Were you a bully at school?

I hated it when other kids picked on a kid with an obvious weakness.

P!ss-taking amongst your peers is different. We all did that. We only took the p!ss out of people we liked.

Can't think of anyone I knew in my school that was bullied, then again, bullying happens on the sly doesn't it, would always have been unlikely to have happened to me as I had an older cousin and brother in the years above me, was definitely not one myself, all I wanted to do was play football. If by bullying you mean name calling, then we all call each other names, I had a pair of football boots once called Patrick, low brand, lost cost footwear and naturally had the piss taken as was called Patrick for a few months but then it died out and people move on to the next thing, I think a lot of it comes down to how sensitive a person you are, for the more aggressive, physical type of bully, there is only one course of action, get physical yourself, it's the only language they will understand. I guess all kids at some point or another test the water to see what they can get away with to relieve their own problems/frustrations, just apart of growing up.

I'd say unless you're the quiet type it can be a perception thing at school. You may think you're having a laugh and really popular but you could well be intimidating people with your presence. I'd say not and used humour a lot but suddenly in year three at secondary they were lining up to fight me. I hadn't changed but peoples perception of me had changed because my brother had left the school and he was a handy lad and suddenly from being an easy going person who peple tended to laugh with I was fighting for my life because of my name. I reacted badly to that and overstepped the mark a couple of times as a result.

I was a bit of a bully at my first job. I went to a private school in Sydney where there was bugger all bullying.Then I started an electricians apprenticeship at a Big Company. I soon realised I was in another world here. I quickly realised there were cool kids and not cool kids. I became cool. A gift of the gab and an ability to make people laugh gave me a dream run.

There was bullying there but was very mild. Never physical. Just making fun of people.

there is a type of bully that has two weaker innofesive crony,s and deliberately targets someone  he thinks is vulnerable ,like a newcomer .typica[[y he may wait with his cronies after school to ambush the victim

Spot on op.

Nowadays everyone is bullied it's a wonder there are enough bullies to go round.

I went to secondary school 79/80 it was a nightmare,really rough school almost guaranteed to get hit be involved in a fight or someone bullying you,it was the punk era a terrible time to be in a rough school.The year 5s were regularly fighting with the teachers and winningjumping out of top floor windows,gobbing on teachers backs at break times was a complete nightmare.You would get dead legs just walking down corridors,stabbed with compasses,the punks were even put up as prefects I remember around the age of 13 getting headbutted by one of the punk prefects really was surreal looking back.Everyone smoked as well round so at pe you'd take your **** out with you on cross country and walk the whole way,heads flushed down bogs.There was even a murder at the school when one girl in my year hit another girls head on a radiator,she didn't get charged as was accidental but every time she was taunted withthin lizzys ''killer on the loose''happy days eh.Thats why 95% of schoolkids were in that school bullies themselves totally out of control,fortunately I was good at sport and fit so only had to worry about the 4/5 bruisers in my year.

Blimey The Giggilo, sounds like Clare Park in Kent a couple of years before I got there.

well put rob - an exact description of myself also.   yes, all kids are rsoles.

I was never bullied at school and had a reputation of being someone to avoid at all costs because I was fearless from playing front row rugby for so many years. Having two older brothers helped as well who were both top amateur boxers and that gave me an early wake up call as how to protect myself and when you get a chance nail any troublemakers. If any of my friends were getting hassled and pushed around, usually they were all far more academic than I was and not into sports, they would invariably come to see me and my other rugby mate and that would be the end of the matter. To be fair though bullying wasn't really a major issue at school, it was some of the teachers that were the real culprits and not the pupils.
Back then they got away with stuff that would have them arrested today for assault.

We got treated pretty badly by the six formers when we were in year 3. I got my head smashed into a wall because I didn't have a belt for one of the prefects to borrow.

Oddly enough, my year presented a united but slightly odd and inconsistent front against bullying when we were in the upper sixth form. We told the kids in lower years we'd batter the sh*t out of them if we got a sniff of any of them bullying each other. We got wind of some bullying once, acted, and it never, to our knowledge, happened again.