More words.

           Alright folks, I'm back. I promised a new blog last night but I lied. Deal with it.
           I've been asked to write about a number of topics, including one that I'm pretty excited about but need to do a little more research on. So I've decided to dedicate this rant to bullying. A lot has been said about bullying in the past year or so, and I'm here to give you my opinion on the subject.
           Let me start by saying that I was fortunate enough through high school to not really have to deal with bullying. I played football so I was just "in" enough to not be bullied. That being said, I did see it happen and would agree it is a serious problem in schools.
          There's a lot of things that lead someone to be a bully. A very common shared trait is abuse or neglect at home, though it's not always the case. From my experiences around bullying, it's usually someone just feeling that they're better than another person, and the victim having some trait that's easy to pick on. (Goth, loner, handicap, speech impediment, etc.) Often, the bully has some aspect of themselves that they're not comfortable with and they project that onto a victim.
         As far as victims, sadly, it's usually people that already feel a disassociation with society to some degree, and the bullying only furthers it. The little bit of trust the victim has in people is lessened because of the bullying. Which I think might be the saddest part about the whole thing. People that are already on the fringes of society further themselves even more because the bully verifies their opinion of how people are. They miss out on opportunities in life because they're afraid of other people. They stay secluded and don't get to experience a lot of things.
       And that is only one possible effect of bullying. As we've seen, victims are also prone to committing suicide or even mass homicide because they were bullied. So what seems like a small ordeal to the bully ends up taking one or more lives, completely unnecessarily.
       So what is the solution? I have a somewhat unconventional idea, but bear in mind it's nowhere near an overnight fix. A lot of people argue that the police should follow up every single threat of violence in schools, no matter how minimal it may seem. I don't believe this, nor do I think it's even possible. A lot of kids talk a lot of shit at one point or another, and I'd be willing to say 90% of the time, it's all bullshit. I think the first line of responsibility in that situation should be the teacher, provided of course that it happens in school. The teacher that best knows the student should be the one do make the call as to whether the comments should be investigated or not. Ideally, the teacher would have spent enough time with the student to be able to tell if they were serious. Also, ideally, teachers would legitimately give a shit enough about their students to actually care about whether it should be investigated. I think if the claims are unfounded, it should be dismissed; however, a second occurrence should be investigated, without question. If the teachers says it should be investigated, the student should have to see a school counselor or even a third-party psychiatrist who can spend time with the student and figure out if they're a danger. If it's found they are a danger, deal with it accordingly. Do they need to be detained? Put in jail? House arrest? Monitored? More counseling? Find the best solution for that individual student and go with it. This puts responsibility foremost on the one person who should feel most responsible-the teacher. It also helps to identify the actual risk based on studying the person individually, rather than punishing them a certain way just because of precedence.
      The second thing I think we need to help cull the problem is martial arts taught in school. It may seem counter-intuitive, but let's be honest-being able to defend yourself is an important part of being a man. You shouldn't go looking for fights by any means, but you should be able to physically defend yourself if necessary. A bug reason bullies pick on people is that they know the person can't defend themselves. If a person hits a bully back, chances are the bully will leave them alone. So if you're in a school where you know, absolutely, that every person there is fully capable of defending themselves, what reason would you have to pick on anyone? Common sense may dictate that everyone being able to fight equals more fighting, but anyone that's spent time training martial arts in an actual gym will tell you that, as long as the gym leader is nice, it's a very relaxed, happy atmosphere. Nobody goes in trying to hurt anybody else. People that do get weeded out pretty quickly. I think that having some sort of martial art first thing in the morning would relax tensions throughout the rest of the day. If you work hard and get worn out and beat up in the morning, you're not going to have the energy to be a bully through the rest of the day, let alone the inclination. Now, at first, there will most certainly be douches who think they're better at it than other people and there will be some bullying. Kick them out of the class. Let the other students that aren't being fuckheads get better at defending themselves and let the bully stop learning how to fight. Pretty simple fix. It may not seem like it, but I think this would go a long way towards fixing the bullying problem.
       So those are my ideas. Until they happen, REPORT bullying, eve if it seems like a small thing. The potential consequences just aren't worth it. And I'm not often one to preach violence, but if you're getting bullied, and you've reported it and nothing's been done, hit that motherfucker in the face. I'll show you how to throw a punch if you need it. You land a good shit and I guarantee they'll leave you alone. Make it a last resort though.
     Owls are the only birds in the world that can see the color blue. Take care of yourselves, you fucks.
      And follow me on Twitter: BryanOnAWire