffer to be different. But they are building their personnalities: maybe they not only need better models, but also better structures to make them more mature. We're hearing about current "let-it go" public schools or about old-style strict schools, but what about making schools really more participatively democratic places to live in (I'm thinking of taking some good points from experiences like SummerHill [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summerhill_School]: I wonder what good/bad lessons we can get from that)?

I'm just thinking of this two simplistic things as I read people saying things like "lookily i was in a private school...", but school is the manufacture of future society: we should care!

gommm• 17 years ago

As a kid in France I found that starting high-school the bullying mostly stopped with most bullies going over to the technical high school... (and it never was as bad as what I've heard from american friends)

Now I'm not so sure if the particular district the school was in (the middle school was a small countryside middle school whereas the high school was in a bigger town.) had any influence... How out of curiosity where did you study?

Thanks for the link on Summerhill very interesting idea... I 'm always interested in education experiments, I thinks there is a lot of research to be done on how to best educate kids and make sure they don't suffer from moral damage from bullying (although as someone said in another thread I'm also grateful for some of the bullying I've received it made me much more resistant to what people think about me)

akkartik• 17 years ago

Of course we should care! http://paulgraham.com/nerds.html

Quarrelsome2• 17 years ago

I think the problem is due to age-segregation of years, we shouldn't do that. It encourages Lord of the Flies-esqe social structures.

reduxredacted5• 17 years ago

That's a very good point. The kids I meet from homeschool co-ops learn in groups with age ranges.

There are twenty or so kids per co-op, yet bullying is virtually non-existant. The other thing that happens is the ten year olds talk to the older children and adults as though they are peers. They don't connect age with wisdom or authority.

tdavis• 17 years ago

I don't see why anybody would go to a high school reunion. I've only been out of high school for six or seven years and I can't remember a single person from those four years, unless I stayed friends with them afterwards. The entire experience strikes me as an errand, and not even one that provides me with groceries.

yesimahuman• 17 years ago

They really allowed violence like that? It reminds me of one of those 80's movies where they kids are just a bunch of bad asses...I thought that was just in the movies. I feel bad for him. The only ostracizing I had to deal with was when I was very fat as a kid. I've filled out a bit now, but it sucked.

mburney• 17 years ago

Bullying seems to be the only form of cruel violence in which the victims are told to "forgive and forget" and stop being "whiny." Would the same "get over it" sentiment exist if this article was about having been sexually assaulted by high school teachers?

Either way, the writer is committing the usual geek-fallacy in his plans for his son -- the hacker notion that a person can just learn a few skills to solve a problem.

The idea that learning karate in childhood will equip a person to beat up bullies in high school is ridiculous. The only way his son could use martial arts as legitimate self defense would be to train for hours a day in a tough mixed martial arts or street fighting gym right up until (and past) his teens. But then, wait a minute -- kids who do that are rarely considered geeks. They're called jocks.

run4yourlives10• 17 years ago

Please don't compare standard bullying to sexual assault. The two experiences are not comparable.

That being said, often the best thing for a person to do is to "forgive and forget", since letting go of anger is the only way to properly conquer it. Even families of murder victims move on after 25 years. As a human, you have to.

Agreed about the Martial Arts though.

tjic7• 17 years ago

> Please don't compare standard bullying to sexual assault. The two experiences are not comparable.

They're not the same, but, yes, they're comparable.

kragen6• 17 years ago

There are plenty of sexual assaults that are less traumatic than having your fingers broken.

sofal3• 17 years ago

He puts way too much faith in karate to help his kids learn how to fight back. Karate does not teach you that.

I was in karate for years as a kid and got a black belt. I took karate for the same reasons he's putting his kids through it. I was tired of being picked on and I wanted to make myself more intimidating. It did not work. You do not learn how to fight in karate. You learn how to perform choreographed moves and routines (like katas and lots of shorter ones that we called 'techniques') and you kick and punch a lot of pads. Sparring is more like a game than a real fight, where you get points by making contact at the right places. Karate gives you good exercise (which is why it can be great for some people), but I did not get out of it what I wanted. I never learned how to fight simply because we never did any real fighting. I had a black belt, yet when it came down to it and someone was physically threatening me, the silly routines that worked against invisible attackers in karate did not work in real life. If you want your kids to learn how to fight and defend themselves, take them to a place where they actually have the kids fight each other. There are no shortcuts.

The self-esteem boost that I desperately wanted from karate I was finally able to get in high school by becoming really good at percussion. People finally started respecting me for what I could do. Drumline was where I belonged.

scott_s7• 17 years ago

Disciplines which place an emphasis on live sparring make an enormous difference. See boxing, Muay-Thai, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and the emerging amalgamation of various sparring disciplines, Mixed Martial Arts.

sofal3• 17 years ago

Absolutely agree. I would also add wrestling. Any kid who did wrestling easily had me on the ground screaming before I could get any fancy blocks, punches, or kicks out (it is always a bad idea to try to kick a good wrestler). Basically, any discipline which involves you having to physically overpower another human being will make a difference if you stick with it.

JesseAldridge• 17 years ago

I had a friend who was in to that sort of thing. It seemed pretty dangerous. I was interested, but was concerned that being repeatedly hit in the head or put in a chokehold might cause brain damage.

I recall this one incident where my friend had a guy in a headlock and the guy lost consciousness so he couldn't tap out. When he finally let him go the other dude had a seizure there on the spot.

The same friend ended up permanently injuring his back by being slammed into the ground while attempting to perform a flying armbar on his opponent.

pm• 17 years ago

Krav Maga for the +1. They teach you straight from the get go that it's about survival and nothing more. It's brutal, but the education is worth it.

warfangle• 17 years ago

Add Hapkido in there, too. (Karate : Judo as Taekwondo : Hapkido)

Retric2• 17 years ago

There are many forms of karate and some of them have little to do with fighting. If you want to quickly learn to street fight take Kenpo. If you want to learn how to make your body as lethal as possible take a non sport from of Muay Thai.

Note: I took American Kenpo for a few years and liked it, but I don't think it's really the best art for the average 12 year old.

Dilpil2• 17 years ago

There are plenty of real karate schools, far more fake ones. The test is pretty simple- you ask the instructor if the students fight each other. If no, it is fake. Very hard to get good at something without ever doing it.

Hexstream• 17 years ago

With respect, if you have a black belt yet can't put up a fight I'd seriously question the competence of your teacher, both in the quality of the training and the standards by which belts are awarded.

sofal3• 17 years ago

The main teacher definitely knew how to fight (Mike Winkeljohn, look him up), but I'm definitely with you on questioning the type of training and the standards by which belts are rewarded. The problem is that a lot of karate places are not really in the business of teaching kids how to fight.

It's a lot like Boy Scouts. The parents want to see progress, and so the belts are handed out to any kid who checks off all the requirements, which mostly consist of memorization and a minimal standard of physical fitness. It's a business, and doing that works better for the real customers: the parents. It certainly works for the OP even though his kids are obviously not learning how to fight ("His Karate dojo is wonderful, and he loves doing it. It's actually a very gentle dojo..."). A lot of kids love to do it anyway. I was just disappointed that my main purpose for studying karate was mismatched. I'll also grant that there is a small element of "getting out of it what you put into it" as well.

raquo2• 17 years ago

> Karate does not teach you that

That largely depends on your teacher. Some schools teach karate as a sport, others - as a discipline or self-defense. Different people see different ways of karate.

subwindow• 17 years ago

I joined the wrestling team my freshman year of high school, and it did wonders. All of your practice is against real people, so when you try to do a particular move, you really know how to perform it.

The best part of it is that it is generally non-violent. The last real fight I had was the month before I started wrestling. Every other "fight" after that consisted of them throwing a punch and then me getting them into a headlock until they cooled off and backed down. No bloody noses.

I'd consider it perfect for anyone seeking real, effective methods of self defense- especially in school, where even if you fight back and end up breaking a nose you can be punished.

fizx• 17 years ago

As a wrestler, it's great for diffusing simple high-school fights. I fondly remember someone throwing a sucker punch at me in the locker room, and I used his momentum and a Greco-Roman throw to put him hard head-first into the ground.

That said, in real life, wrestling sucks for fights, because you never know when the other guy has a knife. Weapons change everything. Run away.

ananthrk• 17 years ago

"Nobody in the streets knows that you are a black belt" - Bruce Lee

pegobry• 17 years ago

I understand how this guy feels, and I've been there. Clearly, his emotions are still very raw from this. But I can't say I agree with his reaction.

I was in his shoes in high school, and now, I've been to the top school in the country, work at a cool web 2.0 startup and, most importantly, am engaged to the most wonderful woman I could possibly imagine. I am, quite literally, living my childhood dream, and I'm incredibly lucky.

So today, these f-ckers mean nothing to me. I don't feel the rawness that the author evidently still feels.

A year ago I ran into one of the a-holes from my high school days. Not the worst, but a bad one. And you know what? He apologized. It turns out he's a decent guy now, and I had a lot of fun hanging out with him. Is he going to be the best man at my wedding? Hell no. But am I glad I ran into him that day? Yes.

So I would go. Partly to have some closure. Partly out of curiosity. But mostly because I'm a relentless optimist. We've all done incredibly stupid things as teenagers, and people can change. I'm sure there'd be at least one person I'd be happy I'd met.

And if not, it'd still be fun to rub their faces in my success. ;)

TheSOB883• 17 years ago

"Today, these fuckers mean nothing to me."

Evidently, they still cause some sort of reaction within you. While you've probably progressed past the author in terms of dealing with it, you still have a bit to before you reach total forgiveness.

joetrumpet• 17 years ago

I don't quite understand what he has to gain from going, nor why your language shows you have moved past it more than he has. If he wasn't friends with anyone in high school, what's the difference between going there and going to some other event and meeting people? Some of them might be nice, and so might some other people he could meet--people nearby that he might actually stay in contact with. It just sounds like a waste of money to me. I don't think he's holding onto anything: I think his point is 25 years after being abused people who didn't apologize are pretending nothing happened, and asking him to spend a decent amount of time and money on reminiscing. What's the point?

oz2• 17 years ago

When I was in grade 4 (Jamaica) some kids picked on me. I remember going home and making some concrete balls, about the size of a large grapefruit each. I put four in my bag and went to school the next day. I don't remember why I didn't harm anybody.

Similarly, in grade 10, a 'jock' slapped me across the face, sending my glasses careening. It was after school, so I went home and made me a little circuit: a transformer rigged to step up the voltage, connected to a small battery, with two needles on the end, all assembled on a piece of board. I fully intended to kill the motherfucker. But cooler heads prevailed, and I didn't return to school with my little apparatus.

Unfortunately, I took all of that anger out on my little brother.

Reading this sure brought back a lot of memories. I remember the first time I read PGs "Why Nerds are Unpopular Essay." To say it was like divine revelation would be an understatement.

Now, at 22, 6'1" and getting built. I would happily beat the fuck out of anyone who 'violated', as we say in Jamaica. Enough with that 'violence solves nothing' bullshit. Violence is what stopped WWII.

It's easy for some to say he should get over it, but I understand where he's coming from. And I didn't have it as half as bad as he did.

TheSOB883• 17 years ago

"Violated," eh? What does that mean, exactly? If it's someone starting a fight, sure, beat 'em up. But you seem a bit overenthusiastic to beat the shit out of people. You may want to take a look at calming down; you might do the exact same thing you did to your brother again, to someone else.

tybris• 17 years ago

That's an honest and emotional piece.

I don't really have bad high-school memories, mostly indifferent memories. Fortunately our high school system separates the potential construction workers from the potential scientists. I did find it hard to socialize with people whose primary interest in life seemed to be the irrational idolization of musicians, with a surprising lack of musical taste. There I was with my interests in physics, economics, politics, philosophy, classical history, etc.

Isolation is what made me play with computers, become really good at inventing and engineering new systems, and brought me to an incredibly fortunate life.

I didn't go to my first reunion, but as the stories got out I felt sad for how poorly most of them had done. I grew up thinking the world was our playground, and for me it still is. Maybe I'll go to the next one, hoping they did a little better.

Ben65• 17 years ago

It's true there's nothing funnier that the sound of a geek's finger breaking, but the down side is that 25 years later they won't be at the class reunion, and that hurts.

run4yourlives10• 17 years ago

I find this, and comments in the thread here extremely depressing, for a few reasons.

First, it's sad how evil kids can be. Clearly Lord of the Flies isn't a apocalyptic fantasy but a realistic description of the social order of our youth.

That said, what I find truly disturbing is seeing bright, intelligent, logical adults wallow in disgust and outright anger over things that were perpetrated on them by children.

Look at your average kid from highschool. They are unfinished. They think in ridiculous patterns and do nonsensical things. You were them once. You thought like they did. The point here is that you are likely nothing like that person by the time you hit 25. Neither are they.

I was never a geek outcast so perhaps I just can't relate to some of the extreme behaviour that others have experienced. That said, I was never a "cool kid" either, and felt all the social stigma of being the outcast. I so wanted to be one of the cool guys with the hot chicks smoking in the parking lot. Alas, I wasn't well off and had peculiar interests coupled with less than stellar social skills; a bit of a late bloomer you could say.

I look back now however, at 34, and realize that it was me that survived the teenage years without incident. I realize the pretty girls weren't all that hot then, and certainly aren't now. I realize that spending all day skipping class translated into not getting a job worth much. I've got a wife and 2 kids, wonderful experiences of a 1/3 of a life. What am I supposed to be mad about?

The author is mad because people from a school he admits he had no friends at are contacting him 25 years later! They not only remember him, but want to see him. They remember that they were children once, but they aren't the same kids from 25 years ago any more.

The only one that is affected at all is the author. It's time to let go, move on, and be proud of who you are and what you've achieved. Harbouring such resentment isn't healthy, regardless of whether it's understandable.

philwelch9• 17 years ago

"That said, what I find truly disturbing is seeing bright, intelligent, logical adults wallow in disgust and outright anger over things that were perpetrated on them by children."

You should try talking to people who were abused by their parents, or rape survivors. I think having your fingers broken is closer to that than "the social stigma of being the outcast".

"The author is mad because people from a school he admits he had no friends at are contacting him 25 years later! They not only remember him, but want to see him. They remember that they were children once, but they aren't the same kids from 25 years ago any more."

It's telling that not a single one of these invitations contained an apology.

"The only one that is affected at all is the author."

Victims of abuse are usually more affected by it than perpetrators.

run4yourlives10• 17 years ago

>You should try talking to people who were abused by their parents, or rape survivors.

Don't compare bullying to rape. They are not in the same class. That's not to say that bullying isn't bad, just that rape is on a different level entirely.

>It's telling that not a single one of these invitations contained an apology.

Is it? True apologies are usually given in person.

>Victims of abuse are usually more affected by it than perpetrators.

Ergo, the victim is best advised to take steps to cure themselves, regardless of what happens to the perpetrators.

He's the angry one, not me. I'm only pointing out that it is better for him if he isn't angry. I care little about the feelings of his bullies, to be honest.

c00p3r• 17 years ago

Oh, it is so common. Sublimation and suffering are required for a success in creative activities, like going-through-pain is required for success in a professional sports.

reduxredacted5• 17 years ago

You go through pain in professional sports because your muscles must be broken down in order to build up and your brain has to master the skill and precision required to play the game. You are also typically coached or trained by someone with more experience than you until you are more experienced than them.

How does spending most of the important years of emotional development experiencing only abuse assist in making one creative? Maybe by having extra time on your hands, but other than that it doesn't seem like it would be something valuable or even connected in any way, let alone _required_.

I think it's correlation vs. causation. People who are creative are non-conformist. Non-conformists tend to get bullied in High School.

Some of the most creative and interesting people I have ever met were homeschooled. They had _some_ negative social experiences growing up, but nothing that would have amounted in their lifetimes what some kids at my school experienced in a day.

reduxredacted5• 17 years ago

I just sent that link to a group of parents that I am going to be homeschooling with (and to my parents who think it's "a horrible idea"). I didn't get anywhere near the abuse this individual received, but I had my share, too. I have met so many people in IT and science that are still colored in some way by the "socialization" they received in school.

I worked for one of the most miserable human beings I have ever met. Brilliantly smart, but now that he was on the other side, he bullied everyone around him (including his boss, who eventually fired him). I have had many coworkers who had been beat up so often, knocked down so often, that when they have an "out of the box" idea, they simply don't share it.

I want my kids to be brought up in an environment that encourages learning, and peer learning via our co-op. I went to my High School reunion for almost the same reasons MarkCC didn't. I was amazed to learn of the fate of the individuals who gave me so much crap. A few were dead because of their behavior.

ice_man• 17 years ago

And yet, in a different blog post, he intellectually beats the sh*t out of an 80-year-old man: http://scienceblogs.com/goodmath/2007/04/george_shollenberge...

42 comments.

To which the 80-year-old man responds (which by the way I think is incredible, because the guy is 80): http://georgeshollenberger.blogspot.com/2007/04/mark-chu-car...

0 comments.

jongraehl• 17 years ago

There's nothing wrong with telling someone that they're wrong.

gruseom2• 17 years ago

Interesting. I took a second look and noticed that at the top of his blog he talks about squashing fools.

One of the insidious things about violence is that it goes along with the conviction that one is in the right.

kragen6• 17 years ago

You're impressed by the fact that this guy wonders whether he can call the FBI to complain that a mathematician claimed he doesn't understand anything about the Theory of Relativity? I've known plenty of 80-year-olds who were a lot more lucid than that.

hc2• 17 years ago

i flagged this post without comment when it was younger, expecting many people to do the same. now i see it has been upvoted 100+ times and it is still here. i am curious why many people seem to hold it to be within the scope of this site. the connection to anything scientific or technical is tenuous, and the post is wholly lacking in insight wrt the sociological phenomenon it rails against.

jrockway• 17 years ago

I am glad I went to a math and science high school. I learned a ton, I was never bullied, and I have lots of friends that I am in regular contact with.

(I went to a regular high school for my first year. While nobody broke my fingers, it was not particularly enjoyable. I also went to a regular high school in Tokyo for a year. Not quite as nice as the math and science school, but for a "normal" school it was pretty nice. I am not sure why the US has such poor schools.)

strlen4• 17 years ago

I am appalled at some of the responses telling the author to "get over it". If it were the case of the kids not inviting him to the prom or verbally mocking him, it would be one thing.

But having a swastika a swastika painted with gasoline on his lawn and having their fingers broken?

I'd say in vast majority of this country, if someone (particularly Jewish, or as in the authors' case mixed-race) saw somebody lighting their property on fire in shape of an unmistakable hate symbol and reached for the family heirloom M1 Garand (that their grandfather used against other fans of this particular "symbol"), that would the very example of a "justifiable homicide"/"castle doctrine".

If someone had their fingers broken by a stranger on the street, the stranger-- if caught and identified-- would face assault charges.

Why is that what would be unambiguously a felony crime when done in the street, treated as something that should be "forgiven" when it's done in a high school environment?

Yes, many of the bullies came from abusive families and suffered many psychological issues themselves. However, I doubt this excuse would work in court on trial for an arson charge with a hate crime enhancement --or in an assault case. These people should be in prison, where they themselves may themselves find out what it's like to be weaker/smaller/less "street smart" than somebody else.

jacquesm14• 17 years ago

Every bully is in charge of their own body, they make choices every time they go for someone that's weaker (or they will use a couple of buddies if they're real cowards).

Abusive families do not come in to play as an excuse.

strlen4• 17 years ago

Right, as I've stated-- this is not an excuse. There may be explanations for bullying, but when one commits a transgression that has a victim there are real consequence (e.g. the example I gave of those excuses not standing up in court). I'm in full agreement.

kragen6• 17 years ago

What do you think he should do that wouldn't benefit from getting over it? Having his kids take karate, for example, would probably be an even better idea if he wasn't still full of anger. It seems like the only benefit of this kind of anger is collective: it might motivate him to take some kind of action to improve the situation for everybody — but he doesn't seem to be doing that.

Oh, and the swastika was on the street, not on the lawn.

strlen4• 17 years ago

On the street in a very dry environment. Even if done on the street, in most every place in the US it would be treated as arson with a hate crime enhancement.

What good would going to the reunion do to him? Speaking out about this, would on the other hand do him-- and others-- very well. Writing can heal old wounds.

hc2• 17 years ago

yes, when the choice is between "get over it" and "cry about it" the latter is clearly the superior option

korch• 17 years ago

Fuck high school reunions. Instead of going, stay home and watch Grosse Point Blanke.

I wasn't a geek, and instead hung out with the delinquent/stoner crowd, so I can relate for entirely different reasons. Everything that's wrong with the world, well, High School is a perfect microcosm of that.

bootload2• 17 years ago

"... Everything that's wrong with the world, well, High School is a perfect microcosm of that ..."

Nice summary.

raffi• 17 years ago

There are so many great threads here that I don't know where to dump this comment. The original article inspired me to phone up the organizer of my reunion and promptly drive to meet her to deliver the check.

DavidSJ• 17 years ago

The horrible times children are routinely given are seen by many as just a fact of life -- growing pains, as it were. It's high time that we stop accepting it; I'm glad something like this was written which doesn't just accept the events for the sake of "moving on". Others need to see and understand this trauma.

dilanj• 17 years ago

He lost. He failed to take action when it mattered, which could've been bulking up or learning social skills or whatever.

Then he won. Earned a great life, does great work; different day, different game. Should've moved on.

But then he lost again, by leaving the final laugh to any ex-bully who can google.

Arun2009• 17 years ago

I don't think I'll ever understand the psyche of the typical American school-goer. From outside at least and from what we see on films, they seem to be leading quite colorful lives!

My own school-life in India was fairly monochromatic. Being a studious type was actually considered a plus, both by your family and your peers. Entering into anything like a romance was blasphemous and took place only in the movies where they had all the time in the world to run around trees in pairs. The overwhelming mad rush was to ace the board exams, state engineering exams, and the JEE and land myself into a decent university. And get the hell out of India if possible.

weirdwes• 17 years ago

I find it kind of naive and disturbing to read some of these responses. To the people who are telling him to "let it go", "get over it" and "move on", I ask can you really be serious? None of the experiences I've read really come close to what he went through all those years ago. It really angers me to no end when people just brush this type of treatment off as "kids being kids" and expect people to just accept it and move on.

To the people who are saying "it's been 25 years, they're not the same people anymore", how can you be so sure? Did you go to his high school? Do you know the people he went to high school with? Why is it that you assume that 25 years has made all the jerks in his high school regretful and apologetic "do-gooders"? If that's the case, where are all of today's criminals coming from? That's a bold statement, I realize and I'm not suggestive that all of today's criminals were high school bullies or that all high school bullies grow up to commit crimes, but they have to come from somewhere right? How do you know that the kid who used to steal your lunch money isn't doing a nickel for a B&E? How do you know that the jock who picked on all the small kids didn't grown up to abuse his own kids? You don't. So please stop pretending like everyone grows out of who they are in high school, because many people don't.

Let's assume tomorrow you're walking down the street and a complete stranger comes up to you, swipes your leg out from under you and stomps on your knee, breaking your leg. You've never done anything to this person, you don't even really know him. Sure you've seen him on your way to work from time to time, but that's it. He's just someone who happens to be in the same areas as you from time to time. But today, he decides to assault you - for no reason than just to satisfy some sick urge he has. He doesn't continue to beat you, he doesn't rape you, he doesn't steal your money or shoot you - he just breaks your leg, laughs it off and goes on his way. The following week he interviews and gets a job where you work. Do you just "get over it?" No? Okay, maybe it wasn't a week later - it's been a month? A year? 5 years? 10? - It doesn't matter, some things are not excusable or forgivable no matter how much time has passed. Some things you just don't get over.

gruseom2• 17 years ago

Some things you just don't get over.

You do when you figure out how much pain you're causing yourself by holding on to them. In fact, the moment you see that, it's impossible not to let go - the same way you'd drop a red hot poker when you figured out you were holding one.

I can see why this idea makes you angry if you interpret it as expecting people to "just accept" violence, abuse and so on. And I can see why it would sound like blaming the victim.

Respectfully, though, it's not about accepting such things, it's about the effective way to reject them. The trouble with many of the obvious strategies for rejecting abuse is that they are deceptive: they cause one to unwittingly perpetuate it. You can easily end up inflicting more pain on yourself by reconducting the abuse in your imagination than the original experience entailed. You can also easily end up inflicting pain on people you love.

The cycle of violence is a strange game, the rules of which don't work the way you (I mean anyone) would think they ought to. Just the fact that so many victims turn into victimizers is a pretty big indicator of that. The important question is, when one finds oneself in a game like that, what's the way out?

yason• 17 years ago

To exaggerate: How about forgiveness instead of raising a new karate kid generation?

Note that forgiving does NOT mean "it's all right that you beat me up".

Forgiveness means recognizing that "yes, they beat me; it all truly did happen back then but well, I lived" and then letting go of that old ugly shit. Almost anything in life is a better thing to do compared to keeping that stuff in your head.

If he's lucky he learned something from school. Setting his boundaries properly, discarding false beliefs that he's a wimp, or whatever it is for him. I assume that he doesn't get beaten up regularly anymore? If so then he has learned.

His classmates have hopefully learned something too. It's not an easy thing to forget, breaking someone's fingers. The bullies have all had wounded hearts already at the time. There's a lot to go through in that.

There's a saying that we're all victims of victims. I assume it fully applies. It's not so much what happens to you but how you think of and act on it.

Why I won't be at my high school reunion

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