How to deal with bullies

I'm not an expert, you understand, I'm just a kid telling what
happened in our school. I'm not sure I'd even recommend what we did,
but it worked. The school was supposed to take bullying seriously, and
it had policies worked out and big notices in the corridors telling you
what to do, but the problem was that the policies were aimed at a
different sort of bully to the one we'd got. Our class bully was called
Sam, and the trouble was that he wasn't one of the remedial kids who
squinted and smelt; he was one of the cleverest kids, and definitely
the richest. Worse, his mother was chair of the Parent Teachers'
Association and one of the school governors. And, like I said, Sam was
clever; he could plan, he could sweet-talk all the teachers and he had
a strategy for every kid in the class. Divide and rule, it's called;
kids like me from middle-class families were largely left alone, as
long as we knew our place; I mean, Sam was enormous and if it came to a
fight he'd flatten me, but I was lucky in that I'd got parents who'd
ring the headmistress and write letters to the paper if things got
really rough, or they'd move me to another school. So there was a tacit
agreement that if we left him alone to get on with his nasty little
ways, then he'd leave us alone. I know that makes us sound very
cowardly, but you've got to remember that in junior school you're also
very powerless, and you'll do anything for an easy life; it's like the
wildlife films where the zebras are all afraid of the hungry lion until
it catches the zebra with the limp; but they don't get together and
help it out, they all settle down again even though their mate's
getting eaten a few feet away, 'cos now the rest of them are safe for a
little while.

Sam's targets were, of course, the poor kids from the Estate and the
run-down terraces near the railway station. Basically what he wanted
was their lunches, plus any nice little objects that took his fancy,
but mostly it was food and drink. I mean, this was terrible because he
was fat as a pig and some of the poorer kids looked as though they
needed extra lunches, not giving them away. But that's exactly what
they did; Sam would come over to them in the lunch break, root around
in their lunchboxes and take anything he fancied and they'd let him,
because if they didn't he'd thump them. Not there and then in the
cafeteria with dozens of people watching, of course; he'd bide his time
and wait until they could be got alone and then he'd set about them.
The really clever thing was, he knew how to hurt people without leaving
marks; punches to the stomach, the kidneys, the groin. So that if the
poor kids went to their parents or a teacher there was never any
evidence, and besides the poor kids were scruffy and often didn't speak
good English and their parents (unlike the middle-class mums) had to
work hard and didn't have the time or the knowledge to turn up at
school and make a fuss; many of them were just glad their kids were
getting an education, even if it was a rotten fear-filled one. And you
don't believe allegations made against the governor's son who surpasses
in all his Key Stage assessments and doesn't bring hair lice into the
school, do you? I suppose if the poor kids had banded together they
could have given Sam some of his own treatment, but it would have taken
three of four of them at least and then they'd have been accused of
forming a violent gang and been kicked out of school. Of course, Sam
didn't have any friends but he did have a sidekick called Aaron, who
was a weedy kid with spiky black hair who seemed to spend most of his
time lurking behind one of Sam's massive shoulders. Aaron wasn't
middle-class, in fact he lived on the Estate, but he came from one of
these families who have the best car in the street even though they
haven't got good jobs. Actually I think Aaron's dad had some sort of
local loan business; the house was secured like Fort Knox and anyone
who tried to break in was usually taken in to casualty not long
afterwards; Aaron's and Sam's families had the sort of mateyness you
find in people who are from very different backgrounds but have pots of
money between them.

But eventually we got rid of Sam; well, it wasn't my doing, the poor
kids came up with it all by themselves. Basically, they poisoned him.
Not with lethal chemicals so that he dropped dead, but with everyday
stuff; if I give you a couple of examples you'll get the picture. Take
Clarence; he's a black kid and every day his mum gave him this orange
juice. Sam soon realised that it wasn't the value-range stuff, it was
real orangey with bits in it, so Clarence didn't often get to drink his
juice. Anyway, one day he switched to orange and pineapple; Sam didn't
like the orange and pineapple quite so much but Clarence explained that
it had been on special offer in the supermarket and his mum had got
loads of it in so he had to bring it to school. What Clarence had
worked out was a way to seal an opened carton with Superglue, and every
morning he'd drink a few mouthfuls of his juice on the bus - Sam never
travelled by bus - fill it up with pee and reseal the carton; Sam
wasn't used to the pineapple taste so he couldn't spot the pee. I think
he was the first to start the poisoning - not a bad idea for a kid
who's statemented, was it?
Then there was Teresa - if you haven't realised, Sam would bully the
girls as well, he claimed there were more soft places to hit and you
could get them to cry more easily - who brought in corned beef
sandwiches most days. Corned beef can be bought cheap in big tins, but
despite that Sam liked corned beef so it was Teresa's sandwiches he
went for first. When Teresa learnt about Clarence's juice she thought
very hard about her sandwiches, and realised that her cat also liked
corned beef, so every morning the cat got to nibble the thick corned
beef slices and drag them round the floor for a few minutes before they
went between the slices of bread. And there were other ones more
disgusting still&;#8230;

Soon Sam was being absent on a regular basis, first for a day or two
then, as more and more people brought in dirty food, for weeks at a
time. His parents went frantic; first they called in a doctor, then a
dietician and they went through the things he'd been eating, but of
course he didn't tell them about the stuff he'd stolen at school so
they didn't catch on, and he ate such a load of unhealthy rubbish
anyway.
Each time he recovered they'd put him on a diet, but that only meant he
was hungrier than ever at school and wanted more of other people's
lunches, so the pineapple pee and the cat-licked corned beef and the
rest would start up again. Eventually they paid a lot of money for a
specialist who said that he was suffering from multiple allergies, or
maybe a strange internal disorder caught from one of the foreign kids
who had more immunity. Sam had to leave school and stay at home, and
his parents paid a lot of money again for private tutors to come and
teach him, and gradually he got better again.

The class is very different now that Sam's left; for one thing, the
poor kids realised they weren't powerless after all, so now they hang
around in noisy groups and us middle-class kids still have to mind what
we say and do or they might pick on one of us: Aaron suffered the most,
of course; once Sam wasn't around he got beat up regularly until he
worked out a strategy to appease the poor kids who'd got it in for him;
he had to stop sneering, start smiling and show a lot more respect. And
there's probably more fighting than ever now that being the cock of the
class is up for grabs, but at least it's on equal terms and if you're
not interested you can leave it alone. Some people say the school's
gone downhill - there's a lot of money from Sam's family no longer
rolling in, and we're told we've lost "expertise" and "aspiration", but
I think our class would be pretty unanimous that we're glad to see the
back of a nasty little toerag.

Sometimes I pass Sam's house and catch a glimpse of him, fat and
pasty-faced from living in the confines of his own backyard. He doesn't
look arrogant and mean any more, in fact he looks rather sad and
lonely, and I feel a bit sorry for him. But only a bit, for he was a
bully and he brought it on himself.