Elza (47): “I was really a bully. Why? Do you want an honest answer? I bullied because I was bored out of my mind at school. By shouting I brought commotion into the tent. “I remember, with a group of girls, bullying an overweight child. Ilona. We were about ten years old. One day we realized that Ilona smelled bad and was full of lice. We supposedly bumped into her in the schoolyard by chance and shouted at the top of our lungs: ‘Damn, it stinks in here! Who is that?’ And then look at Ilona falsely, pinch our noses, and run away. “We took her coat away. We then threw them to other children. If you hit someone with it, you shouted: ‘Ha, ha, now you have lice too, go take a shower.’ Ilona of course whines, and we laugh.
“Two years later, in eighth grade, I kind of became friends with Ilona. She was always home alone after school; her parents worked. I found it exciting to be in that empty house with her. There were cigarettes, her mother smoked. I smoked my first cigarette with Ilona. There were bottles of liquor. Smoking and drinking in secret – that’s how we pretended to be adults.
“We had serious conversations. She talked about how lonely she felt, as an only child, with a father who was rarely home due to work and a mother who was always tired and grumpy. I started to realize how mean it had been that we had bullied Ilona like that before. But I was ambivalent about that, I now realize. I didn’t include her in my group of friends. If I agree something with Ilona, then only with her. So I continued to keep my distance from her. I was afraid someone would say to me, ‘What? Are you hanging out with that bitch?’
“Fortunately, my own children have not been bullies. Not that I know of, at least; I have never received a complaint about that either. During their lessons, attention was paid to bullying behavior. In my time there was no attention paid to this at all. Of course, my children regularly said that they thought a classmate was ‘stupid’ or a ‘loser’. I was alert to that. Then I said: ‘You don’t have to be friends with every child, but you don’t start complaining about each other. Then you just play ten meters away.’
“I don’t think any child is born a bully. There’s more to it. For me, I think it was a form of attracting attention. I sat among children who obediently sat down to calculate, asked smart questions, and could draw nicely. I didn’t participate, I hated sitting still. Apparently I wanted to show: hello, I’m still here!
“That is my great frustration about my school days. I received obedience training there like a little dog. No one has ever asked me: why are you being so annoying? And I was too young to ask myself that.
“I still think that bullying behavior in children is viewed far too one-sidedly. The blame is placed on kids. The school is supposedly doing nothing wrong. I see it differently. You also have to deal with children who feel constantly bullied by all that school stuff.”
Elza’s full name is known to the editors.
Written by Gijsbert van Es