[Mark Lapierre]

I had all the trappings of a reject when I was in primary school. I was a good student from the start; I easily picked up everything I was taught and could always correctly answer teacher's questions. Being very skinny I appeared to be a typical nerd, albeit without the thick glasses.

I was also moved from a public school to a Christian school, in my third year of school. I used to be able to wake up, slowly get ready, sit and watch cartoons, then when I heard the bell ring, run across the road to class. Then, because my mum decided she wanted me and my brother to have a Christian upbringing, she decided that we'd have to go to another school, about 3 kilometers away on the other side of the biggest hill in the suburb (and our suburb was quite hilly).

I was upset. I don't remember how my brother felt, but I wasn't concerned with his feelings at that age, all I knew was that I had to catch the bus to school, and I had to wake up half an hour earlier than I used to, and I had to leave my friends. I cried a lot.

I'm sure most people would expect that the new, skinny nerd, cry-baby, and teacher's pet, would become a target for all the bullies. Yet I was almost never picked on. Or at least I was never picked on to the point of getting hurt. Sure, a few tried, but the thing that saved me was that I didn't react the way they expected. They'd tease me and I'd accept what they said, then fire an insult back. I'd be completely dead pan as I said it so that they couldn't tell if I was joking or not, but they'd know that I wasn't upset. I was pretty sarcastic too, so they actually found it funny, though I didn't intend it that way. I had no idea what I was doing at the time, but it worked so I didn't even think about it.

The bullies ended up ignoring me, and because I never thought of myself as better than anyone else, the non-bullies accepted me and I was able to make some new friends. I didn't really "click" with most of my classmates, but it seemed no-one thought of me as an outcast, despite meeting all the criteria.

I did end up getting beaten up once. One bully decided to follow me home one day and beat me up while a couple of his friends watched and laughed. I did the typical childish thing, I cried my way home, told my mum, then begged her to not to confront the other kid's mum. None-the-less she dragged me along, the other kid's mum said he was in big trouble, and I feared to return to school.

I avoided the bully for the next few days, and whatever his punishment was must have been effective because he didn't come looking for me.

I also joined a nearby karate club to make sure that I could defend myself next time. I never had to though, I was never bullied again.

Take from that what you will, but what it tells me, is that the way I behaved, the attitude I had towards others, was what caused them to treat me the way they did. They were interested in their own thing, and when I didn't fit their view of how I should act, they ended up viewing me differently. I didn't even have to change the way they thought, I just had to make sure I gave them the opportunity to fit me into a pre-existing image that was better for me. I'm grateful for the upbringing which allowed me to do that without realising it myself.