BULLIES

  Occasionally I will hear a PSA on radio about bullying and by the time it is finished I am usually pretty annoyed. I can't remember exactly how it goes but it runs something like this. It uses the voices of various male and female children. Today I learned a lot in school. I learned that I am fat, I am ugly, that I smell, that I am disgusting etcetera, etcetera. Then the commercial ends with a child saying the only thing I didn't learn in school today is why no one helps. I always want to tell the kids in this commercial to quit your whining, buy a helmet and suck it up buttercup. I learned this lesson the hard way, no one can end bullying but you. Not your parents, your teachers, or the school principal. You have to learn how to stand up to a bully on your own. When you get a job and work in the real world is your boss going to be able to protect you from a co-worker who is a bully? What if your boss is a bully?

  I grew up a spoiled and sheltered child. My mother taught me to avoid fighting if I could. She said that fighting did not make you a man. I can still agree with that, but like the Kenny Rogers song, Coward of the County say's, "Sometimes you have to fight to be a man". As a child I was a coward. I freely admit it. My life changed when I was orphaned at the age of 12 and I no longer had my parents to run to. At 14 a bully walked up to me in school and for no reason punched me in the face. Shocked, I just stood there and did nothing. Around the same age I was playing a pin ball machine at the State Fair when I suddenly realized that I was surrounded by a group of teenage thugs. I tried to to ignore them until one punk leaned close to my ear and said, "F_ _ k  you". I did a Pee Wee Herman exit and eased on out through the crowd. Letting them have the rest of my game and the pin ball machine to themselves. 

 I am an old man now and I still cringe when I think of the times that I backed down to bullies. The next time I had to deal with a bully I put him on the floor with one punch and I was shocked at how easy it was and how good I felt afterward. When I was stationed at N.O.R.A.D. in Colorado Springs I was promoted to SSgt just after my arrival there. Several men in my unit had as much time in grade as I did but they were still E-4's. One big Polish guy was resentful of my promotion. Being promoted made me the Assistant Flight Chief which meant that I was his supervisor. He wasn't as tall as I was but he was a big man, barrel chested with a low center of gravity. We got along well prior to my promotion but then the bullying started afterwards. He would make threatening remarks or bump into me as we passed each other. As a supervisor, and as a man, I had to do something because I knew that I would lose the respect of my men. One day we were passing each other through a doorway and he bumped into me pretty hard. He looked at me and said "Segroves, one of these days I'm going to sniper your ass".  There were several of my men watching and I calmly unhooked my gun belt and placed it on a chair. We were both Air Force Security Policemen and were both armed. I squared off, looking him straight in the eyes. "You take that gun off, and we will settle this thing right here, man to man". If he had taken me up on my challenge we could have both been brought up on charges for fighting but this had to stop. He glared at me for a few seconds and finally, with a sheepish grin said, "Aw Segroves, I'm just playing with you". After that I had no more problems with him. I got some sweet revenge a few days later. We would all go to a local city park and play tackle football without helmets or pads. I received a kick-off and was running as fast as I could go down the sidelines when he tried to tackle me. I just ran right over him as if he wasn't there. These were rough games. One day I was going up for a pass. The last thing I remember was catching the ball. When I woke up I was sitting on the ground with a bunch of guys standing around me. I had been knocked out cold and for about an hour I barely knew who I was. . 

  There are various ways to stand up to a bully without having to fight. We encounter employers, teachers, customers, bureaucrats, politicians and many others that are bullies in our everyday life. I have only had one real physical fight in my life. As a security officer I still run into thugs and bullies on occasion. Whenever someone tries to bully me it just makes me that much more determined to stand my ground. My fear is that we are becoming a nation of wimps. There is a "woosification" of society going on today that will one day come back to haunt us. Many boys are not raised to be men anymore. If we don't stop this cancer of political correctness we will become a defeatist nation. The left will have what they want. A nation full of sheep. One reason that people like Donald Trump is that he stands up to the leftist bullies in the press and on the left. When attacked, he defends himself. Some might argue that there are bullies out there that are dangerous and too formidable to handle on our own. They can kill or maim us and I would agree. Yet there is a fate worse than death. A life without honor. 

 As a writer I speak out about the many wrongs in society. These days, as we have seen, it can be tough speaking your mind. The PC crowd bully people that speak out. Calling them a variety of hateful names in order to silence them. Names like homophobe, bigot, nativist, racist, sexist, and Islamophobe. Speaking out about radical Islam can get you killed, as we have seen in the case of those in France who were writers for the satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo. They died because they drew cartoons of Mohammad. You can be ostracized in public just for wearing a MAGA hat or a Trump tee shirt. I don't own a MAGA hat but I have two Trump tee shirts and I wear them proudly in public. I relish the thought of someone giving me a hard time for it. They will get a piece of my mind if it happens. 

 These Warsaw Jews fought to the last man and woman in the Warsaw Ghetto. They had to know that they were fighting a lost cause but they chose an honorable death standing up to the German bullies rather than meekly walking into their gas chambers like so many of their people had already done. These Warsaw Jews had the honor of dying on their feet rather than dying on their knees. At one time in my life I could not relate to Patrick Henry wanting to die rather than relinquishing his freedom but now I understand what he meant when he said, " Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?” Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!” It is not a stretch to say that one day sooner than we think, we might have to choose an honorable death standing up to government bullies who would dare to rob us of our freedoms.