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Why I won't be at my high school reunion

• hc 17y ago
  i flagged this post without comment when it was younger, expecting many people to do the same. now i see it has been upvoted 100+ times and it is still here. i am curious why many people seem to hold it to be within the scope of this site. the connection to anything scientific or technical is tenuous, and the post is wholly lacking in insight wrt the sociological phenomenon it rails against.
• Arun2009 17y ago
  I don't think I'll ever understand the psyche of the typical American school-goer. From outside at least and from what we see on films, they seem to be leading quite colorful lives! My own school-life in India was fairly monochromatic. Being a studious type was actually considered a plus, both by your family and your peers. Entering into anything like a romance was blasphemous and took place only in the movies where they had all the time in the world to run around trees in pairs. The overwhelming mad rush was to ace the board exams, state engineering exams, and the JEE and land myself into a decent university. And get the hell out of India if possible.
• jacquesm 17y ago
  Wow, that could be me... I've also not gone to my highschool reunion, and my answer to the request was pretty much the same. Funny thing though, I did help the people setting it up in tracking down all the other kids from the class, I still remembered each and every one of them, and where they had lived. But I didn't feel like going there myself, too many (very) bad memories about that period.
  • cwan 17y ago
    I can't disagree with his sentiment. Having been bullied myself and being part of a small racial minority, at least I ultimately had the good fortune of attending a public highschool in Canada that was flooded with geeks (relatively small town with the school next to two universities). That said, I think experiences - both good and bad make us who we are. In a sort of sadistic way, I'm sort of glad that the bullying built up a certain level of resilience and has helped motivate me. I haven't delved much into the author's personal life but I can't help but imagine that while he may not want to friend these jerks on facebook, in some small part he owes some of the best parts of who he is to these people.
    • jacquesm 17y ago
      That's a good point, I never looked at it that way. The bullies certainly taught me how to stand up for myself, to the point where - and I'm not proud of this - I put one in hospital and got suspended for three weeks. What really surprised me though is that the people that invited me to come didn't recall any of all this, whereas for me it was a constant source of real trouble at the time. Funny how different viewpoints can radically change the perception of reality.
  • redman 17y ago
    http://www.cookupbooks.com http://www.cookupbooks.com start early - K-3 reading instruction
  • abstractbill 17y ago
    Is this kind of recall common? I ask because I also had a not-fun time at high school, but I remember very little about it. Names get mentioned - especially on Facebook - of people who I apparently went to school with (and it was a small school), but I remember pretty much nothing about the people. I also have only vague memories of the school itself. Sorry for veering off-topic, but I've been wondering about my memory lately, and just how much worse it is than the average.
    • jacquesm 17y ago
      I find that memory is strange, not 'bad' or 'good'. In general it will remember stuff for a while unless you concentrate hard. Bad stuff might get 'forgotten' a little quicker than good stuff, or the reverse. Stuff that you really want to remember sometimes gets lost for no apparent reason. I used to be able to remember just about everything that I wanted but lately (now almost 45) that is getting noticeably harder. Traumatic stuff is in a class of its own. Some people will never be able to get away from it, others have it suppressed to the point where it might as well not have happened.
      • anonthistime 17y ago
        Have to be anonymous for this as it is a little too personal for comfort. My earliest memories are from probably extremely traumatic situations: Finding my mother's boyfriend dead from a heroin overdose in his bed (both were addicts) and watching an ambulance crew carry him out. Eating raw pasta when our mother had left us alone in the house for days. Being taken from our house by social workers (I remember parts of the drive from there in vivid detail). I was four or five at that time. The funny thing is I don't remember how I felt at the time, but the scenes are etched in my memory. Oh well, make of it what you want, it just came back to me when reading your post :)
        • jacquesm 17y ago
          I don't really know what to say to that other than that I'm really happy to see you on the 'other side' of that and alive and apparently well. I thought I had had it pretty rough at some times in my past, you make me feel like I had a very easy childhood. Wow.
• w1ntermute 17y ago
  From a comment on the post: "For those who missed John Katz' essay on why high school is designed to suck the first time around: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=99/04/25/1438249 http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=99/04/25/1438249 "
  • shizcakes 17y ago
    Bad link, get rid of the * at the end.
• shizcakes 17y ago
  I don't fully identify with this dude - I had friends, although I was picked on, and I still talk to a number of people from High School. That said, I did like this read. Potentially it was the emotional reaction I had on his behalf, but I like to think that it was the realism of his scenario: "I don't think I had it particularly worse than a lot of others" and "here are the things that are entirely my problem that accelerated this treatment". While 'the system' is sometimes to blame, it's also the person. And he understands that. But since he works for Google, it's clear that he got it together in later life, and distancing himself from those who used to drag him down is probably a good choice. School reunions are often just people gloating about how awesome they think they are at life anyways, so why should he put himself in a position to potentially arouse jealousy?
  • tjic 17y ago
    "Got it together" ? What the !@#$%^ ? He was a smart productive kid, and he got picked on by imbeciles. Now he's a smart productive adult. He hasn't gotten shit together - he had it together. The difference is that now he's in a free market, with other competent adults, instead of in a government-run Lord of the Flies style child warehousing make-work program. To say that he "got it together" is to blame the victim.
    • jonknee 17y ago
      He didn't have it together, he didn't know how to manage social contact. He readily admits being awkward and unable to communicate. Being smart is not exclusive to having it together. It doesn't excuse what happened to him, but there are plenty of adults that get walked all over too.
      • jacquesm 17y ago
        That does not give others license to abuse you though.
        • jonknee 17y ago
          Of course not and as I said it doesn't excuse what happened, but the odds are 95% of the kids didn't do anything but not talk to him (and why would they, he was socially inept). They don't remember anything bad that happened to him. He has been holding in an impressive amount of anger and thinks everyone else has too. They haven't been. I bet even the bullies don't remember him. Seems like he's still got some social problems--people trying to reach out and he says stay the fuck away from me.
• tjic 17y ago
  Sounds like my middle school. ...which had much in common with another government run institution: prison. * Violent and angry inmates. * Unionized, apathetic officials. * A shocking level of brutality. * An institution run almost solely for the economic benefit of the employees. I won't say that government never taught me anything, though. It did teach me how to kick the ass of someone who started a fight.
  • sjf 17y ago
    It's interesting that a lot of the things kids to do each other in high school, would if they tried them as an adult land them in prison.
• jrnkntl 17y ago
  This guy totally missed the social bandwagon. Thinks that his kid is 'less of a loser' when he knows karate and 'totally kicks the crap out' of people who bully him. Dreaming the 'I will kick your ass' dream isolated from real friends. I wouldn't call that geekery but just a social loss.
  • tjic 17y ago
    > Thinks that his kid is 'less of a loser' when he knows karate What he said was that the kid was going to be able to physically defend himself from assault. Can you disagree with that assertion?
    • jrnkntl 17y ago
      I am a supporter of avoiding assault.
      • dennmart 17y ago
        So am I. But this quote from the post is pretty self-explanatory: "One of the mantras that his karate school follows is: Never start a fight, but if a fight starts, always be the one to finish it. And that's what he'll be able to do."
      • cousin_it 17y ago
        Then I don't understand your position. In my experience, learning to fight has been one of the most effective ways of avoiding assault. You just start signaling to people in various subtle unconscious ways that you're able to defend yourself. It's a pity my parents didn't understand that when I was in school, and gave me the usual idiotic lines like "don't stoop to the bullies' level". I only realized this when it was almost too late to change, went and took some boxing lessons, and whaddaya think - it's improved my "social skills" quite a bit. :-) See, "social skills" are mostly about how others perceive you, and people are pretty damn perceptive when it comes to pecking order.
      • randallsquared 17y ago
        I spent much of my childhood avoiding assault (and never had it as bad from other kids, at least, as the blogger), but I think it was a mistake to do so. I think if I'd snapped just once or twice, it would have made others think twice about the nonsense they pulled on me. I was more afraid of the external consequences (police and other authority figures) than worried about getting beat up, though, so I just sat and took it. In any case, the blogger in question didn't manage to avoid assault. I don't imagine he went to the bullies and said, "Here, break my fingers".
• kingkongrevenge 17y ago
  Apparently his social skills still haven't improved much. What a whiny nerd.
  • tjic 17y ago
    Yeah. Folks who are punched, have their fingers broken, and are mocked in the hallways shouldn't harbor resentments.
    • biohacker42 17y ago
      99.99% of kids are mocked and punched. Broken finger are extreme, but still. The fact is almost everybody is bullied and people grow up and things change. And most people get over their bulling. Harboring resentments all your life just messes with your mind. Stop messing yourself up. You can blame that on the fact that you were abused, and that may be true, but you should still try to get passed it.
      • philwelch 17y ago
        There's getting passed it, and then there's pretending to be friends with the people who did it. It's the pretending he's not interested in.
        • run4yourlives 17y ago
          The OP wasn't talking about not pretending to be friends. The OP specifically said that you can't blame him for harbouring resentment.
          • philwelch 17y ago
            In a case where "harboring resentment" concretely means "not going to his high school reunion with people who committed violence against him". Most children of abusive parents still harbor resentment, even if they become healthy enough to move past it in their everyday life. You're expecting someone who was surrounded by an abusive peer group (and an utterly apathetic group of adult "supervisors", who are all but guilty of criminal neglect) not to have negative feelings about his experiences when his former tormenters invite him to a reunion?
• keltecp11 17y ago
  Part of growing up is understanding that people develop - People can change.
  • cracki 17y ago
    but they don't get a clean slate for not being around the last 10 years. they only get a chance to show that they changed.
  • jerf 17y ago
    Yeah, but... so what? My experiences weren't the same, because I was geeky, uncoordinated... and six foot four, thank God. I've dealt with it and don't hold on to anger like it sounds like Mark has... but I didn't bother going to my 10th, because, frankly, why? I didn't like the majority of them, the ones I did like I'm still in contact with (or for one particularly notable exception, married to), and otherwise, they're just people, the majority of whom I still won't like, just for different reasons, and even if I'm wrong I could just step out, walk downtown, strike up a conversation at a coffee shop, and have odds just as good for finding a friend, if not better. I think a lot of posters here are losing the thread here. All arguing about how wonderful people may be in theory after 25 years gets you back up to is "neutral" on the reunion... gosh, it might not suck as much as I expected? Sign me right up! cracki in a sibling comment says that they get a chance to show they've changed; I say no, not really. Who cares if they've changed or not? If you don't have happy memories, if you aren't nostalgic for a time period where you had no rights and were stuck in a boring room seven hours a day, five days a week, there's no reason to care about the coincidence of who you lived near, so why bother? (Every year of my life since I was about five or six has been better than the last, and I can't go beyond that simply because I don't remember. Some through circumstances, some because of health issues, some because I'm getting better at living well, which is itself a skill. I'm not much for nostalgia.) Incidentally, my wife, who isn't particularly a geek and didn't have a bad time of it the way I did, pretty much feels the same. Her friends were mostly in the grade above anyhow, and we've kept in touch. (We'll be seeing all those again literally next week, at my son's first birthday party which has turned into quite the shindig.) Facebook has really eaten into the positive reasons for reunions, even for nongeeks.
• ChaitanyaSai 17y ago
  Ouch. Reading about such traumatic experiences makes me wonder if this is more common in US schools (especially public schools; don't know if the author was at one). Growing up geeky in India didn't have any such downsides, but that might have been peculiar to the small school went to,but I don't think it fully explains it. Developing nations with a favorable regard for the sciences and engineering seem to inculcate a favorable outlook towards geekiness. How is it for people who grew up elsewhere? The early and constant negative emotional feedback definitely shape one's view of people and nature, skewing it because of sampling (Most kids do grow up into reasonable adults, eventually, one hopes). I also wonder if the massive popularity of organized school sports is a factor. Providing developing adolescents with a single hierarchy to place everyone on seems misguided. The world is more multi-faceted with a place for everyone, but that sort of a thing may be hard to impart in the limited aquarium that is school.
• michael_dorfman 17y ago
  Setting aside the whole issue of geek abuse, and Mark's story in particular, for a moment: I have to say that I find the whole Facebook experience very creepy in general. Anyone who can't figure out how to get in touch with me outside of Facebook is definitely not a "friend", so what's the point of pretending that they are?
  • Goladus 17y ago
    Don't pretend anything. It's not a matter of figuring out how to get in touch with you otherwise. Someone just decided that would be the most polite and convenient way to contact you. If you find that creepy, that's your loss.
    • michael_dorfman 17y ago
      I'm not sure it's a loss, really. Someone "friending" me, who is clearly not my friend seems more like an imposition. My real friends are happy to call me on the telephone, or send me an email. Facebook "friends" are faux friends, and a site dedicated to quasi-communication by faux friends seems, well, creepy.
      • Goladus 17y ago
        How is it an imposition? What does creepy actually mean? Why are they faux friends and not simply weak social connections that may have potential to grow stronger?
        • michael_dorfman 17y ago
          It's an imposition, because it puts me in a position of either having to respond, or having to refuse to respond. Creepy, according to Webster's, mean "annoyingly unpleasant". That works for me. In terms of the last question, I think Mark Chu-Carroll, in the original post, explains nicely. He doesn't feel any particular connection to the folks from his school-- even the ones who didn't torture him. If he had, he surely would have been in touch with them in the past 25 years in some other way. If the weak social connection really had potential, why did it take Facebook as a catalyst?
• wallflower 17y ago
  I went to my 10-yr high school reunion. I had conversations with former jocks, geeks (the smartest guy IQ of 164 was now working for the government), some of the prettiest girls, others. Talked about their life now. It didn't really matter what we were in high school. The biggest surprise was a geeky girl I had known was now beautiful and helping produce records. Some of the jocks were very successful salesmen. Other than that, it was oddly reassuring to revisit old paths once tread. It was nice to talk to people at the reunion who I pretty much never talked to in high school. It's not like we all became friends and traded numbers. In fact, we sarcastically said 'See you at the next one'. We all grow up and change. And sometimes we don't but high school as someone wiser than me once said - high school is a geographic coincidence. Not because you want to be there.
  • ilitirit 17y ago
    > The biggest surprise was a geeky girl I had known was now beautiful Is ugliness a prerequisite for admission into geekhood?
    • scotth 17y ago
      I imagine he means that she was geeky, in the sense that she wasn't popular (and not in the sense that we all consider ourselves geeks). Girls who are beautiful in high school don't usually have this problem.
    • Alex3917 17y ago
      I think so. It wasn't always, but geekiness has gotten ridiculously commercialized. In the early 70s geekiness may have been more authentic, but now it's more about companies convincing homely looking girls and guys with BMIs below 20 or over 27 to buy Star Wars t-shirts and WoW subscriptions. Basically geekiness today is about buying products designed to make you feel smart, even if you're not.
      • troels 17y ago
        That's a disturbing idea.
• davidw 17y ago
  Gets a rise out of one, but not particularly interesting. I do wonder where this school is so that I can avoid the area (although it may well have changed in the meantime).
• Alex3917 17y ago
  I had my fingers broken in high school too, because someone wanted to see what would happen if they jumped off the bleachers and landed on my hand while I was stretching. The school nurse wouldn't even entertain the possibility that they were broken, so she just sent me back to class even though my fingers were twisted and I was throwing up everywhere. So as a result my fingers are still kind of messed up to this day, because they never got properly set.
• noonespecial 17y ago
  The best revenge, as always, is to live well. All of his "friends" will gather at a fake party and try to convince each other that their "careers" are huge successes. Kind of like what would really happen if you were to say, get a PhD and a sweet job at Google. The rise of nerd culture has brought us the delightful spectacle of a thousand tiny Shawshank redemptions. See you in Mexico.
  • oz 17y ago
    Zihuatanejo, here I come! (Cue Thomas Newman soundtrack here)
  • jonknee 17y ago
    Please. Many of the people he went to highschool have great careers and will actually enjoy the reunion. They've moved on, he's still holding onto anger from the 1980s. That's not revenge, it's just sad.
    • davidw 17y ago
      There are people I didn't care for in HS, who maybe treated me badly at some point... didn't invite me to a party or something. That's easy to move beyond, but breaking someone's fingers? Sorry, some stuff leaves memories that don't fade with time.
      • jonknee 17y ago
        And yet he has it in for everyone at his high school, not just people who broke his fingers. My point is most people likely remember him as the shy kid they never talked to, but since they have grown up aren't afraid to invite to the party now.
        • davidw 17y ago
          Shrug... like I said elsewhere, this isn't particularly interesting, but I guess he just feels bitter enough about the whole experience that he doesn't want anything to do with the whole lot of them. I actually wouldn't mind meeting some of the people I knew then to catch up, but I can also live quite happily without ever seeing them again, and I didn't have a terrible time in HS. Perhaps he's mostly moved on, and all these people "intruding" in his modern life brings back a lot of bad memories, that he doesn't want to dredge up. Sometimes it's best to leave stuff in the past.
• biohacker42 17y ago
  This is a meta-comment about what belongs on HN, so if you don't like those kinds of comments, just down vote it and stop reading now. If you're not interested in completely off-topic personal rambling, stop reading now. While I know a lot of people have had similar experiences, I doubt group therapy of this kind is healthy for anyone. Even some of the people who used to beat the crap out of me on a regular basis are getting in touch as if we're old friends. My reaction to them... What the fuck is wrong with you people? They grew up. Everyone knows kids are evil. And a few of them grow up to be evil adults and eventually go to jail. But most people do grow up. They stop being what they were as kids, and most nerdy kids grow up to be much more sociable. Now I don't think this person is missing much by not going to the reunion, but I do think it's a shame he still has not gotten over his childhood. Obviously his childhood was worse then average, but that's life, life is not fair, deal with it.
  • bluefish 17y ago
    Your tough-love approach "...that's life, life is not fair, deal with it" is completely misguided and naive. I certainly hope that if you ever have children you don't use that mindset on them when they come home bullied, frustrated or upset.
    • biohacker42 17y ago
      I wouldn't use that on children, but he's not a child anymore.
      • darkxanthos 17y ago
        Exactly. He's got enough pity for himself, I'm glad you aren't giving him more.
  • tc 17y ago
    Some people get over things by eliminating those things from their lives. He probably spends the vast majority of the days of his life over that whole experience. His rant was prompted by elements of that old world trying to intrude on the world he lives in now, which dredged up that negative energy. Also, adolescents turn into adults, but they don't forget what passed before. So if you were evil to someone in high school, the adult thing to do would be to apologize if you're going to contact that person.
• ilitirit 17y ago
  To everyone else, I was a geek for the first few years of high school. I was also bullied for a while. Till the day I fought back. Busted the fucker's lip. Nobody bothered me after that, and fewer people thought of me as a geek. I hadn't changed a bit though.
  • tjic 17y ago
    Amen. I was picked on, and I learned to fight. Everything in life is a cost/benefit trade off. If it's fun to push you around, and the cost is low, people will push your around. If it's fun to push you around, and you land a few dozen punches before the fight is over, the cost is too high, and the abuse stops.
• 9oliYQjP 17y ago
  I was a fat geek when I started high school. It was an all male school at that. I wouldn't say I was terribly pushed around, but at the start, I was easy prey for bullying. Towards the end of grade 10, I'd had enough. I used some of my savings to buy a $200 weight bench. I worked out 5 times a week. I started eating healthy. Nobody really noticed my transformation toward the end of grade 10. They probably should have as I usually had to walk the whole damn warm-up run in gym class, and now I was actually finishing it in the middle of the pack. But between June and August during summer break I made huge progress. I timed my transformation with a growth spurt and now I was a lean, well built geek. I distinctly remember the first week of grade 11 because it was the most peculiar experience of my life. Guys who were literally in gangs and who bullied the shit out of me came up to me with looks of shock and started being my friend. It was as if I was a friend to them before, at least in hindsight in their eyes. Teachers even stopped me in the hall and congratulated me. And girls... I hadn't caught the eye of any girl until I was 17 and then boom, I had girls coming up to me and asking for my phone number. Since I had no experience with girls, I didn't know how the hell to respond. A part of me felt they were playing a practical joke on me. So I'd let them give me their number and I'd never call. This would drive them nuts but they seemed to enjoy the chase. I was still a geek, but any girl that dated me didn't have to know that at first because they wouldn't be able to attend my school. I ended up dating my high school sweetheart who was a really popular and gorgeous girl in another school. She was really mischievous and always getting into trouble. When her principal found out that she had a boyfriend, he decided to investigate to see if this boyfriend was causing her behaviour problems (let's just say she was an artist in a math/science oriented school). He tracked down who I was, phoned my principal who never heard of me and had to get out my file. I would have loved to hear how that conversation went but basically my girlfriend was called into the principal's office the next day and told that maybe I'd have a positive influence on her. In university I started gaining weight back from poor lifestyle choices. I was no longer treated like crap, but rather with indifference. I was clinically obese through my 20s and only now have I gone back to lifting weights and whipped my butt into shape. Again, I'm being treated a lot differently (better). I'm not sure what the point of this was. But I suppose one take-away from this article and my story is that humans can be treated like crap for the most idiotic reasons one second. The people treating them like crap can change their ways all of a sudden and think nothing of it. This is a total mindfuck to the people being treated harshly. It's enough of a mindfuck that a well-adjusted father and husband can still be affected by experiences 25 years on.
• edw519 17y ago
  Wow, this was me. 5'1" in 9th grade, 5'10" in 11th grade, 120 lbs., total geek into math, science, and I even published my own magazine. If I complained about the bullying, I was called a whiner, even by my own family. (Either my father didn't care, or he was smart enough to know that I better figure out how to toughen up. I hope it was the latter.) But that's where the similarities end. Even though I was socially ackward (and still am a little), I got an after school job and made friends. Good enough (and tough enough) friends that nobody fucked with me any more. I went to college, learned to program, and built a career and life. Now I go to every reunion and have a ball. I've finally reached the point in my life where I really don't care what others think (for the most part). If I did, then I'd still be a victim of virtual bullying. Last reunion, I was drinking and laughing and acting geeky when the captain of the basketball team came over and told me to shut up. I told him that he may have been hot shit 20 years ago, but he wasn't anymore and should just go away. I was surprised how good that felt. I sympathize with OP and understand his reasoning. I'm glad I ended up going down a different path, although I don't really know why. I hope he finds a way to release the hurt and anger and move on. I know that I have.
  • bootload 17y ago
    "... I sympathize with OP and understand his reasoning. I'm glad I ended up going down a different path, although I don't really know why. I hope he finds a way to release the hurt and anger and move on. I know that I have. ..." Hey ed, I haven't been back to hackernews for a while but I want to chime in on this topic. Each person is going to respond in a different way. Also reading the article Mark has had a pretty rough time. Physical injury is one thing, psychological injury by people you know is worse. The dilemma is caused because the fact the person being abused (bullied, call it what you like) knows the attacker and has no control over the situation. There is no use trying to explain this to people who have not been in a similar situation. As for me I entered school at 5'8", okay at sports and took the math/sci stream, same ineptness as most. I had a foot in 2 camps: sports & science. I think I managed to slip under the radar till the last couple of years. But unlike the experiences I've read here most have the crap for me didn't begin till the last couple of years at HS. The last year especially. A year bookmarked by tragic circumstances on top of all the crap in-between. I still don't know why people I'd known for years gave me the crap they did? I brushed it off at the time only wondering later why? But it wasn't all bad. I actually had someone come up to me late in the year telling me they'd under-rated me. Gee I wasn't as if I was a different person before I organised the emvac. Then there was the school leaders more worried about publicity and their hides than students welfare. Yeah I learnt a lot more than I bargained for that year. So while I've graduated, moved on and had a good run since, I sure as hell make sure I pick my friends carefully and assert myself online. I don't take any crap. And as for attending HS reunions, No. Besides the school has been torn down ~ http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/sets/72157620934091013/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/sets/72157620934091013...
• trickjarrett 17y ago
  High school is definitely a love/hate experience. Some come out of it on top while others get pulled down or tossed down. It's sad really. I never had the bullying issue thanks to being a big guy and having played football for high school, but I also tended to be fairly accepted socially. I had friends who were jocks, preps, nerds, rockers, etc. I wasn't really in any of the crowds, but I could wander over at lunch and strike up conversations and chill, and then move on to another group.
• dugmartin 17y ago
  Wow. Its been 25 years, its time to let go of that anger.
  • TheSOB88 17y ago
    Have you ever had your fingers broken by someone? Unless you're a Buddhist monk, I think you'd be hard pressed to forgive that and multiple similar transgressions.
    • biohacker42 17y ago
      I'm not sure if only Buddhist monks are enlightened enough for this. But I am sure all that anger is not good for him.
    • mrtron 17y ago
      Not that it is important to this thread, but I had a few broken noses during my childhood. I used to be fairly angry. But there came a time in my life when I was about 16 where I was happy, and it didn't really matter. Let it go and live well. As a small side note, it troubles me seeing him push his kid so hard into Karate. It is still influencing his decisions and impacting his child's life now too. (not that Karate is bad, but the reasons are)
      • tc 17y ago
        His reasons for the Karate seem perfectly acceptable to me, as long as his kids enjoy the activity. At that age, the activities kids participate in are almost totally driven by parental influence. He's making choices that are guided by the lessons in his own life. How could he act differently? Would you object if he made a point to teach his kids how to be social and interact positively with others just because he learned the lesson the hard way? The anger, though, he should release if possible. If not, however, it seems pretty clear that he'll be able to go back to just avoiding the stimuli for another five or ten years.
      • jacquesm 17y ago
        Karate teaches a lot more than self defense, it also teaches self control and a whole bunch of social skills. Chances are that his son is less likely to get into a fight because of going to karate classes than he would have otherwise been.
• lucifer 17y ago
  I think as children we occupy a much more primal social space than that which we occupy as adults. As adults, the spaces of interactions we occupy are highly regulated by internalized models of behavior. (We let loose when we feel free of such bonds, thus extreme online behavior afforded by the mask of anonymity.) Beyond Karate, the most important tool that one can impart to one's precious little child is that human groups are dynamic systems that require various poles -- the group (I believe) seeks these poles to organize itself. The underdog or gamma wolf is not an individual -- it is a required 'position' in the pack. http://www.mnforsustain.org/wolf_mech_dominance_alpha_status.htm http://www.mnforsustain.org/wolf_mech_dominance_alpha_status...
• clistctrl 17y ago
  Maybe times have changed? I just got out of high school about 5 years ago. I grew up in a small town in Wisconsin near Milwaukee which at one time was built around a tractor factory, now it sort of lies in limbo trying to find an identity. As an extreme computer geek I wasn't popular, but I never had anything particularly 'Bad' happen to me. I would say the worst thing that would happen on a regular basis is people would take advantage of my OCD like nature and create an absolute mess near me (which would drive me nuts... only encouraging them) The rest of the time I noticed people would try to get on my good side for group projects etc. Classes at my school (and I think its pretty common now) were centered around computers, so kids who normally wouldn't talk to me suddenly wanted to be "partners" with me.
• darkxanthos 17y ago
  Wow. Bitter? Party of one? My highschool experience sucked too but we were all just kids. It's been 25 years so maybe it's time to forgve and forget? (rhetorical)
  • jimbokun 17y ago
    "It doesn't explain the guy who broke my fingers, because he wanted to know what it would sound like."
• plesn 17y ago
  So the debate is: what's wrong with high-schools? Is it the kids? is it the (lack of) discipline? is it because of social reasons? I went to public schools in different ditricts in France, and it changes a lot... It's not surprising that a school in a more urban and "bourgeois" place has more emphasis on scolar success which makes it a little easier for geeky types, but there certainly are other kinds of bullying (sometimes more on social aspects). Of course kids at this age are very "mimetic": they want to be in the mass and do like popular ones, they suffer to be different. But they are building their personnalities: maybe they not only need better models, but also better structures to make them more mature. We're hearing about current "let-it go" public schools or about old-style strict schools, but what about making schools really more participatively democratic places to live in (I'm thinking of taking some good points from experiences like SummerHill [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summerhill_School http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summerhill_School]: I wonder what good/bad lessons we can get from that)? I'm just thinking of this two simplistic things as I read people saying things like "lookily i was in a private school...", but school is the manufacture of future society: we should care!
  • gommm 17y ago
    As a kid in France I found that starting high-school the bullying mostly stopped with most bullies going over to the technical high school... (and it never was as bad as what I've heard from american friends) Now I'm not so sure if the particular district the school was in (the middle school was a small countryside middle school whereas the high school was in a bigger town.) had any influence... How out of curiosity where did you study? Thanks for the link on Summerhill very interesting idea... I 'm always interested in education experiments, I thinks there is a lot of research to be done on how to best educate kids and make sure they don't suffer from moral damage from bullying (although as someone said in another thread I'm also grateful for some of the bullying I've received it made me much more resistant to what people think about me)
  • akkartik 17y ago
    Of course we should care! http://paulgraham.com/nerds.html http://paulgraham.com/nerds.html
  • 17y ago
• tdavis 17y ago
  I don't see why anybody would go to a high school reunion. I've only been out of high school for six or seven years and I can't remember a single person from those four years, unless I stayed friends with them afterwards. The entire experience strikes me as an errand, and not even one that provides me with groceries.
• yesimahuman 17y ago
  They really allowed violence like that? It reminds me of one of those 80's movies where they kids are just a bunch of bad asses...I thought that was just in the movies. I feel bad for him. The only ostracizing I had to deal with was when I was very fat as a kid. I've filled out a bit now, but it sucked.
• mburney 17y ago
  Bullying seems to be the only form of cruel violence in which the victims are told to "forgive and forget" and stop being "whiny." Would the same "get over it" sentiment exist if this article was about having been sexually assaulted by high school teachers? Either way, the writer is committing the usual geek-fallacy in his plans for his son -- the hacker notion that a person can just learn a few skills to solve a problem. The idea that learning karate in childhood will equip a person to beat up bullies in high school is ridiculous. The only way his son could use martial arts as legitimate self defense would be to train for hours a day in a tough mixed martial arts or street fighting gym right up until (and past) his teens. But then, wait a minute -- kids who do that are rarely considered geeks. They're called jocks.
  • run4yourlives 17y ago
    Please don't compare standard bullying to sexual assault. The two experiences are not comparable. That being said, often the best thing for a person to do is to "forgive and forget", since letting go of anger is the only way to properly conquer it. Even families of murder victims move on after 25 years. As a human, you have to. Agreed about the Martial Arts though.
    • tjic 17y ago
      > Please don't compare standard bullying to sexual assault. The two experiences are not comparable. They're not the same, but, yes, they're comparable.
      • run4yourlives 17y ago
        Only if you equate bullying to be only its most extreme forms.
        • jfarmer 17y ago
          Breaking someone's fingers for the hell of it sounds pretty extreme to me.
    • 17y ago
• sofal 17y ago
  He puts way too much faith in karate to help his kids learn how to fight back. Karate does not teach you that. I was in karate for years as a kid and got a black belt. I took karate for the same reasons he's putting his kids through it. I was tired of being picked on and I wanted to make myself more intimidating. It did not work. You do not learn how to fight in karate. You learn how to perform choreographed moves and routines (like katas and lots of shorter ones that we called 'techniques') and you kick and punch a lot of pads. Sparring is more like a game than a real fight, where you get points by making contact at the right places. Karate gives you good exercise (which is why it can be great for some people), but I did not get out of it what I wanted. I never learned how to fight simply because we never did any real fighting. I had a black belt, yet when it came down to it and someone was physically threatening me, the silly routines that worked against invisible attackers in karate did not work in real life. If you want your kids to learn how to fight and defend themselves, take them to a place where they actually have the kids fight each other. There are no shortcuts. The self-esteem boost that I desperately wanted from karate I was finally able to get in high school by becoming really good at percussion. People finally started respecting me for what I could do. Drumline was where I belonged.
  • Hexstream 17y ago
    With respect, if you have a black belt yet can't put up a fight I'd seriously question the competence of your teacher, both in the quality of the training and the standards by which belts are awarded.
    • sofal 17y ago
      The main teacher definitely knew how to fight (Mike Winkeljohn, look him up), but I'm definitely with you on questioning the type of training and the standards by which belts are rewarded. The problem is that a lot of karate places are not really in the business of teaching kids how to fight. It's a lot like Boy Scouts. The parents want to see progress, and so the belts are handed out to any kid who checks off all the requirements, which mostly consist of memorization and a minimal standard of physical fitness. It's a business, and doing that works better for the real customers: the parents. It certainly works for the OP even though his kids are obviously not learning how to fight ("His Karate dojo is wonderful, and he loves doing it. It's actually a very gentle dojo..."). A lot of kids love to do it anyway. I was just disappointed that my main purpose for studying karate was mismatched. I'll also grant that there is a small element of "getting out of it what you put into it" as well.
• pegobry 17y ago
  I understand how this guy feels, and I've been there. Clearly, his emotions are still very raw from this. But I can't say I agree with his reaction. I was in his shoes in high school, and now, I've been to the top school in the country, work at a cool web 2.0 startup and, most importantly, am engaged to the most wonderful woman I could possibly imagine. I am, quite literally, living my childhood dream, and I'm incredibly lucky. So today, these f-ckers mean nothing to me. I don't feel the rawness that the author evidently still feels. A year ago I ran into one of the a-holes from my high school days. Not the worst, but a bad one. And you know what? He apologized. It turns out he's a decent guy now, and I had a lot of fun hanging out with him. Is he going to be the best man at my wedding? Hell no. But am I glad I ran into him that day? Yes. So I would go. Partly to have some closure. Partly out of curiosity. But mostly because I'm a relentless optimist. We've all done incredibly stupid things as teenagers, and people can change. I'm sure there'd be at least one person I'd be happy I'd met. And if not, it'd still be fun to rub their faces in my success. ;)
  • TheSOB88 17y ago
    "Today, these fuckers mean nothing to me." Evidently, they still cause some sort of reaction within you. While you've probably progressed past the author in terms of dealing with it, you still have a bit to before you reach total forgiveness.
  • joetrumpet 17y ago
    I don't quite understand what he has to gain from going, nor why your language shows you have moved past it more than he has. If he wasn't friends with anyone in high school, what's the difference between going there and going to some other event and meeting people? Some of them might be nice, and so might some other people he could meet--people nearby that he might actually stay in contact with. It just sounds like a waste of money to me. I don't think he's holding onto anything: I think his point is 25 years after being abused people who didn't apologize are pretending nothing happened, and asking him to spend a decent amount of time and money on reminiscing. What's the point?
• oz 17y ago
  When I was in grade 4 (Jamaica) some kids picked on me. I remember going home and making some concrete balls, about the size of a large grapefruit each. I put four in my bag and went to school the next day. I don't remember why I didn't harm anybody. Similarly, in grade 10, a 'jock' slapped me across the face, sending my glasses careening. It was after school, so I went home and made me a little circuit: a transformer rigged to step up the voltage, connected to a small battery, with two needles on the end, all assembled on a piece of board. I fully intended to kill the motherfucker. But cooler heads prevailed, and I didn't return to school with my little apparatus. Unfortunately, I took all of that anger out on my little brother. Reading this sure brought back a lot of memories. I remember the first time I read PGs "Why Nerds are Unpopular Essay." To say it was like divine revelation would be an understatement. Now, at 22, 6'1" and getting built. I would happily beat the fuck out of anyone who 'violated', as we say in Jamaica. Enough with that 'violence solves nothing' bullshit. Violence is what stopped WWII. It's easy for some to say he should get over it, but I understand where he's coming from. And I didn't have it as half as bad as he did.
  • TheSOB88 17y ago
    "Violated," eh? What does that mean, exactly? If it's someone starting a fight, sure, beat 'em up. But you seem a bit overenthusiastic to beat the shit out of people. You may want to take a look at calming down; you might do the exact same thing you did to your brother again, to someone else.
• tybris 17y ago
  That's an honest and emotional piece. I don't really have bad high-school memories, mostly indifferent memories. Fortunately our high school system separates the potential construction workers from the potential scientists. I did find it hard to socialize with people whose primary interest in life seemed to be the irrational idolization of musicians, with a surprising lack of musical taste. There I was with my interests in physics, economics, politics, philosophy, classical history, etc. Isolation is what made me play with computers, become really good at inventing and engineering new systems, and brought me to an incredibly fortunate life. I didn't go to my first reunion, but as the stories got out I felt sad for how poorly most of them had done. I grew up thinking the world was our playground, and for me it still is. Maybe I'll go to the next one, hoping they did a little better.
• Ben65 17y ago
  It's true there's nothing funnier that the sound of a geek's finger breaking, but the down side is that 25 years later they won't be at the class reunion, and that hurts.
• run4yourlives 17y ago
  I find this, and comments in the thread here extremely depressing, for a few reasons. First, it's sad how evil kids can be. Clearly Lord of the Flies isn't a apocalyptic fantasy but a realistic description of the social order of our youth. That said, what I find truly disturbing is seeing bright, intelligent, logical adults wallow in disgust and outright anger over things that were perpetrated on them by children. Look at your average kid from highschool. They are unfinished. They think in ridiculous patterns and do nonsensical things. You were them once. You thought like they did. The point here is that you are likely nothing like that person by the time you hit 25. Neither are they. I was never a geek outcast so perhaps I just can't relate to some of the extreme behaviour that others have experienced. That said, I was never a "cool kid" either, and felt all the social stigma of being the outcast. I so wanted to be one of the cool guys with the hot chicks smoking in the parking lot. Alas, I wasn't well off and had peculiar interests coupled with less than stellar social skills; a bit of a late bloomer you could say. I look back now however, at 34, and realize that it was me that survived the teenage years without incident. I realize the pretty girls weren't all that hot then, and certainly aren't now. I realize that spending all day skipping class translated into not getting a job worth much. I've got a wife and 2 kids, wonderful experiences of a 1/3 of a life. What am I supposed to be mad about? The author is mad because people from a school he admits he had no friends at are contacting him 25 years later! They not only remember him, but want to see him. They remember that they were children once, but they aren't the same kids from 25 years ago any more. The only one that is affected at all is the author. It's time to let go, move on, and be proud of who you are and what you've achieved. Harbouring such resentment isn't healthy, regardless of whether it's understandable.
  • philwelch 17y ago
    "That said, what I find truly disturbing is seeing bright, intelligent, logical adults wallow in disgust and outright anger over things that were perpetrated on them by children." You should try talking to people who were abused by their parents, or rape survivors. I think having your fingers broken is closer to that than "the social stigma of being the outcast". "The author is mad because people from a school he admits he had no friends at are contacting him 25 years later! They not only remember him, but want to see him. They remember that they were children once, but they aren't the same kids from 25 years ago any more." It's telling that not a single one of these invitations contained an apology. "The only one that is affected at all is the author." Victims of abuse are usually more affected by it than perpetrators.
• c00p3r 17y ago
  Oh, it is so common. Sublimation and suffering are required for a success in creative activities, like going-through-pain is required for success in a professional sports.
  • reduxredacted 17y ago
    You go through pain in professional sports because your muscles must be broken down in order to build up and your brain has to master the skill and precision required to play the game. You are also typically coached or trained by someone with more experience than you until you are more experienced than them. How does spending most of the important years of emotional development experiencing only abuse assist in making one creative? Maybe by having extra time on your hands, but other than that it doesn't seem like it would be something valuable or even connected in any way, let alone _required_. I think it's correlation vs. causation. People who are creative are non-conformist. Non-conformists tend to get bullied in High School. Some of the most creative and interesting people I have ever met were homeschooled. They had _some_ negative social experiences growing up, but nothing that would have amounted in their lifetimes what some kids at my school experienced in a day.
• reduxredacted 17y ago
  I just sent that link to a group of parents that I am going to be homeschooling with (and to my parents who think it's "a horrible idea"). I didn't get anywhere near the abuse this individual received, but I had my share, too. I have met so many people in IT and science that are still colored in some way by the "socialization" they received in school. I worked for one of the most miserable human beings I have ever met. Brilliantly smart, but now that he was on the other side, he bullied everyone around him (including his boss, who eventually fired him). I have had many coworkers who had been beat up so often, knocked down so often, that when they have an "out of the box" idea, they simply don't share it. I want my kids to be brought up in an environment that encourages learning, and peer learning via our co-op. I went to my High School reunion for almost the same reasons MarkCC didn't. I was amazed to learn of the fate of the individuals who gave me so much crap. A few were dead because of their behavior.
• ice_man 17y ago
  And yet, in a different blog post, he intellectually beats the sh*t out of an 80-year-old man: http://scienceblogs.com/goodmath/2007/04/george_shollenberger_returns_t_1.php http://scienceblogs.com/goodmath/2007/04/george_shollenberge... 42 comments. To which the 80-year-old man responds (which by the way I think is incredible, because the guy is 80): http://georgeshollenberger.blogspot.com/2007/04/mark-chu-carroll-is-like-horse-feathers.html http://georgeshollenberger.blogspot.com/2007/04/mark-chu-car... 0 comments.
  • jongraehl 17y ago
    There's nothing wrong with telling someone that they're wrong.
  • gruseom 17y ago
    Interesting. I took a second look and noticed that at the top of his blog he talks about squashing fools. One of the insidious things about violence is that it goes along with the conviction that one is in the right.
  • kragen 17y ago
    You're impressed by the fact that this guy wonders whether he can call the FBI to complain that a mathematician claimed he doesn't understand anything about the Theory of Relativity? I've known plenty of 80-year-olds who were a lot more lucid than that.
• deleted 17y ago
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• jrockway 17y ago
  I am glad I went to a math and science high school. I learned a ton, I was never bullied, and I have lots of friends that I am in regular contact with. (I went to a regular high school for my first year. While nobody broke my fingers, it was not particularly enjoyable. I also went to a regular high school in Tokyo for a year. Not quite as nice as the math and science school, but for a "normal" school it was pretty nice. I am not sure why the US has such poor schools.)
• ogie 17y ago
  They bullied you the way they best knew how, and now you bully others the way you best know how.
• strlen 17y ago
  I am appalled at some of the responses telling the author to "get over it". If it were the case of the kids not inviting him to the prom or verbally mocking him, it would be one thing. But having a swastika a swastika painted with gasoline on his lawn and having their fingers broken? I'd say in vast majority of this country, if someone (particularly Jewish, or as in the authors' case mixed-race) saw somebody lighting their property on fire in shape of an unmistakable hate symbol and reached for the family heirloom M1 Garand (that their grandfather used against other fans of this particular "symbol"), that would the very example of a "justifiable homicide"/"castle doctrine". If someone had their fingers broken by a stranger on the street, the stranger-- if caught and identified-- would face assault charges. Why is that what would be unambiguously a felony crime when done in the street, treated as something that should be "forgiven" when it's done in a high school environment? Yes, many of the bullies came from abusive families and suffered many psychological issues themselves. However, I doubt this excuse would work in court on trial for an arson charge with a hate crime enhancement --or in an assault case. These people should be in prison, where they themselves may themselves find out what it's like to be weaker/smaller/less "street smart" than somebody else.
  • deleted 17y ago
    [deleted]
  • jacquesm 17y ago
    Every bully is in charge of their own body, they make choices every time they go for someone that's weaker (or they will use a couple of buddies if they're real cowards). Abusive families do not come in to play as an excuse.
    • strlen 17y ago
      Right, as I've stated-- this is not an excuse. There may be explanations for bullying, but when one commits a transgression that has a victim there are real consequence (e.g. the example I gave of those excuses not standing up in court). I'm in full agreement.
      • 17y ago
• korch 17y ago
  Fuck high school reunions. Instead of going, stay home and watch Grosse Point Blanke. I wasn't a geek, and instead hung out with the delinquent/stoner crowd, so I can relate for entirely different reasons. Everything that's wrong with the world, well, High School is a perfect microcosm of that.
  • bootload 17y ago
    "... Everything that's wrong with the world, well, High School is a perfect microcosm of that ..." Nice summary.
• raffi 17y ago
  There are so many great threads here that I don't know where to dump this comment. The original article inspired me to phone up the organizer of my reunion and promptly drive to meet her to deliver the check.
• DavidSJ 17y ago
  The horrible times children are routinely given are seen by many as just a fact of life -- growing pains, as it were. It's high time that we stop accepting it; I'm glad something like this was written which doesn't just accept the events for the sake of "moving on". Others need to see and understand this trauma.
• dilanj 17y ago
  He lost. He failed to take action when it mattered, which could've been bulking up or learning social skills or whatever. Then he won. Earned a great life, does great work; different day, different game. Should've moved on. But then he lost again, by leaving the final laugh to any ex-bully who can google.
• weirdwes 17y ago
  I find it kind of naive and disturbing to read some of these responses. To the people who are telling him to "let it go", "get over it" and "move on", I ask can you really be serious? None of the experiences I've read really come close to what he went through all those years ago. It really angers me to no end when people just brush this type of treatment off as "kids being kids" and expect people to just accept it and move on. To the people who are saying "it's been 25 years, they're not the same people anymore", how can you be so sure? Did you go to his high school? Do you know the people he went to high school with? Why is it that you assume that 25 years has made all the jerks in his high school regretful and apologetic "do-gooders"? If that's the case, where are all of today's criminals coming from? That's a bold statement, I realize and I'm not suggestive that all of today's criminals were high school bullies or that all high school bullies grow up to commit crimes, but they have to come from somewhere right? How do you know that the kid who used to steal your lunch money isn't doing a nickel for a B&E? How do you know that the jock who picked on all the small kids didn't grown up to abuse his own kids? You don't. So please stop pretending like everyone grows out of who they are in high school, because many people don't. Let's assume tomorrow you're walking down the street and a complete stranger comes up to you, swipes your leg out from under you and stomps on your knee, breaking your leg. You've never done anything to this person, you don't even really know him. Sure you've seen him on your way to work from time to time, but that's it. He's just someone who happens to be in the same areas as you from time to time. But today, he decides to assault you - for no reason than just to satisfy some sick urge he has. He doesn't continue to beat you, he doesn't rape you, he doesn't steal your money or shoot you - he just breaks your leg, laughs it off and goes on his way. The following week he interviews and gets a job where you work. Do you just "get over it?" No? Okay, maybe it wasn't a week later - it's been a month? A year? 5 years? 10? - It doesn't matter, some things are not excusable or forgivable no matter how much time has passed. Some things you just don't get over.
  • gruseom 17y ago
    Some things you just don't get over. You do when you figure out how much pain you're causing yourself by holding on to them. In fact, the moment you see that, it's impossible not to let go - the same way you'd drop a red hot poker when you figured out you were holding one. I can see why this idea makes you angry if you interpret it as expecting people to "just accept" violence, abuse and so on. And I can see why it would sound like blaming the victim. Respectfully, though, it's not about accepting such things, it's about the effective way to reject them. The trouble with many of the obvious strategies for rejecting abuse is that they are deceptive: they cause one to unwittingly perpetuate it. You can easily end up inflicting more pain on yourself by reconducting the abuse in your imagination than the original experience entailed. You can also easily end up inflicting pain on people you love. The cycle of violence is a strange game, the rules of which don't work the way you (I mean anyone) would think they ought to. Just the fact that so many victims turn into victimizers is a pretty big indicator of that. The important question is, when one finds oneself in a game like that, what's the way out?
• yason 17y ago
  To exaggerate: How about forgiveness instead of raising a new karate kid generation? Note that forgiving does NOT mean "it's all right that you beat me up". Forgiveness means recognizing that "yes, they beat me; it all truly did happen back then but well, I lived" and then letting go of that old ugly shit. Almost anything in life is a better thing to do compared to keeping that stuff in your head. If he's lucky he learned something from school. Setting his boundaries properly, discarding false beliefs that he's a wimp, or whatever it is for him. I assume that he doesn't get beaten up regularly anymore? If so then he has learned. His classmates have hopefully learned something too. It's not an easy thing to forget, breaking someone's fingers. The bullies have all had wounded hearts already at the time. There's a lot to go through in that. There's a saying that we're all victims of victims. I assume it fully applies. It's not so much what happens to you but how you think of and act on it.