The years between middle school and high school can prove to be the most formative in our development as human beings. As bodies begin to change and hormones begin to increase, bullying becomes much more commonplace as well, which can negatively impact people for decades to come, but sometimes those getting bullied and harassed finally decide that enough is enough. Here a a few times where people were able to exact revenge on their childhood bullies.
Peril At The Pencil Sharpener
“I was in 5th grade at the time.
I can’t remember what specifically caused me to snap, but after spending the last 5 years being continually harassed, bullied, and assaulted by a specific boy, I’d had enough.
I calmly walked to the mounted pencil sharpener at the back of the class and sharpened my pencil to a very fine tip. Then, I walked behind said bully, and in a downward motion slashed him across the entirety of his back in one fluid motion.
Obviously, I got a truckload of trouble for what I did. Principal insinuated to my mother that the parents of the other boy may want to press charges for my harming of their pride-and-joy.
My mother, bless her heart, retorted back, ‘If that’s the case, perhaps I should press charges considering how often my son has been coming home with cuts, bruises and welts administered at their boy’s hands without repercussions from your staff.’
The principal moonwalked out of that conversation so dang fast.
I still was read the riot-act at home, though. Got drilled into me that what I did was use a weapon to harm someone, and that it would never be tolerated at any level. Grounded for a very, very long time.
Bully gave me space, for a while anyway. Went back to his usual torment after a couple weeks — minus any physical contact.”
Schoolyard Fight
“In fourth grade these two guys Ronnie and Freddy kept ridiculing me, making remarks and teasing me at recess. I was raised to be peaceful and accommodating. I tried to ignore them, but it got under my skin. I decided to stay near the teacher at recess. They left me alone then, but I couldn’t stay near the teacher all the time. They accused me of being teacher’s pet. That bugged me even more. This went on for weeks.
When recess was over we lined up on the sidewalk to go back indoors. One day Ronnie was right behind me. He started teasing me.
I lost it. I took him down. When they pulled me off him I was pounding his head against the pavement. Ronnie stopped teasing me. Noting the improvement, I challenged Freddy to a fight after school. A crowd gathered. It took only a few seconds for me to pin Freddy to the ground and force him to surrender. That ended the teasing from Freddy.
A day or two later my mother and I were called to the principal’s office. My father was overseas in combat. Ronnie and his mother were there. I never knew where Ronnie’s father was. As soon as the meeting started, Ronnie’s mother launched into an indictment of me. Before she was finished the principal cut her short. ‘Now let’s hear the other side,’ she said. I stated my case.
The principal heard me out, then said, ‘Gentlemen don’t fight. It’s against the rules to fight on the school ground. I want you two to shake hands and apologize.’ I did as told, Ronnie had to be prompted to apologize.
But that’s not the end of it.
Years later, in my early 20s I had a job at a research institute at university. The institute director informed me that ‘A young man called Ronald J. was just hired. He says he beat you up in grade school.’
‘That’s not exactly how I remember it,’ I replied.
‘I’m not surprised,’ she said.
A week later there was a party at the director’s house. Ronnie and I were there. Ronnie was slender, maybe 5’9″. I was 6’4″, about 195 pounds, ran about 6 miles per day.
The director’s wife maneuvered Ronnie over to the the group where I was, and said, ‘Ronald, let’s hear how you beat up Polanski in grade school.’
Ronnie mumbled something about a mistaken impression and left shortly afterward. He was careful to avoid me from then on.
Some time during the next year or so I laughed and mentioned it to my mother. She said the principal had said to her, ‘I wish I had been there to see it when Polanski pounded Ronnie’s head on the sidewalk.'”
Mind Your Own Business
“This happened six years ago when I was in fifth grade and the bully was in sixth grade.
I’d gotten to school a bit early and was just chilling on my phone when the bully came up and started ranting about how I couldn’t be on my phone.
Me: School hasn’t even started yet. Besides, it’s not your business.
Bully: I’ll go tell a teacher and they’ll take your phone away.
Me: They won’t care. School hasn’t started yet. Just go away.
He then reached for my phone. He literally tried to take it. Of course I didn’t let him.
I was getting really frustrated and told him, again, to go away. He didn’t.
He decided to was a good idea to punch me in the face. I wasn’t ready at all so I didn’t even have time to put my arms up or anything. Just a fist straight to the face.
Now, I was a pretty small girl back then and the bully was a year older and apparently played a lot of sports and stuff, and on top of that he was standing up and I was sitting down.
I just snapped. Without even thinking I just punched back as hard as I could. He just kinda stared at me before running off. I could literally hear him crying. He shouted at me that he’d tell a teacher, but no one mentioned it to me ever again and I never got in trouble.
The bully didn’t bother me even once after that.”
Getting Inventive
“I knew a girl who traumatized me from elementary school, all the way up to high school. She was the class pet and popular girl, so no one ever did anything, student or teacher. Didn’t tell my parents as I didn’t want to be seen as a wuss. I’m a guy.
Was riding my bike home my sophomore year of high school when this girl on her bike, pops my dang tires, making my bike flip over. It hurt as the sidewalk was that weird sharp, bumpy cement. I got scratched up pretty good and all she did was laugh and call me names. This was my breaking point and I had had enough of her nonsense.
I was originally going to punch her, but I figured I’d get in trouble for that. So I did something that I knew would leave no ‘physical’ marks. I got up from the ground, threw my bike helmet off, and stormed over to her. Considering I never fought back, this moment of aggressive approaching definitely freaked her out as her eyes widened to the size of grapefruits.
‘What’re you doing?’ she said, taking a few steps back. I raise my hand back, as if to slap her and she closes her eyes.
I found my opening, and I took it. Using both my hands, I grabbed her face and pulled it inches away from mine. I gave her a small, gentle kiss on the cheek and whispered softly, ‘See you tomorrow.’
I took my bike and walked off.
For the rest of high school, she did nothing. She never got close to me, she didn’t even look in my general direction. I felt proud of myself that the least harmful thing I could have done worked.”
Retro Revenge
“I was a ‘goth chick.’ It was 1987, I was 14. It was a great time to be goth, but I thought of myself as New Wave. I was new in school. So I got double bullied. Weirdo with a funny accent.
There was this 17 year old sophomore. Total loser. He was waiting until he turned 18 so he could drop out. He had this really red Impala. Rims were red, hubcaps were red, even windshield wipers were red. Antennae was red. He was a big bully, bullied everyone, all day every day. People just took it and didn’t make fun of his car, because he was WAY bigger than his classmates.
I had just gotten out of a particularly bad gym class. People throwing rocks at me and my friends, calling us ‘witches’ as we walked around the track. I was in a mood.
In English class after gym, this guy is sitting right behind me. I was wearing an Echo and The Bunnymen t-shirt, and this dude drops his pencil. It rolled up by my foot. When I reached down to pick it up to hand it back to him, he said ‘Hey, Bunnyman, that’s MY pencil, don’t you touch it.’
Boy, did I snap. I picked up his desk, the one he was sitting behind, and I proceed to wail on this heathen with that desk. Up-over-my-head beat him with it. Screaming ‘I never did anything to you, you drive a car that looks like my period!’ And I beat him until he was bloody on the floor, crying a bunch of people pulled me off of him, and an ambulance was called. People cheered, I was told. I saw nothing but rage.
The next day, my dad and I were sitting outside of the guidance counselors’ office. Dad is telling me this is it, I’ll probably get kicked out of school, maybe start my arrest record today. When we meet the guy and his parents, his dad was freaking 7 feet tall, I swear. And he told his son to shake my hand and thank me for kicking his butt.
He was lucky to be getting his butt handed to him by a girl, it would teach him to lose the attitude before someone else out in the real world taught him the lesson. Most likely in prison.
Dad was right, the kid was killed in jail before he was 30. I did my part to try to get him to lose the attitude. Think he had to sell the red car to pay his hospital bills, too. His dad wouldn’t let mine pay even their deductible.”
Use Your Words
“I was in 5th grade. I was already having a bad day and in math class my long-time tormentor sat behind me. About halfway through class, he whacks me in the back of my head with the textbook and yells, ‘Move idiot I can’t see the board!’ So I move to the desk next to me (which was empty) so he moved to the desk behind that (which was also empty) and started kicking the snot out of my chair and yelling stuff like, ‘I bet nobody even loves you cause you’re so dang stupid.’ Keep in mind that this was the kid who never did homework, got held back in 2nd grade, all that stuff. Also, he was like 6 inches shorter than me at that time (still kind of is). Now, I wasn’t the tallest kid in the class, (that title belonged to someone else who was 6’ 2” in fifth grade) but I was still taller and likely stronger than almost everyone.
Then he starts yelling along the lines of, ‘I bet I could clap you in a fight’ and ‘You’re so weak and stupid’ and then started going around class telling people that we were going to fight after school and telling people to bet on him to win. He was short, not fat but not thin either. I’ll be honest though, this kid was at least 160 pounds and already had a double chin. Odd, seeing that his parents were both fit runners. Anyway, after class he hit me in the crotch with his binder, and I fell to the ground and started crying. I was taken to the school nurse who was concerned but I lied and told her I had another anxiety attack (had two or three almost every week). Processes similar to this went on for about 4 days, On the last day, when he was kicking and taunting me, I whipped my head around and screamed at the top of my lungs, ‘ENOUGH! KNOCK IT THE HECK OFF!’ Seeing as I was normally ‘the quiet kid’ who was super non-confrontational, he got scared and started crying. My useless math teacher (who never did a thing to try and help me) screamed at me, gave me a detention and sent me to the principals office. I was scared too, because I was worried for myself, mostly because I have never hated a human more than that moment.
After class, the teacher and the bully came to the office, where I was sentenced to even more detentions, and was suspended for fighting. Parents came to pick me up, and the principal told my parents what had happened, and my parents grounded me. Once we got home, my parents asked for the real story (they knew what most of the principal told them was malarky) and I told them the whole story. They got super mad and called my principal, who responded, ‘That’s what his teacher told me! If you have a problem, go complain to her!’ So the next day we went to complain to the math teacher, and she got defensive and actually yelled at my parents saying, ‘All I saw was your son screaming at poor [bully’s name]! [Bully’s name] did nothing to your son!’ My parents calmly responded with, ‘We know our son would not lie about this sort of thing. He sees no point in lying to us.’ We then talked to our principal, who removed my detentions and suspension, as well as gave the math teacher, bully, and bully’s parents a warning, that if they heard of any problems between me and my bully, that he would be suspended or expelled.”
Don’t Mess With A Hockey Player
“My experience was with dozens of bullies. Practically all but a couple boys in my class and the two below me. (It was a small private school, I joined it just before middle school.)
Now, I’ll be the first to admit. I was kind of an insufferable little twerp back then. I desperately wanted friends, or even for someone to listen for once in my life. Or even to be treated as someone with some kind of worth, even if grudgingly.
Then the pranks started. The teasing, the humiliation. By midway through 7th grade, I was so on edge and so desperate for some sort of praise or camaraderie or something non-negative that even well-intentioned constructive criticisms started to feel like attacks. Tried to get the teachers to intervene, and to their credit they tried. But I had to keep my guard up almost every minute of the day even so.
Through it all the only person I could consistently say was ‘on my side’ on a daily basis was my mother. The problem there was that for some bizarre reason she thought the whole thing was caused by my dandruff problem, and resolved to fix that problem by any means necessary.
This made things considerably worse because I stopped wanting to shower. Having your head scratched bloody raw for hours on end before even being allowed in the bathroom kinda did that. And then I had to endure even more bullying at school because I smelled so ripe as a result.
I lashed out multiple times, trying to fight back. But I was outnumbered and massively outweighed. They thought it was dang hilarious. And the attacks and humiliation got worse and worse.
This pattern of loneliness and misery continued until a hockey game one fateful early Saturday morning, during 8th grade. I was having a very bad morning, overslept, hadn’t eaten a bite, had to take my ADD pill with my mother’s godawful tea while rushing to the rink to get changed.
And half a dozen of my tormentors headed in to the locker room to laugh at me and roast me for being late while I was having a panic attack, frantically putting my skates and pads on and at least trying to do the right thing.
I saw red and flipped out again. This time, there was one key difference. I had my skates on. Sent one of them to the hospital with a lacerated leg before I regained control of myself and stormed off.
I wish I could say the abuse, teasing, and humiliations stopped completely after that, but it at least died down to manageable levels.
20-odd years later, tho, I’m still dealing with serious problems trying to deal with other people, work up the courage to start dating again, and take on responsibilities as an adult. Even something as simple as sending a resume, doing homework for my degree or looking for a therapist to help me deal with all this still gets me horribly stressed out.
Even today, my instincts still scream don’t do it, don’t do anything to get noticed or the bullies will pounce on you. Don’t reach out to other people, they’ll hate you instantly, nobody will ever want to hear anything you have to say. Don’t bother trying to date, you’re still that tiny, smelly little nightmare with no friends and no woman will want to be near you.
Even though I know I’ve changed and have worked hard to be a better man, and have better people in my life now as a result, it’s very hard to quiet that negativity.
I still don’t regret sending one of my bullies to the hospital, though. I wish it hadn’t escalated to that point, but I’m not gonna lie – it felt good just to not lose for once.”
Middle School Terror
“I was in middle school where I only had 2 friends and a lot of bullies. I was pretty used to getting teased for my hair not looking right (I was a young girl going through puberty and had no clue how to style my suddenly curly hair) or not wearing the popular clothes, or just being a gigantic weirdo. I talked constantly in class because I liked learning and I figured out quick that the lessons moved faster if you interacted with the teachers so on top of everything else I was a huuuge nerd and teacher’s pet.
I was picked on pretty relentlessly through most of middle school for refusing to conform to the mean girls, for standing up for other people getting bullied by their ‘friends’ and for like nerd things before anything like that was cool. I brushed it off/ didn’t engage with most of it though, so besides some hurtful jabs I didn’t respond to and being outrageously unpopular I usually was just ignored.
Well one day the teacher stepped out of science class and kids being kids, the teasing began. They started on this guy who LOVED cats, like brought Cat Fancy magazines to school, loved cats. I’m not gonna say the kid made it easy on himself but I didn’t think he deserved the awful things being said about him for his affinity for kitties so I stood up for him and told them to cut it out. That was the wrong move cause I guess these kids had just decided they wanted to really make someone cry that day and set their sights on me. They picked and poked at me on everything from there being a bump in my hair from my ponytail at gym to my purse (a pretty sweet number my aunt had gotten for me that was made out of recycled capri sun packets. I was a dork.) I finally got tired of it and laid my head down, waiting for the bell to ring and holding back tears cause they were NOT going to get to see they made me want to cry. I bit those back and waited to be able to slink off to my next class and do that alone like a stubborn 12 year old.
The bell rang and I ran off as fast as possible to put my books down in my next class and get to the girls room to cry it out in a stall in peace. Some of my more vocal bullies decided they wanted a piece of that action and followed me into English class to tease me some more. I had no sooner set my stuff on the table as a group of three of them came up behind me tease me some more. Of course the teacher wasn’t in there cause some of our classes had to share teachers and she had to walk back to this classroom for our lesson so these girls figured they had at least 3 more good minutes of picking on me left before they had to go.
Except something snapped in me. Night after night I had laid in bed imagining what I would say when I finally had the courage to stand up to these bratty little girls, all the flaws I wanted to point out at them, all the venom I had been storing up inside, I decided enough was enough.
Her name was Candy. Short, blonde and acted exactly like how you imagined a girl name Candy would act in middle school. She had two girls flanking her, one who liked to cheat off me in social studies and one who I honestly can’t remember who they were cause give me a break, I’ve remembered a lot from this day 14 years ago but not everything. They came up behind me and started again but before they got a full sentence out and I snapped.
‘You know what Candy? You can make fun of me now cause one day I’m gonna hit puberty grow and out of this awkward stage I’m in, but you’re always going to be ugly and hateful when you treat others like this.’
Y’all she lost it, immediately started bawling her eyes out and ran out of the room, her slack jawed lackeys in tow. I was honestly surprised it worked if you want to know the truth, but it did and I’ll be darned if they didn’t leave me alone after that. The occasional poke and prod here and there but not to the extent it had been and Candy wouldn’t even look at me for almost 5 years after that.
A couple of years ago I went to a birthday party where low and behold Candy was there. She was super friendly and nice to my husband while ignoring me (it’s also possible she didn’t realize who I was considering we hadn’t seen each other in 8 years) and I had to be told who she was cause I didn’t recognize her. She chain smokes now and my husband says I grew up to be much prettier than her. I looked up Mr. Cat Fancy himself not too long ago and while he doesn’t post a lot, it appears he has gotten very attractive, married and still loves cats so dang much.”
Stand Up For Yourself
“In middle school, I had a bully who constantly touch my butt when I walked up stairs. I asked him to stop multiple times. I told my teachers who said to just IGNORE HIM. Finally one day, he was behind me for two flights and kept pinching me and I became enraged. I turned around and used my massive textbook as a bat and took a swing at his head…which bounced off the concrete stairwell wall.
About 30 minutes later, I got called to the principal’s office and my dad was there.
Principal: ‘We called you in because we’re going to have to suspend M. Unfortunately, she hit another student with a textbook.’
Dad: ‘M, is this true? What happened?’
Me: ‘Yea, he was pinching my butt again and I couldn’t take it any more.’
Dad to Principal: ‘Did you know this was the reason? Are you aware that he has been touching her in unwelcome and inappropriate ways for weeks now and nothing has been done to stop it? ‘
Principal: ‘Well, yes sir, and I apologize but we have a zero tolerance for hitting, so we’re going to have to suspend her.’
Dad starting to reach across the desk: ‘Ok, that’s fine. Suspend her if you need to. I’m going to call the police to have that boy arrested for assaulting her and press charges against you for failing to protect a minor.’
Principal jumping out of his seat to knock the phone away from Dad: ‘NO! No no…I …I don’t think that’s necessary…’
The boy got suspend for 10 days and my dad took me out of school early that day to go see a movie as a reward for standing up for myself.”
Justice For A Cyber Bully
“I’m in the 10th grade now but the summer before 9th grade both of my parents had died. I was very depressed going into school and maybe only showed up 2 or 3 times a week for the first semester. This caused me to not have a lot of friends.
This happened in the 2nd semester. I would always eat my lunch alone at a table in the cafeteria reading my book. One day I started getting anonymous messages on Instagram saying stuff like ‘I bet you’re alone right now’ and ‘you have no friends’ or ‘are you crying’ and things like that. This really upset me but I couldn’t really do anything about it so I blocked the anonymous account.
Then maybe a week later I start getting more messages from another anonymous account saying the same stuff. I blocked them again.
The next day I open my locker and it was a printed meme made about me. It was a picture of me eating my lunch alone in the cafeteria and the caption was ‘family reunion’.
I took the piece of paper and went into the principals office and showed him everything on Instagram and the piece of paper. He then started saying how this was serious cyber bullying and he got the police involved. The police took my phone and got the IP address of both accounts (the IP addresses matched) And then found out who it was (not going to say his name for legal purposes) but the guy wasn’t even that popular. His parents were then called and he had to have a long talk with the police with his parents in the room. He came out of the room crying like a baby and had to apologize to me.”
So Close To Graduation
“I’m a ‘gentle giant’ and took a lot of abuse from bullies during my years in school. My senior year I find out that I still needed a P.E. credit, so I get stuck in a class, thankfully right before lunch. So this new troublemaker who moved in a year prior decides that he’s going to use his short man aggression on me. I blow it off thinking I have a few months before I graduate and see my town in a rear view mirror. I did the best I could by talking with coach about it and telling him that I’m concerned about graduating and fighting would mess that up.
The last week of school arrives and we no longer have to suit up anymore and the guys are welcome to do whatever. I was sitting on the roll out bleachers, finishing some homework when suddenly my right side of my head starts stinging, my glasses fly off, and I literally see red out that eye. I turn my head in the direction of a muffled laugh I hear through my screeching ear. That little prick threw a basketball at my head from no more than 12 ft away. He’s on the floor howling with laughter while the underclass boys just look at me, wondering what I was going to do.
Well, they got a show. From my position, I launch myself off the bleachers onto the bully. I beat his face in and as I pick him up thinking what I’m going to do I hear coach call my name and I snap back to reality. He tells me in a calm voice to go to his office while he takes the bleeding bully into the athletics dept. infirmary (its where they treat injured players) to clean him up. I quietly walk to his office at the other end of the ball court and sit down. Out of my good ear, I can hear him yelling at the bully about how many times he told him to leave people alone. A few moments later the bell rings and everyone goes to lunch and I wait for coach to come and take me to the principals office. I’m doing my best to calm down, when he comes to his office. He has a pen light in his hand and while he assesses my ear and eye, calmly tells me that nothing is going to happen and that they had been full aware of this kids (mental) issue. I apologize to coach who only stops me to apologize for not being able to do anything other than tell the kid to stop and that he crossed the line and I acted accordingly. I wasn’t the only one he had messed with and he told me that had he been in my position, he would have been suspended by now for beating him up.
Not a word was said and I graduated the next week.”