THE subject of bullying commands a vast amount of analysis and theory in the field of psychology. This is especially true in serious societies.

Many of the victims of bullying have turned to tragic avenues of escape, such as the recent case at St Stephen’s College. Some victims of bullying have sought revenge as famously observed in mass school shootings in the USA.

I was a victim of severe bullying in my first year of secondary school, circa 1968/69. I learned a tremendous lesson from the experience.

I was a 12-year-old on a Common Entrance scholarship, serious about school, minding my business and being friendly to all. For no reason known to me, I would be slapped, ‘tapped’ and kicked by a particular Form Four student whenever I was in the big yard. This started within weeks of the start of school.

He was big and fearsome looking. I remember the size of his arms in comparison to me being so skinny. It was not unusual for him to walk through a crowd and hit me or walk up behind me and slap me on the back of my head.

My parents told me to stay away from him and he would forget me. That did not work.

About six weeks after the start of school, in obligatory Friday lunchtime mass, he came in and sat behind me and began hitting me on both ears with a ruler. On returning from communion, I sat behind him and asked him to stop what he was doing. He must have been offended because as I exited the church, he jumped out from behind the door and began punching me with closed fists, mainly to my face and head.

I literally saw ‘stars’ and flashes of light until I was pulled away by a Form One classmate from Belmont, known only to me by his surname Claverie (as we all were). Dazed and bleeding from my nose and mouth, he walked me to a pipe in the yard and began washing my face and helped me to stop the blood.

‘Aboud,’ he said, ‘you know why he keeps doing you that?’

‘No’ I replied. ‘He does that because he never got a good cut-arse,’ was what Claverie told me.

One month later, the bully picked on a Venezuelan boy. The Venezuelan challenged him to meet in Lord Harris Square after school. There, the Venezuelan boy properly cut his tail and ended by holding him in a headlock, from which the bully had to beg for release in front of a crowd of schoolboys.

That Form Four boy never bullied me after that.

I have seen it often, especially in the world of business and in personal matters, that bullies change their behaviour after a good licking-whether physical, financial or legal.

Gregory Aboud Port of Spain