I’m glad it helped and I thank you for taking the time to let me know that.

If you can download Skype (free internet telephone), I’d love to interview you for a podcast and see what comes during the conversation. Your articulate comment makes me suspect you might be a powerful voice in helping others. You can click “email me” in my sidebar if this idea interests you. We can keep you anonymous if you want it that way.

Much respect,

Clay

Anyways, this story was very interesting indeed. Thanks a lot for sharing. It helped substantially.

“I was bullied for two years in high school. Every day,” writes Clay Burrell [sic]. “But this story does things differently. It’s to the bullied. It tells them that, for me, over 700 consecutive days of bullying in high school was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. It just took me a couple decades to realize that.” I’m glad Burrell [sic] got past being bullied. I’m happy for him. But his perspective is simply wrong. Being bullied is not a good thing. It’s not something students should simply have to tolerate. It’s not - as Rick Mercer says in his video - enough to say that high school is the worst their lives will get. Because, for people who are bullied, it might not be - it might just be the kick-off to years of fears, depression and anxiety. I’m really glad things worked out for Burrell [sic]. But he must not fall into the fallacy of thinking that every bullied student can just pull himself up by his bootstraps.

My reply:

Stephen, you mis-represent my argument here by a surprisingly wide mark.

I don’t, as you imply, argue against the attempts by others to address the bullies. Nor, if you listen to the actual story, will you hear me advise that it’s something the bullied must “learn to tolerate.”

Nor do I commit the fallacy of saying “every” bullied student can do anything.

I told a story of my own experience. Call it a worst-case scenario story: school did nothing, teachers did nothing, students did nothing to stop it (maybe this is actually, in the real world, a typical scenario, actually?). But the experience was a wind onto a sea this ship might not otherwise have sailed.

Granted, “the best thing” as written above, on reflection, invites the arched eyebrow. At the same time, though, that doesn’t mean it’s not true.

I could have very easily ended up the popular football player in high school and college, and walked the road most traveled by.

I truly am thankful that did not happen.

Like war, bullying is an emotional subject for even the most logical types, so I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised by your reaction; but like war also, simply demanding that bullying must stop does little for the victims of it living and breathing as I type.

Something tells me they’d get more hope from a simple “I’ve been there, and it was hard, but things turned out all right” than from a million “End Bullying” public service announcements.

The nice thing is, though, we care enough about this issue to disagree about it. And that I have no problems with.

Hope you’re well, Stephen.