Memoir, Bullying
I Was Bullied by a School Friend for Being Poor
Each week, those who qualified for free meals had to go and collect the tickets, so every one knew who the poor kids were. I hated this so much. I felt ashamed without understanding why.
I’d nearly survived the first year of secondary school intact and was still in the top set for maths. Not bad for a newbie, I thought.
Then, a mini-disaster struck.
If you read the previous episode about Karen, you would already know after leaving primary school we’d stayed friends and joined an athletics club together. Also, our dress up game had led to my first consensual sexual experience. But only a few months later, our friendship went up in smoke.
Often, we had both spent our break times with Victoria and Jane. Two other girls we’d been friends with at primary school. But Karen was growing up very fast and started meeting up with the girl she sat next to, who was in with a popular clique. It didn’t take too long before she wanted to ditch me for the new friends.
To be honest, I didn’t want a bestie anyhow. Not again. So I was happy enough for her to enjoy the company of others, but for some reason, maybe to seem more attractive or assertive to her new chums, she started publicly putting me down. Bullying I suppose. Let me explain…
My mum was a single parent and also worked five days a week. However, she didn’t make enough money for a mortgage and two kids. This meant I was given tokens to have free school dinners.
Each week, those who qualified for free meals had to go and collect the tickets, so every one knew who the poor kids were. I hated this so much — felt ashamed without understanding why.
The school did not think at all about how this would impact on a child’s self-esteem or could cause ridicule from peers.
A few years later, when we were allowed packed lunches, I begged my mum to let me have them, just to avoid being known as a free-school-meal-pupil.
Karen had a darling mum who understood our household didn’t have enough money for extra clothes etc and had passed on some second hand bits from her sister's daughter, who was as similar size to me. I had been very grateful as one item was a tracksuit which I badly needed for my running club, and when I accepted them I didn’t know Karen would tell half the class that not only were my family too poor to pay for my school dinners, I also had to rely on hand-me-downs from her own mum.
It was a horrid week of mud-slinging, with Victoria and Jane shouting my corner and Karen making accusations about me to her new friends and half the class.
Victoria was a special girl in many ways. When she had joined my primary school at ten, she quickly became the most popular person in the year 6 class. And rightfully so. She included everyone in her conversations and made time to nurture different friendships. Not only that, she was the kind of pretty which got the right attention from boys and girls. As the years went on, she became the teen all the girls wanted to be like, and the boys wanted to take out.
Another good thing about Victoria was she really liked me. Had done from the start. It was her who ended up putting Karen firmly back in her box by stating a few home truths. Such as, I had helped Karen join friendship groups at primary school when nobody wanted to play with her, and taught her how to run properly. Sounds weird, but there is a knack!
About this time, my mum was also thinking of getting married to the man who would eventually become my stepdad. Victoria gloated on my behalf that after the wedding we’d be even richer than Karen’s family. This wasn’t totally true, although my household would become better off than we had been for many years.
The funny thing was I remember much of the shouts and name-calling going over my head. I didn’t cry or run home and hide, as I had done when the previous school had separated me from my then best friend, Claire. But let’s face it, far worse things than this had happened to me.
I almost felt detached from what was going on all around. A kind of disconnection which has returned many times over the years. It is probably my body and mind’s way of helping me cope with distressing situations.
Positives often come from negatives, and for a while that was the case here. Victoria insisted I team up with her, along with Jane and another girl, Anna. Having a peer group like this helped my self-esteem, and I felt as if I was one of the girls for the first time ever.
While checking out the current system in place for free school meals, I came across this:
Our research… conducted over a number of years has shown us that children in receipt of Frees School Meals are more likely to be bullied than their peers. Very little is known currently about why this is.
I was not at all surprised this still goes on. I am shocked the Alliance claim not to understand why this happens. Hiding the fact a child is in receipt of free meals is virtually impossible. This immediately creates a two tier social scale in school— the haves and the have-nots. Wherever there is a perception of power, the ones with higher status will take the upper hand and naturally want to keep those they view as inferior under control. And so bullying occurs.
Power can apply to money as in the above situation, but can also play out under many different guises. Attractiveness, strength, intelligence. The list goes on. It has been happening since the dawn of time.
Often the bully has their own problems — perhaps they are picked on in another area of their lives or don’t have stable foundations at home. It may be they are envious in some way of their chosen victim. I am not sure what provoked Karen. Her mum was very keen on me, and perhaps Karen was a little jealous when she gave me clothes. Another possibility was — up until this point — Karen had never found it easy to be liked. I had been a friend, but now she had another and was eager to put me down to let her new peers know she was on their more popular team, and not mine.
When ever my own daughters got into a situation where another child was being abusive to them in any way, I would always attempt to get them to try and sort it out first. If that didn’t work, I would then go into the school or instigate intervention of some sort. It was surprising how often they managed, with their friend's help or perhaps speaking to a teacher, to put a stop to the bullying themselves. I think being able to navigate these incidents may have raised their self-esteem.
However, bullying is NOT OK. In fact, I moved my eldest daughter from one school to another at fifteen because she was being victimised for a friendship choice she’d made.
This kind of intimidation can affect everyone involved and prolong into later life too. The victim may suffer various mental health issues and their friends a feeling of helplessness, for not being able to do anything to protect someone they cared about.
Bullying has been linked to a variety of mental health issues, including depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Victims of bullying often suffer from feelings of helplessness and hopelessness as they struggle to cope with the relentless verbal and physical abuse.
And even the bullies themselves are known to have lifelong issues with aggression or substance abuse.
Luckily, my particular situation didn’t last long. Both friendship groups moved on in different directions, and I learned something that day, which helped me actively stop a bully the next time I was systematically picked on. I will write about it soon.
I wonder if there is a kid out there — or indeed an adult — who has not suffered from bullying in some way during their life — at school, work, or social situations.
What do you think?
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This story was part of my personal memoir project, find out about it here: Lipstick and Powder
Here Marie A. Rebelle talks about her school days and gymnastics
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