I’m Sorry: An apology from an ex-bully

When I was younger I was beaten up rather regularly.  I was picked on because I was a nerd, I was the only guy who really seemed to enjoy being in the chorus, and I was a twin whose counterpart epitomized the stereotypical “cool guy” persona.

My twin brother was tough, and had a sharp tongue. He played football, ran cross country, was on the swimming team and the water-polo team, and played in the band all while holding down several long term serious girlfriends.  He was the guy every teenager emulated, whether consciously or not.

This is, obviously, not him. But he's cool too.

I was silly and over the top.  I was a mediocre student in as many advanced classes as I could take to show off my intellect. I was a choir-boy through and through, and until around age 13 I was the pushover nice-guy that gets picked on for being nice. But as I hit my teenage years, something changed:  I got bigger, very quickly, and grew from 5’ to 6’ in around 2 years. And then I started to pick on many of my friends, and became a passive aggressive type of bully.

I was like this before I got tall and bearded:  Nerdy and awkward.

I wasn’t a bully in the traditional sense:  I didn’t go out and find the smallest people I could, and I didn’t pick on the kids everyone was already ready to pick on.  I only picked on my long-term best friends. I found people in choir whose voices were better than mine in the tenor section (because a high voice usually meant they were embarrassed at how they sounded), and I mocked them for being too effeminate. I tried to become tougher by sarcastically putting everyone around me down. By the end of freshman year of high school I had ostracized some of my closest friends, gotten into trouble for stealing and fighting, and was a generally unpleasant little bastard. 

The long and complicated story that ends with me realizing I was a bully is too lengthy to put here, so I’ll give the shorthand version to save time.
1) I got a job, and found out that being tough didn’t mean crap if I wasn’t hard working.
2) My sister started dating more seriously, and I hated the guys who acted exactly like me.
3) My voice dropped further, and my new choir friends were all confident and strong.
4) Finally, I started seriously dating. One girl I dated had been abused by the men in her life.  Once I saw the actions of adult male bullies, I realized it was time to wise up.

Once all these things happened (between ages 13-15) I stopped being such a bully. I became the hard-working nice guy, I pulled up my grades, I joined clubs and started practicing martial arts, I helped tutor a few kids in my science classes, and I generally became a much more pleasant guy. But the thing I never truly did was apologize to the people I hurt in my youth. . 

I'm Sorry!

I'm sincerely sorry for being a jerk when I was a kid.

Bullies don’t often apologize.  We never have to because most of the adults in our lives know that a bully apologizing is about as sincere as O.J. Simpson’s book “If I Did It”. Even when we’re forced to apologize, we get away with a sarcastic or passive-aggressive apologies like “I’m sorry you annoyed me so much that I ended up hitting you” or “I’m SO SORRY I stole your lunch money to buy myself a second delicious cheeseburger while you sat crying in the nurse’s office.”

Today, though, I’d like to apologize on behalf of my younger teenage self. 

First, let me say that in the intervening years I’ve tried to be a better man.  I worked as a professional boy scout, am studying conservation and ecology to be of use to the rest of the world, am active in politics to try to help those who I think need protection and assistance, and I spent years of high school organizing and working with a homeless shelter to provide for victims of Hurricane Katrina as a part of my Boy Scout Eagle Scout project. In college I joined the ‘nice guy’ house and promoted anti-hazing and responsible partying on a campus where Greek organization hazing and binge drinking were the norm.  I’ve tried very hard to act in a moral manner in order to correct for my many teenage wrongs. 

Boy Scout Brian is Better Human Being Than Bully Brian

I still feel that I need to say I’m sorry.

I am so sorry that I was a weak and hateful little kid.  I picked on friends because I was too afraid to pick on strangers that I wasn’t sure would put up with my bullshit.  I am so incredibly ashamed of having made anyone feel bad about themselves and I didn’t deserve the friends who tolerated my crap and put up with me for YEARS of mistreatment and abuse.  I’m sorry that I tried to lord my intellect over others or my strength when I finally grew into being physically strong.  I’m sorry for teasing and mistreating you, and I’m sorry that anyone ever felt like I made their lives worse.  I’m sorry, personally, to the half dozen people I tormented even through our friendly interactions. We played games together and spent time together, and yes, I know that I was USUALLY mostly nice…but for every time that I broke the fun up with violence or teasing or mocking or perpetuating rumors, I’m sorry. You all deserved better, and even today deserve better than someone who took so long to apologize.  You were my best friends and I made you feel like crap.  So, I repeat and with every ounce of sincerity say:  I’m sorry.

No one should be the sort of bully I was.  No one should bully at all, but in particular those horrible bullies who pick on their own friends to save their own egos are especially pathetic and foul. I hope you can forgive my childhood weaknesses, and I hope that if any other bullies read this, they realize that their adult selves will not want them to keep perpetuating the bullying that feeds their weak egos.

This is normally a comedy blog, and today I’m not being funny at all.  I felt that today, it was time to make up for my past mistakes and admit I was a terrible snot-nosed young teenager. I wasn’t a bully before I hit the teenage years and I stopped being a bully before I learned to drive, so if that time frame reminds you of yourself or someone you know, realize that you or they are probably only a bully because you or they are a scared little snot.  Do the right thing, make amends to those you have hurt, and grow a pair of proverbial balls as you admit your mistakes.  You’ll never be a real adult until you can face the mistakes you made before becoming one.

The overused and childish phrase I was taught as a child was that “Bullies are big on the outside and small on the inside.”  It’s immature and simplistic, but it’s also accurate and insightful. It's time us ex-bullies or current bullies try to be bigger people, on the inside for once.

I’ll get back to being funny later this week in my next post.  For now, thank you for reading and pass this along to anyone who might need to take a gander at the admission of an ex-bully, whether they’re a bully themselves or if they have been victims of bullying.

Thanks for your time,

Brian, the Author Guy.

Feel free to check out my other relevant posts, such as “JerksFinish Last” and “For Alto to Bass:  How a Choir Boy Becomes a Mountain Man"