Long talk about a bully

I got to M’s school a bit earlier than I have been lately. Traffic’s been a nightmare as they’re redoing the main southern bypass of Nashville and everyone’s backed up on other roads, so I had some time to kill.

The doors opened and I saw M being escorted out by one of the people. She was in tears.

Long story short at dismissal someone decided to start calling her names and when that didn’t achieve the desired effect he pushed her down. Fun times.

We had some time in the car to talk about what happened. She felt shame because she’d been knocked down and started crying. I think we managed to turn that into feeling something like pity for the bully for not being bright enough to hurt her with words.

We talked about how it’s not shameful to be knocked down. How it’s pitiful to knock someone down because you couldn’t hurt them with words, and how the mental space this miscreant should take was done with.

It took a while to get near home. We talked about a great many things including how wasting one’s time on jerks was also playing into their power dynamic. I mean it was in 5 year old terms, but I’m pretty sure the end result of this was M looks at her pusher and thinks it’s really pretty sad that he can’t impact anyone except by impacting them.

Then she got a sucker and I think the thing is forgotten now.

I’m gathering that due to the teacher being out today the bully took the time to weasel into bullyish behavior. Who knows? Whatever the case the teacher’s been informed and his actions evidently are mostly forgotten except for by me.