My experience with a bully

Juan Apolinario C. Reyes

The bullying news brings back so many traumatic memories for adults. Physical altercations were among my vivid memories. I could still feel the knuckles on my face when a bigger kid punched me because of an altercation about a lemonade. We were 7 years old.

I had more quarrels in grade school. Many came to shoving and pushing and punching. The scariest of them was when a kid, who was two years older and a known thug in school, brandished an icepick in front of me. I was grade four. He was grade six. From that moment on, whenever I saw his shadow, I would do my best to vanish in air. That kid-thug still lives in my town. He is now a raving lunatic. He raves and curses at people in one spot at a crossing near the church.

The church was no safe place either for kids like me. There outside the church was a gang of kids waiting for me. We had a quarrel in a basketball match a day earlier. They wanted payback. They harassed, taunted me to fight. But they were a gang, and the church which was only 100 meters from my house seemed like a church from another town. That spot where these kids cornered me was their territory. They were a known group in our town. They were Batmuz. Batang Muzon.

I faced these on my own. What kept me brave somehow were the stories my father told me when he was a young man. In his youth, he fought in a gang versus many other gangs on many occasions. He fought not once but fought at least half a dozen times. He’d been in jail because of this, he and his mates. Some of his mates fathered those kids in Batmuz. My father also loved telling the part when a policeman in the precinct took interest in fondling his penis.

A kid must fight. It is and could be the scariest experience he’ll face. But he must fight. He must punch, push, wrestle, and kick. His bravery to face the difficult world of fighting his peers has a lot to do with his father. It is their father who is their guide in these issues. The instructions he gave, and the stories he told about himself and his youth.

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