How Anonymous Stopped Bullies
By Anonymous on Jun 20, 2010 in Self-Defense for Kids, Stop School Bullies
Sensei,
If you don’t mind, I am e-mailing my bully stories directly because I don’t know if you would want to tell a child to do what I did when I was a child. I would prefer that my name NOT be attached to any of this text.
As an adult, the worst bullies I’ve had to deal with did not come physical, they bullied with words. A harsh word hear, a slur there, unfair assignments, insinuations, attempts at destroying my repuation, all things that a roundhouse kick and a kiai cannot handle. In the end, I have handled people by falling back on the Bible and preservering. Remaining calm and never allowing myself to wallow in despair for very long. Staying focussed on whatever I want to accomplish for my family. If anything came from martial arts, it would be Taekwondo’s tenents of Preservance and Indominable Spirit. One recent bully I try conquered with preserverance and indominable spirit, to the point that she lost it in the workplace and tarnished her own reputation worse than she tried to ruin mine and others. It took Christ-like compassion and forgiveness on my part. I wish I had that when I was a boy and a teenager.
On to childhood: training in martial arts ultimately allowed me to handle child bullies. I was actually trained in Taekwondo and Judo, but was too young to consciously remember the Judo training (I was 4 years old). I had no dan rankings until I was 33, and my training had ridiculously long breaks since a child cannot control what classes he can attend, and a young man in his 20s is more interested in a cute woman than in Nage No Kata. So as a child, I handled bullies, but, at great injury to some of them. This is why I am letting you sift through these and only pass on advice that you think won’t land a child in juvie. I never went to juvie, but that was also the 1970s and 1980s in Southern Maryland, a place where they felt if you started it and it was one-on-one, well, if you lost, you just lost. End of story.
1) Rock throwing bully: I was 8, he was 9 or 10. He called me the n-word, called other kids various names, threw rocks at us. I ignored it, until he hit one of the girls with a rock. He was with a group. We sat on some monkey bars. I grabbed the rock out of the air that he threw at us and threw it back at him. After I jumped down on the ground, his group ran, leaving him alone. He ran into the woods. I chased him into the woods. I was a slow fat kid, but, being from the country, I knew how to run in the woods without tripping. He didn’t. That allowed me to chase him into an environment where I could fight and he could not because he kept falling. Poor bastard. I did an osoto gari to soften him up, and te-garuma on him, which ended up seperating his shoulder. Or was it two te-garumas? Or just one?
2) Closet bully: I was 8. He heard what I did to rock throwing bully, I think. He tried to fight me in a coat closet. Using a series of front kicks and attack punches from Taekwondo, I beat him into a corner. And left him laying under a pile of raincoats. The teacher found him. Yes, I was suspended for three days. Granted, he didn’t bother me again, but that story followed me across county lines and into high school. And it still did not discourage others.
3) High school jail bound bullies: I’m grouping all of these into one. These were teenagers who were pretty much on their way to jail and wanted to take other people with them. I beat them by literally beating them in fist fights. I ended up with a sore jaw and a sore hand. The simple moves that you learn up to green belt in Taekwondo and Judo are what I used—because that’s all I knew. The only thing that stopped them was their eventually going to jail. One guy I beat because I did a heel trip. He struck his head on the pavement and while the onlookers thought I was hitting him to be mean, I was actually trying to revive him. If you have ever seen anybody’s eyes roll up to the back of their head because of something you did, you know that sinking feeling. Another one my mother said I was killing with the roundhouse kicks to the chest, so she jumped in front of me and hit him with a stick. But all in all, violence only lead to more violence.
Yes, I did defend myself.
4) Abductor: this was a man who tried to kidnap me when I walked a country road alone at 15 years old. He tried to get out of the car to “talk to me” as he said. I did not buy it. I moved away and I threw rocks at him. Nothing. The rocks bounced right off of him. I yelled. Nothing. He kept coming. When I went into my TKD fighting stance, he got scared. He froze and backed up. He was AFRAID. I would have never though I could scare someone that much bigger than me. And because he froze, he was there long enough for three men to pull over on the side of the road and run to my aid. Abductor managed to escape. If there is any wisdom, it is that a 15 year old boy, no matter how big he is, cannot walk a road alone. Some violent homo-pedophile will try to rape him. Last year, I managed to return the favor by saving a 16 year old from the same fate. He came to me when I was jogging because some adult man was trying to kidnap him. The man saw me
and drove off. I walked with him, called some cops and left him in their care.
5)Down the steps: We were at a school. This one thought he could box. I was 12, he was 13. He tried to fight me. And there were steps behind him. And I shoved him down the steps. And yes, I got suspended.
6) I was the bully: 11 years old. I don’t even know how this one started, but, I was arguing with a guy about a jacket or something or other. Since I wore a hood, he grabbed me by the back of the hood when I went to attack him and punched me in the face. Repeatedly. It was bad. I had no chance. Turns out, his dad taught him Boxing and Wrestling. We actually ended up being friends after that, and are friends to this day. He also showed me some wrestling moves and kick boxing until I got to be better at the wrestling than he was. I would say he showed me the importance of keeping a calm head because the one time I lost it, I ended up losing the fight. He also is a good example of a gentleman fighter. Never did he ever have braggado or a big head. Always was and is one of the most humble people I have ever known. If there are any tactics a kid could use from this, I’d say this: use the bully’s clothing as a weapon if possible. Get his head
lower than his hips and you can control the bully. Keep calm if at all possible and do not stay in the line of his attack.
7) Bullies needing medication: These were people who attacked me as an adult. I am assuming that all of them needed medication, because I know that one of them definitely was not on his meds. With them, I parried, blocked, circled until they got tired. Once they exhausted themselves, I firmly but politely stated whatever position or opinion I had that they disagreed with. I learned this tactic from yet another martial artist who beat me in a fight—albeit a friendly fight. He took on three of us. He showed me, though I didn’t know it at the time, the principles of parrying, stickyhands blocking, avoiding, softness—with Taekwondo techniques. He told me one thing afterwards: keep taking classes and learn kata/forms/poomse/tuls/patterns. He felt that if I kept studying, I’d eventually get to where he was. I still don’t think I have, but, I have been able to duplicate his counters on the untrained without hurting them and without landing me in
court! If there is anything a kid could learn, it would be to get in class and stay there. Take lessons. And don’t just stay with one type: go, say, Boxing then Karate then Wrestling, or Taekwondo then Judo then Hapkido, or Kungfu then TaiChi then Jujitsu. Etc. Etc.
This is all I can think of for now. If I can think of any more useful information, I will pass it on.
Sincerely,
Dear sir;
I’m not only emailing you, but I’m going to copy this email into the comments section of your submission http://martialarts808.com/BullyBlog/2010/06/20/how-anonymous-stopped-bullies/
My opinion as to your courage as a child to stop innocent children from being traumatized by bullies as well as defending yourself may not be a popular one amongst the let’s all just try to understand bullies and hug them crowd, but I believe it to be popular among parents of innocent children.
I give both you and your actions my compliments. Even chasing down the bully into the woods may not have been done as an adult, but you still showed courage in doing so. As far as you getting upset and attacking the other student, that was not bullying that was a fair fight amongst kids. Bullying is mental and physical intimidation of a person in a weaker position of defense.
Let me also state, yes I want bullies to seek counseling and to improve their situation to become the best person they can be, but not at the expense of my child nor anyone elses. If a bully must be physically taken down in a legal self-defense manner in order to save an innocent child or adult then so be it
Rick
admin | Jun 20, 2010 | Reply
Thank you for the advice! I?ll try it out.
Antione Grasha | Jul 30, 2010 | Reply
Great to find out you back. And again having an interesting posting.
Sheldon Oriti | Aug 5, 2010 | Reply