HAVING BEEN a fat little kid as a child, with a broken chair as my “bench-mark,” broken because I sat in it. It was obvious how my bullies would easily be able to “unseat” me whenever they chose.

However, as a singer and actor in my elementary school days, my popularity gave me a strength that masked my “fatness” as a fatal weakness. It gave me, instead, a shield behind which I could ignore the nasty sentiments bullies used to frighten their targets.

Bullies seek out our weaknesses, which often we hide from ourselves, and pounce upon them until we fold, and then they have us.

Despite the fact that we all have weaknesses, once a bully announces ours, it is as if all the world sees ours now, and their existence makes it seem as if only we (I) have that particular weakness, and it is disgraceful, and the bully and we (I) now both know it. What could be more terrible?

The bully, you know, has himself/herself been bullied. You know that, don’t you? That’s a reason a bully tries to find someone else to bully. It means that as parent’s we need to point out strengths our kids have, so that our children begin to recognize that all of us have strengths and weaknesses, and that in time we all improve and that eventually our weaknesses turn out (with encouragement from our parents) to become our best strength.

Of course, as kids, it may be hard to believe but help them to see their strengths, so they don’t assume they only have weaknesses.

If only the parents of bullies understood that, their children might have avoided becoming bullies themselves. But who knows what those same parents experienced themselves? It’s worth thinking about...maybe then we’d have fewer bullies and lots more friends.

Perhaps someday. Wouldn’t that be wonderful?