[patentatt]

That's me. Grew up in a very middle to perhaps lower-middle-class area and went to more-or-less middling schools. It definitely wasn't 'the mean streets' or anything but very blue collar. I'm certain there were kids living through very real problems at home and in their personal lives all around me. But I was blissfully unaware and disconnected from all that as I was wrapped in the bubble of band and honors/gifted classes and the associated type of kid. A pretty good childhood overall. One time, one 5-minute instance, I was actively, actually bullied, in a very minor and entirely inconsequential way by the football captain jock kind of kid. Took me by surprise, but rattled my cage enough that I still remember it. He went on to play in the NFL, had a short and pretty much unremarkable career as an athlete best I can tell, and now is a construction worker nearby and I saw a headline once that he got arrested for a DUI. I now live in a much nicer neighborhood in a bigger house than he does, and based on the blurb about the DUI, I drive a better car than he does/did. Point is, I can't imagine what it's like to actually be bullied. One tiny thing happened to me in an entirely impersonal and inconsequential way and here I am decades later googling the guy and feeling smug that I came out on top. I would have been crushed by any amount of real bullying.