Bullying Vs. I Don't Like You!

In both FIREFLIES and CHURCH SCHOOL BLUES, the storyline involves kids who have conflict with one another, but only BLUES is about bullying.

In FIREFLIES, the conflicts and changes in the relationship of the little girls of Willow Haven isn't bullying. Disagreeing, quarreling and even some name-calling isn't, in my opinion, bullying. Reena and Kittie disliked each other, Daphne and Rhoda had their own dance of admiration vs. jealousy, and eventually Daphne ended up with Rhoda's best friend, but none of that is bullying.

Bullying isn't about people disliking each other or even dumping one's best friend. It isn't about coming to blows over who gets to sit by someone they both want to be friends with. Bullying is behavior that is persistent and focused on taking away someone else's power. 

Bullying is vampiric behavior. The bully feeds off the fear and pain that they cause in the kid who is vulnerable to them. The bullies in CHURCH SCHOOL BLUES were bored people who craved excitement. Bullying gave them a rush, which they were unable to experience in any other way.

I think this distinction is important while our society is so focused on the issue of bullying.  It is important that people understand the difference between bullying behavior and other behaviors that reflect conflict between personalities.  We don't want to fall into the pitfall of branding kids who misbehave as something they aren't.  The absence of bullies in a school doesn't mean that there will never be a fistfight, or that people won't get their feelings hurt by rejection and snide remarks.  Bully behavior may include the use of fists and the use of rejection and hurtful remarks, but it is more than that.  It is relentless, obsessive, and may continue for years as it did in CHURCH SCHOOL BLUES.

In my other book, PRECIOUS JEWELS, A SEVENTH-DAY ADVENTIST FAMILY SAGA, the Purcell couple had characteristics that fit my definition of bullies.  They were relentless and obsessive in their determination to destroy the reputations of schoolteachers Grace and Ralph Denton, and they continued their campaign from Minnesota to Carolina to have them removed from church membership and barred from teaching in the schools.  Not even the intervention of the highest church authorities in the Dentons' behalf deterred the Purcells from their decades-long efforts to destroy them.  

Granted, the Purcells seemed to me to be more than bullies -- since they were adults, their relentless obsession seems pathological.  With kid bullies, they may grow out of bully behavior when they learn less destructive ways to feel alive, while the Purcells never gave up their craving to consume and destroy.