Authors: Patrick Connolly
My struggle for many years to “turn fear into anger” is still with me more than fifty years later. In addition, there are certain, mostly uneducated men that are still trying desperately to assure themselves that they are “real men”. With age comes the greying of hair and other signs of the aging process. The male machismo oriented insecure uneducated adult may interpret these signs as indications of weakness.
This senior citizen, in recent years, has had, after fifty years of nonviolence, three separate incidents of threatened violence. The reaction of this much older child was the same as it would have been when he was fifteen. In each case, the bullies backed down because they knew they were going to suffer pain if they did not. Bullies are always cowards, no matter what their age, family or not.
I would have preferred not to have those experiences with bullying for ten years as a child. If my Mother or other family members had interceded with the bullying before I arrived in my teens, I possibly would not have had to live with the results of this lifetime impact on my mental attitudes and personality. You as a parent, teacher, bully or victim of bullying, now know better.
The End