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Photo: Getty Images
Photo: Getty Images

SocietyAugust 10, 2022

My 1980s high school bullies are still with me

Photo: Getty Images
Photo: Getty Images

You can leave school and your bullies behind, but can you ever silence their humiliating voices in your head?

I have sat down to write this every time the subject of bullying comes up in the news. That’s a couple of times a year, I suppose, because the bullies, like the poor, will always be with us. Something has always stopped me. It’s part of what perpetuates bullying in schools, workplaces, on sports fields, basically everywhere: the unwillingness of the bullied to own that label, to cast themselves as a victim.  

I was occasionally bullied at primary school. It was terrifying at the time but didn’t have a lasting effect as it felt random, rather than personal. 

I was properly bullied at high school. 

I’m told Westlake Boys High School on Auckland’s North Shore is a good school these days, former schoolmates have no hesitation sending their sons there. It’s changed, they say. It bloody needed to. 

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Lyric Waiwiri-Smith
— Politics reporter

I don’t recall exactly when it started, but it must have been pretty much straight away. I remember one day standing near two kids who were arguing light-heartedly over who was more entitled to the surname that they shared. I had been at primary school with one of them, and his surname was different then. I contributed this piece of information, and immediately wished I hadn’t: I received a murderous look, a mouthed threat and the unmistakable gesture of a fist slammed into an open palm. I was already afraid of this kid — let’s call him Lance. 

Lance was tall and athletic, a member of the rowing eight and soon enough the First XV, and he gathered around himself a group of like-minded others who joined in when a bit of amusing nastiness was on offer. But Lance’s most loyal bully buddy was an even taller kid —another fellow rower — let’s call him Stephen. These two made high school hell. 

The cruelty was more psychological than physical. I’d be scragged by four of five of them, a shoe yanked off my foot then tossed from one to another in a kind of humiliating piggy-in-the-middle thing. I’d be grabbed from behind, upended and carried, one to each limb, to a puddle and dumped in it. I had a lisp, and this was mocked. My school books were nicked and defaced. 

Not much actual physical harm was done. But the worst aspect of this kind of treatment is you start to ask yourself: “Why me? What is it about me?”

I was pudgy, pretty gormless and a social hockey player when I arrived at Westlake. I was no genius, but I was academically capable. I wasn’t the weakest kid there, but I was weak enough, and certainly no match for Lance and Stephen. I had the lisp. That was enough. 

One day I muttered something to my father about being picked on. “The only way to deal with bullies is to stand up to them,” he advised. That’s the wisdom he would have received from his own father when he was being bullied at his high school. Dad went to King’s College.

I was mulling his advice over in class the very next day when I became aware of a commotion outside. When the bell went, we all crowded out and joined a circle of kids around a couple of teeth lying in a splotch of blood on the concrete.

“What happened here?” I asked.

“Someone tried to stand up to Lance,” an awed-looking kid replied.

The school took no action that I’m aware of. Lance carried on being Lance. No one stood up to him again. 

Three years later, when I was in sixth form, I was in the classroom at lunchtime waiting for the bell for classes to resume, and probably hiding from Lance. There was another kid in there, Evan, a quiet, artistic hippy who was probably hiding from Lance too. The door opened, and Lance came in. He was visibly aroused, and Evan noticed.

“There’s dark spots on the front of your shorts,” he said, his voice full of loathing.

Lance shot him that familiar, murderous look, and turned and left, returning minutes later with Stephen who strode up to Evan, grabbed the front of his shirt, dragged him upright and forced him up against the wall. He pulled a knife from his pocket and held the blade to Evan’s throat. 

The door opened again. Framed in the doorway was the deputy headmaster. He took in the scene and jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “My office.”.

Stephen mooched out, followed by Lance. Evan and I looked at each other and I could tell he was thinking what I was thinking. At last, the reign of terror was over! Stephen would be expelled! Lance would be deprived of his main henchman! School wouldn’t be the horror show it had been for the last four years!

Nothing happened. Stephen was at school the following day, and he and Lance were still at the head of their pack of goons. The deputy headmaster was also the coach of the First XV. And in the end, when your school has Maadi Cup aspirations, the rules don’t apply to anyone who is that good at tugging on his oar. 

Boys, as they say, will be boys. But boys need help to become men — civilised male members of society — from responsible adults. The responsible adults were Awol at Westlake. The headmaster seemed laser-focused on school prestige — rowing, rugby, cricket, academia, in that order — and he fully set the tone. 

I left Westlake, Lance, Stephen and the rest of them behind at the end of 1983. I had survived — but only just. The wheels came off for me in my first two years at university; I was depressed and borderline suicidal. Because the thing about bullying is that the bullies are always with you. Even after they’ve gone, there’s a part of you doing their job for them. You avoid conflict. You don’t stand up for yourself, because you don’t feel as though you’re allowed to. There’s a mean little voice at the back of your mind. “There’s something wrong with you,” it says. “You’re pathetic, weak and powerless,”  it says. “You can’t aspire to anything.”

You could say that the experience of being bullied made me a better person than I might have been, and set me on the path that has brought me to the excellent place  I am now. I sometimes wonder who I’d be now if  I’d gone to another school, or if Lance, Stephen and co. had taken their twisted little psyches elsewhere. I wonder what would have happened if Westlake had acted on any of the complaints of bullying that they must surely have received. But that’s all hypothetical. But what’s real is that mean little voice that’s with me still. Whenever anyone compliments me on something, I’m conscious of an immediate, disparaging reflex. 

A few years ago, I was in Wellington’s Civic Square when a vaguely familiar face appeared from the crowd in front of me. 

“McCrystal, isn’t it?” he asked. 

I’m bad with faces and worse with names, but his name came back to me straight away. He was a shy, frail-looking boy at school, and my path hadn’t really crossed his, though we were in the same year.  I remembered he was a gifted pianist. I asked him if he still played, and he seemed grateful that I recalled something positive about him. He told me he still lived in Auckland. “What brings you to Wellington?” I asked.

He told me matter-of-factly that he’d been in therapy for years, as the result of his experiences at Westlake. His therapist had suggested he confront those who’d tortured him, and who continued to torment him after the fact. So that’s what he was doing. He was touring the country confronting the bullies. I wondered with some alarm whether I was being confronted. 

Because the sad truth is that I can’t absolve myself completely. From time to time, a room full of kids waiting for the teacher to arrive would round on a boy. Maybe his speech mannerisms, like mine, invited mockery, or his surname was lisped in such a way as to make insinuations about his sexuality. I can’t remember whether I joined in when it was someone else’s turn. I’m pretty sure I would have grinned, as though it was funny — anything to ingratiate myself. At the very least, I know for a shameful fact I did nothing to intervene or to stand up for the blushing, miserable object of cruelty.  

‘Hutt Valley, Kāpiti, down to the south coast. Our Wellington coverage is powered by members.’
Joel MacManus
— Wellington editor

People can change. When I decided I would finally write about my school days, I did a quick bit of cyber-stalking. The gang all still live locally. They have all got on in life, more or less. They still seem to share common interests. Curiously, each of their Facebook profile pictures show them holding a large snapper — for all you can tell it’s the same fish — but it’s hard to say what kind of people they are now, how they might recall their own school days, how they would talk about bullying with their kids.

I wonder what they would say if I confronted them. Would they apologise? Would they mean it? Would any apology they gave me mean anything to me?

Keep going!
Tūranga, Christchurch’s Central Library, which opened in 2018 (Photo by Kai Schwoerer/Getty Images)
Tūranga, Christchurch’s Central Library, which opened in 2018 (Photo by Kai Schwoerer/Getty Images)

SocietyAugust 9, 2022

In praise of public libraries, and the indomitable people who work in them

Tūranga, Christchurch’s Central Library, which opened in 2018 (Photo by Kai Schwoerer/Getty Images)
Tūranga, Christchurch’s Central Library, which opened in 2018 (Photo by Kai Schwoerer/Getty Images)

Librarians these days are as much social workers as experts in books, writes David Hill.

The guy was getting increasingly agitated. His voice rose; he glared at the young staff member. She asked something, and suddenly he was swearing and yelling at her. He took a step forward, and she cringed away.

A security guard came striding up. “You’ll have to leave, mate.” The belligerent man wheeled towards him, while the young staff member stood, shaking.

A disgruntled client at Winz? A troubled patient at A&E? In fact, it was at the information desk of our local library, and it wasn’t the first time I’d seen such a confrontation.

Picture a public library, and you see….what? If you’re well into your second half-century like me, you probably recall a respectful hush, figures seated at tables or moving quietly around shelves, an authority figure in spectacles at an issues desk. You may even remember a wall sign reading SILENCE”. (A few milder branches added “PLEASE”.)

How things change. Our public libraries now – there are some 300 of them across the country – are places of talk, music, play. A lot have cafes, or let you eat and drink on the premises. They host book launches, JP desks, Scrabble clubs, Lego builds for small kids, migrant women meetings, movie and gaming nights for teens. They offer free wifi and computers. They’re also de facto day shelters for numbers of homeless and otherwise challenged people.

(Bilious aside here, to note that the men’s shelter in our town often has to reduce its services because of money problems. Where do its troubled clients then go? To our library, among other places. The shelter’s last grant from our local council was $7,000. Meanwhile the same council has promised $2.4 million over the next financial year towards a sports stadium. But that’s a comparison, and comparisons are invidious.)

‘No online site can equal the face-to-face, communal nature of a library.’ (Photo: Getty Images)

Anyway, it’s understandable that librarian training now includes lessons on how to handle disturbed or threatening clients. And on first aid: it’s not unknown for library staff to become first responders in emergencies.

In some libraries, staff don’t want to wear name tags. Pretty well every one of them I’ve spoken to at our local branch has been abused and threatened, told “I know where you live!” Some have been grabbed or shoved; one at least was punched. Their forbearance towards those responsible is remarkable.

Then there are other issues: finding three under-eights alone and uncertain in the kids’ section while Mum goes shopping; discovering that the dishevelled old guy slumped on a seat in the biography section doesn’t seem to be breathing.

As free community facilities, libraries and librarians see the effects of drugs, poverty, unemployment, homelessness. Syringes have been found in our branch’s toilets. For some people, it’s a place to wash bodies and even clothes.

So staff report being stressed, targeted, guilty that they can’t do their work fully and professionally. Just like nurses. Or teachers.

And in a number of ways, they have similar jobs. They deal with the medicated, unstable, anti-social. They face complaints. (“Why isn’t that wonderful book here?….Why is this disgusting book here?”) They’re abused when computers aren’t available. They have to handle crises out of left field (“My brother’s got cancer. I need a book on how to save him…Can I rip out the lies in this rubbish thing?”)

No surprise then, that security guards are now a presence in many libraries. Lori from Iowa tells me that in the US, their library security usually carry guns. Think of that next time you complain about your overdues fine.

Actually, those fines are now en route to joining the SILENCE PLEASE” signs. Many branches are dropping them, acknowledging financial hurdles, trying to stay accessible to as many people as possible.

Because public libraries are still sometimes perceived as places for the three W’s: white, well-off and well-on in years. Other people can feel daunted; some come in prickly, ready to feel condescension or disapproval, ready to get angry. Libraries and librarians are trying to change this image. Successfully? Look at your own local branch.

But isn’t all the above increasingly irrelevant? Aren’t books yielding to screens, and libraries to online sources? Aren’t they both on their way to becoming anachronisms?

Never. Not in a thousand-plus years. No screen can match the deep, still, tactile pleasure of sitting with a book. No online site can equal the face-to-face, communal nature of a library.

And public libraries are community centres. In the days after 9/11, libraries across the US were full of people wanting to set up condolence books for victims’ families, leave gifts, find reliable (note that adjective) information about Islam. Wanting also to be together, to share grief and loss. The same happened here after the Christchurch mosque shootings.

Public libraries are icons. Think of the distress when Wellington Central closed for earthquake strengthening. Again in the US, they’re now ranked as essential services, alongside police, fire, medical, utilities. They’re being mooted there as perfect sites for early voting in local and federal elections: the best hope for future trusted election outcomes,” wrote the New York Times in 2020. Another potential role – or burden – for ours?

One group of our libraries, the School Library Association of New Zealand Aotearoa – Te Puna Whare Matauranga a Kura, are holding their inaugural Library Week August 8 -12. Look kindly upon them and on all librarians. They’re medics and educators, child-tenders and psychologists, facilitators and IT techs. They can probably tell you a fair bit about books as well, if they ever get the time.

But wait there's more!