This is a paper that I wrote in school a few years back. I still find it to be relevant.

Section I.  What I Know, Assume, or Imagine

            I often imagine myself as a superhero. Not the type that can fly, or run fast, or even have x-ray vision. No, I am the type of superhero who gets the job done. If there is a problem at my house, my line is, ‘I will handle it.’ If there is an issue at work, my co-workers generally call out to me for help. When I first got my job, I loved every moment of it. I woke up early every single day, tingling with excitement about the new things that I was going to create, and the people that I would get to meet and help that day. Time would simply fly by each day, and before I knew it, it was time to go home. For six months, I would lay awake hours before my alarm would go off, wishing that I could go to work at that very moment, wondering what was around the next corner for me in my life, and knowing that I was finally on the right path.

            Around three months ago, however, I began to notice that while I was still waking up early each morning, I no longer felt the pull of work. The excitement that I used to feel was replaced by a gnawing dread that sometimes became so severe that by the time I got to work, I was physically ill. The happiness that I felt at creating new databases and records was now a malaise, and time seemed to slow to a crippled snail’s crawl. I began to look for a way out, a new beginning, a way to staunch the bleeding out of my career. I did not know where I wanted to go to, nor did I care. I just knew that wherever it was, it could no longer be there.

            What caused this drastic change of moods within me, and how did it turn something that I loved so dearly into something that I now vehemently despise? Quite simply, my boss became a bully. At some point in the last three months, I fell out of favor with her for some unknown reason, and now I am the invisible man. When I began working in the office, I was initially given a cubicle, which may not mean much to others, but to me, it meant I had a place of my own at work, a private area. My workspace was mine, and after years of working in open environments where everyone was elbow to elbow, it was something I cherished. Three months ago, with no rhyme or reason, I was moved from this cubicle to an open desk directly in front of my bosses’ desk. She can literally look out of her door and see what I am typing on my computer.

            With the move to a new desk that was in closer proximity to her, however, came some new developments in terms of my relationship with her. I was now persona non grata. She would enter the office and loudly say a personalized good morning to everyone in the office, with the exception of me. Her office, as she had advised us earlier in the year, had an ‘Open Door Policy,’ meaning that if we needed to talk to her, we could just walk in. This still stood for everyone in the office, again, with the exception of me. I had to make appointments to talk to her, and when I did make an appointment, I never got a chance to speak. I was simply harassed and harangued by her for the extent of the appointment.

            How did this happen? How did a superhero like me come under such heavy fire by my boss? What did I do to cause this? Was there anything that I could have done or not done to avoid this issue? I had not been accosted by a bully since I was in 6^th grade and got jumped by a group of them simply for getting an “A” on my math test. I was in a foreign land. I needed help.

            When we were assigned this paper, I was actually leaning strongly towards discussing the overcrowding of California prisons. But given this situation, I realized that I need to learn more about what bullying is, and what causes the bully to act the way they do. To me, a bully has always been classified as a bigger kid, usually (at least in my imagination) chubby, with freckles and red hair, who may or may not have a tattoo of an anchor on his arm. Wet willies and Indian burns fall from the sky like manna whenever he comes near to you, and wedgies, dead arms, and teasing are all part of his illustrious repertoire. By doing research on this subject, I hope to not only truly find out what makes a bully tick, but hopefully, how to disarm one. I want to find out if bullies are genetically predisposed to be antagonists, or if they learn it through experiences in their lives. I need to know if there is a way to defuse a bully once they have set you apart as a target, and if there is a reason why they choose certain people as their targets. I have a burning, desperate desire to classify bullies, because they are not all redheaded freckle-faced weightlifters named Bruno. Sometimes, they are an authority figure who controls your destiny.

Section II.  The Search

            If I was going to know bullies, I needed the most up-to-date information available. I went directly to the internet, utilizing Google.com for the majority of my information. Although I have extensive practice in using Google, I was unsure what type of information would be available in a field such as this. After all, who really would post a website about being bullied? Who would want their dirty laundry to be aired in such a manner?

            Apparently, about 5,750,000 people would. From their search engine, I was able to glean a plethora of research material, much of which I was then able to include in my findings section. I was also surprised at what information I found, as there were topics that ranged from bullies at school and bullies in the workplace, to girl bullies. I initially planned to take a few sources from a few sites, and glean a paper from the information that they gave me. Instead, I found myself with all the information that I needed and more. I even was able to procure information about cyber-bullying, which interested me as well, because I play video games online, and the issue of cyber-bullying, or ‘griefing’ as it is called online, is one that I frequently encounter. I also spoke with Jeanne Crudup, MA, who is a family counselor with a specialty in children. She advised me of some of the different things that a bully looks for in a target. While doing my research, I found that the biggest issue I encountered was that there was, quite possibly, too much information for me to utilize. I agonized for a few days before deciding what could, and could not be included in my paper. It is my hope that the decisions that I made turn out to be the right ones, and form a cohesive, informative paper.

Section III.  What I Discovered

            So what is a bully? According to Dictionary.com, a bully is defined as “a blustering, quarrelsome, overbearing person who habitually badgers and intimidates smaller or weaker people” (Dictionary.com). To put it succinctly, a bully is a person whose constant desire in life is to exact pain upon another person, whether it be mental or physical. Bullies, it seems, come in all shapes and sizes, but the majority of bullies tend to be male, as do the greater part of their victims. It was noted by Dr. Laura DeHaan, PHD that 20 percent of American children have been the victim of bullying at some point in elementary school, and about the same number have described themselves as engaging in some form of bullying behavior (DeHaan). By the time that a student reaches the second grade, they are at risk of running into a bully. Dr. DeHaan stated that ‘Being a victim is the most common in second grade, and the likelihood of being bullied decreases each year after that… Boys are more likely to be doing the bullying, but girls and boys are equally likely to be victims’ (DeHaan). So if an attack by a bully is at its apex in the second grade of school, then it can only be assumed that a bully must be born, not bred into such a violent existence, because how else can a person become so mean so quickly? Dr. DeHaan mentioned many varying reasons for bullying, but the one that stuck out to me the most was that parental relationships contribute mightily to a child’s progression. On her website, Dr. DeHaan had this to say in regards to the correlation between the lack of family relationships and the nurturing of a bully:

Bullies tend to come from families that are characterized as having little warmth or affection. These families also report trouble sharing their feelings and usually rate themselves as feeling less close to each other. Parent of bullies also tend to use inconsistent discipline and little monitoring of where their children are throughout the day. Sometimes parents of bullies have very punitive and rigid discipline styles, with physical punishment being very common. Bullies also report less feelings of closeness to their siblings (DeHaan).

            That information startled me, because as a parent, I often feel that I need to ensure that discipline is maintained within my home to keep order. I am not stating by any stretch of the imagination that my wife and I are abusive to our children, far from it, but it still makes me wonder. I utilize discipline to keep my children away from trouble, but according to Dr. DeHaan, some children become bullies due to “rigid discipline” (DeHaan). So it seems to me that either way you look at it, whether you are a smothering soccer mom, or an absentee parent who only stops by the house long enough to put a TV dinner into the microwave on your way to Bingo night, it does not matter. A bully is going to thrive in whatever environment that their parents place them in.

According to Science Daily.com, bullying can be inherited through your genes. They did a study of 1,500 Swedish and British twins, and among their final results was this: “Combined aggressive and non-aggressive behavior is frequent in both boys and girls. In boys it is related mainly to environment effects that influence both kinds of behavior, whereas in girls the combined behaviors appear related primarily to genetic factors” (Science Daily.com).

That fact lends more to my pre-conceived notions that bullies are born, not bred. After all, it would be easy to assume that if a bully is bred into an environment, then once they depart from that environment, the desire to be a bully would dissipate as they interact with different people. But if that were the case, then there would not be nearly as many cases of people dealing with bullies late into their adult lives. If that were true, then Billy Wolfe would be able to enjoy high school.

Who is Billy Wolfe, you ask? Billy is now a junior in high school in Fayetteville, Arkansas. Billy Wolfe was featured in a New York Times article written by Dan Barry on March 24, 2008 because he has been getting bullied since the age of 12. The problem is not just that he is getting bullied; the problem is that he is getting bullied by multiple people. The article begins with a boy videotaping Billy getting beat up, and it soon took the shape of a recap of a boxing program:

It began years ago when a boy called the house and asked Billy if he wanted to buy a certain sex toy, heh-heh. Billy told his mother, who informed the boy’s mother. The next day the boy showed Billy a list with the names of 20 boys who wanted to beat Billy up. Ms. Wolfe says she and her husband knew it was coming. She says they tried to warn school officials — and then bam: the prank caller beat up Billy in the bathroom of McNair Middle School.

Not long after, a boy on the school bus pummeled Billy, but somehow Billy was the one suspended, despite his pleas that the bus’s security camera would prove his innocence. Days later, Ms. Wolfe recalls, the principal summoned her, presented a box of tissues, and played the bus video that clearly showed Billy was telling the truth (Barry).

The article goes on to recount the myriad of ways that Billy had been accosted. In junior high, he got sucker-punched so hard that ‘he lost consciousness.’  However, to me, the saddest part of that story was the school’s reaction, who did not take any action.  Ms. Wolfe, Billy’s mom, recounted to the Times how a school official refused to call the police saying it looked like Billy got what he deserved (Barry). Now I realize that that statement may have been a bias by his mother, who may have been hearing what she wanted to hear, but it does lend to the thought that bullies generally thrive when there is no discipline delivered by an authority figure, or when the people who witness the act do not speak up. However, if no one ever chooses to speak up or discipline the bully at an early age, chances are that they will continue to bully people as they grow up, which will eventually lead to being a bully in the workplace.

It seems like workplace bullying has been happening since the dawn of time. It was a large part of George McFly’s demeanor in ‘Back to the Future.’ It was the entire plot of the Rick Moranis canon, ‘Big Bully.’ In every office in every city in every state in every country in every continent around the world, there is a bully. In fact, in ‘Get Rid of Bullies in the Workplace, an article written by Anita Bruzzese in USA Today, it is quoted as an ‘epidemic.’ "Bullying is a silent epidemic that affects one in six workers," says Gary Namie, a psychology professor at Western Washington University. "It is witnessed by nearly 80% of workers, who don't do anything about it. It's a dirty little secret" (qtd. in Bruzzese). A workplace bully does not do the same malicious bullying that they did as a youth. A workplace bully is more of a psychological abuser. According to the Workplace Bullying Institution, workplace bullying takes one of the three following forms:

• Verbal abuse
• Offensive conduct/behaviors (including nonverbal) which are threatening, humiliating or intimidating

• Work interference -- sabotage -- which prevents work from getting done (Namie).

When the bully was in elementary school, there was the chance that a teacher or an adult would see what they were doing and discipline them. When they become adults, though, there is generally no stopping them. Why? The reasons are many, but the Workplace Bullying Institution notes that ‘Bullying is mostly legal. Employers can ignore it with little risk. However, it is four times more prevalent than illegal status-based (or grounds-based) discrimination’ (Namie). So if the attack is not going to be stopped, and 49% of workers have seen or experienced it, but do nothing to assist the victim, what can be done to cope in an environment such as that? My tactic is simply to keep my head in my work, never looking up or drawing attention to myself. I also try to make sure that I am never in a room alone with my boss, as that seems to be the green light for her to release her ire on me. I am sure that I could get plenty of tips from a random person on the street, though, because during the Workplace Bullying Institution’s extensive study, they found that an astonishing 73% of bullies are bosses (Namie).

            My health has never been in question. I can count on one hand the amount of times that I have been sick. I guess it is a given, after all, I am a superhero. However, in the past few months, I have found myself becoming increasingly slowed down by illnesses. Oh, they are never anything truly serious, but the fact that I have been getting sick more and more lately led me to wonder what caused my health to so quickly deteriorate. As surprising as it may seem, my boss may be the direct cause. In ‘Get Rid of Bullies in the Workplace, Gary Namie says that studies show that some 41% of those who are bullied are diagnosed with depression; more than 80% said it keeps them from being productive because of severe anxiety, lost concentration and sleeplessness; and 31% of women and 21% of men suffer post-traumatic stress disorder (Namie). These are all issues that will lead to a lowered immune system, which would cause illnesses to affect the body easier.    

            I liked it better when the bullies were easily classified. Red-headed Bruno never left my mind as the archetype of a bully, even when I was jumped by kids who looked nothing like my imaginary adversary. Now I see that not only do I not know what my opponent looks like, but as an adult, the majority of time, my adversary is going to be someone I cannot do anything against, or do anything about. Even when I am at home, I have to deal with bullies. I do not mean my wife, or anyone else in my family. I mean people who conspire to ruin my recreational time, people who go out of their way to make sure that my time spent doing my hobby, playing video games, is as miserable as humanly possible.

            With the invention of the internet, the reach of bullies is now unmatched. Cyber bullying is defined on Wikipedia.com as ‘the use of information and communication technologies to support deliberate, repeated, and hostile behavior by an individual or group, which is intended to harm others.’(Wikipedia) These behaviors are often seen in message boards and online social networking sites such as MySpace.com and Facebook.com, most notably in the case of Megan Meier. Fox News.com reported that in 2006, Meier, a 13-year-old girl who suffered from depression and attention deficit disorder, was led to believe that she had befriended a young man online by the name of Josh, was heartbroken when he stopped talking to her. She committed suicide the next day (Associated Press). Josh, however, was a fictional character created by Lori Drew, Meier’s ex-best friend’s mother. In an update of the original story, Mrs. Drew was revealed to have conspired with her daughter and her 18-year-old assistant to ‘cause emotional distress’ to Meier. The case was heard by a jury earlier this year (Associated Press 2).

            I tend to not frequent those sites after a hacker got my password, broke into my system, and started sending mean messages to my friends. But I do play online video games, and in that realm, the bullies are known as ‘griefers’. Griefers are defined on Wikipedia.org as ‘a player who plays a game simply to aggravate and harass other players’(Wikipedia). When I play an online game, whether it be on my Xbox 360, on my PC, or on other means of gaming, there is always a person in the room who is either spewing racial slurs, killing their own teammates, taking all of the items before their teammate can get to them, and quitting a game, leaving one team short-handed. This group may not seem like a bully in the normal sense, but these folks are not just going online with intent to cause people to stop playing games. They also go online with the intent to cause harm. Kevin Poulsen wrote a story for Wired Magazine on March 28, 2008 about a group of griefers who took their hobby to a new low:

Internet griefers descended on an epilepsy support message board last weekend and used JavaScript code and flashing computer animation to trigger migraine headaches and seizures in some users… The attackers turned to a more effective tactic on Sunday, injecting JavaScript into some posts that redirected users' browsers to a page with a more complex image designed to trigger seizures in both photosensitive and pattern-sensitive epileptics. RyAnne Fultz, a 33-year-old woman who suffers from pattern-sensitive epilepsy, says she clicked on a forum post with a legitimate-sounding title on Sunday. Her browser window resized to fill her screen, which was then taken over by a pattern of squares rapidly flashing in different colors. Fultz says she "locked up." "I don't fall over and convulse, but it hurts," says Fultz, an IT worker in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. "I was on the phone when it happened, and I couldn't move and couldn't speak" ( qtd. in Poulsen). After about 10 seconds, Fultz's 11-year-old son came over and drew her gaze away from the computer, then killed the browser process, she says (Poulsen).

            As a superhero, sometimes it gets difficult to determine who the true villain is. But it is widely understood that the bully is a dastardly person. As I mentioned earlier, there are conflicting reports about who makes them that way. What I do know, without a shadow of a doubt, is that bullies have progressed from the schoolyard, to the executive board, to the message boards, wreaking havoc and pain everywhere they go. In this situation, we know who the villain is. The question is do we want to endure their constant derision, or do we want to overcome it?

            I interviewed Ms. Jeanne Crudup, MA, about bullies, but to be more specific, I talked with her about their targets, both as a youth and as an adult. She advised me that bullies do not always go after the smart child, or the hardest working adult. Bullies generally pick on a child for reasons such as looking different, or for being popular. She also mentioned that bullies sometimes target those who will not join their group, or break away from their group. Sometimes, she said, bullies would go after reformed bullies, bullies that stopped bullying others. If you have a tendency to have people come to you with questions, or show you a respect that the bully feels should be theirs, she warned, the bully may target you. If you have a creative flair, or walk against the grain, you may be targeted. Above all else, Ms. Crudup told me that if you are the type of person that is a hot head, bullies will flock to you like bugs to a light. “Once they know that they can get a rise out of you, that is it, “she said. “They will harass you until you fight back, tell, or move, and as long as you have that tendency to blow up easily, the target will stay with you” (Crudup interview).

            My research took me to a lot of places that I did not want to go back to. I was reminded of when I was a kid and got hit by a flying bottle thrown at me by a bully. I remember when I was six-years-old and got beat up by a kid named ‘Tarzan’. I was reminded of when a child poured milk into my Hawaiian Punch, and when the same child spit in my food. I still remember all of these repressed things, and I wonder; what do I need to do to make sure that my kids do not go through this?

I am still looking for the research paper that addresses that.   

Word Count: 3,995
                                                                Works Cited

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Associated Press. "Mom: MySpace Hoax Led to Daughter's Suicide." FoxNews.Com. 16 Nov. 2007. Fox News. 29 Nov. 2008 a href="http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,312018,00.html%3E">http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,312018,00.html>;.

Barry, Dan. "A Boy the Bullies Love to Beat Up, Repeatedly." New York Times. 24 Mar. 2008.29 Nov. 2008 a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/24/us/24land.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1%3E">http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/24/us/24land.html?pagewanted=1&_...;.

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Center For the Advancement of Health, ed. "Bullying Behavior: Blame it on Bad Genes?" Science Daily. 10 Mar. 1999. 29 Nov. 2008 a href="http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1999/03/990310053751.htm%3E">http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1999/03/990310053751.htm>;.

Crudup, MA, Jeanne H. "Interview About Bullies." Telephone interview. 29 Nov. 2008.

"Cyber-Bullying." Wikipedia.org. 29 Nov. 2008 a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/cyber-bullying%3E">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/cyber-bullying>;.

DeHaan, PHD, Laura, ed. "Bullies." Bullies. Feb. 1997. 29 Nov. 2008 a href="http://www.ag.ndsu.edu/pubs/yf/famsci/fs570w.htm%3E">http://www.ag.ndsu.edu/pubs/yf/famsci/fs570w.htm>;.

"Griefers." Wikipedia.org. 29 Nov. 2008 a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/griefers%3E">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/griefers>;.

Namie, Dr. Ruth, and Dr. Gary Namie, eds. "The Workplace Bullying Institute's Definition of the Phenomenon." Workplace Bullying Institute. 2002. Workplace Bullying Institute. 29 Nov. 2008 http://www.bullyinginstitute.org/education/bbstudies/def.html.

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Rashanii is the host of Single Simulcast and Sin and Solace. You can listen to both at http://www.singlesimulcast.com and on iTunes and Stitcher Radio