I was a bit surprised when a fellow Christian author blogged about bullying recently. Not that he’d been bullied, no surprise there. It seems to me it’s one of those ubiquitous kid things like zits. And not that I’m making light of his experience. Far from it. I was hit by a car when I was a kid, damned near killed in fact, and grew up with no memory before the age of 7, a nasty limp and a damaged eye. Dealing with disability is the only life I’ve known, really. So I get being bullied, and all the condescending rubbish that goes with being ‘disabled’. The surprise comes because I always figured an unhappy childhood was a prerequisite for being a writer. (or a serial killer. fine line, there)
I mean what else jump starts a person’s defensive mechanism of escapism and fertilizes the imagination quite like being taunted, mocked, shunned, ignored? A nice layer of creative mulch, that festering rotten crap. And who else can lay it on quite as stinky and thick in those crucial formative years as the jocks, teacher’s pets, and cheerleaders?
Forward is the only direction God has given us though, and I’ve learned over the years it’s not what you can’t do that counts; it’s what you can do. So decades later not only am I still married to the same beautiful woman after 29 years, have three great kids and three wonderful grandchildren, but when I’m not doing stained glass work, I get to write stories. Stories that people buy and read. Some of these readers even enjoy my stories and come back for more.
So thank you, schoolyard bullies, for forcing me to take that ‘less-traveled’ path, for laying the groundwork to my spec-fiction projects. It’s working, thank God. And you know what the really beautiful thing is?
I don’t remember your names.
Have a great day.
Something for the bullied and the bullies
Hot Space Station Justice 
“It’s not what you can’t do that counts; it’s what you can do.”
That is a great way of looking at things. And I don’t think I remember any of my bullies’ names either.