RenaRFs great diary prompted me to write about my own experiences with bullying. I don’t mean to steal Rena’s thunder, coat-tail on her Rec List fame, or diminish from her experiences in any way. High school can be a minefield for a lot of us, but poor Rena and her family withstood a frontal assault, and I’m very glad that she survived.
I’d like to talk about what can become of childhood bullies once they mature. While many leave bullying behind as they enter adulthood, others never grow out of it and remain stuck in a perpetual state of childhood. Knowing that their behavior would not be tolerated in the adult world and would cause them to be shunned, they seek to disguise their deviance underneath layers of legitimacy, becoming more sophisticated, more devious, and, sometimes, just as dangerous as the bullies that tormented us as children.
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