Targeted

What Bullies Are and Why They Pick Me

Photo by Kübra ÇELIK from Pexels

I am considered very short for an American woman. My genetics have predestined me to grow to a maximum height of 4’ 11” then in later years I shrank to around 4’ 9.5”. I take up very little space which, looking on the bright side, might be a good thing for the planet. On the not so bright side, big crowds can make me feel claustrophobic as if stuck inside a human canyon. I usually have to look up whenever anyone speaks to me above the age of ten or eleven. Children of those ages are ecstatic to stand next to me because I am always the first adult they surpass in height and it thrills them to no end that even though I’m the grown up I’m short enough for them to look down on.

That’s okay. My ego can handle it. I would say that one of the biggest downsides of my lack of height in a land of tall people is that I can sometimes be a target for bullies. In addition to this lack of height, I am female and I am Asian. I tick off all the boxes which in the mind of a bully add up to … “Go for it!”

There have been several incidents while running on my own that a guy or guys decided to pick on the very slow running, older aged Asian woman. I did have some experiences being bullied as a youngster but I believed since becoming an adult those days were over. Truth be told, some bullies never grow up. One that didn’t was a guy in a group of others who thought it would be hilarious to yell something demeaning at the innocuous and oblivious me running around the track. Someone he had no respect for, was in no way intimidated by, and most importantly couldn’t fight back.

My bullies were probably sadists as children who may have started by torturing insects and small animals. They graduated to humans once they entered the schoolyard. They probably hung out in groups with a whole spectrum of bullies from the wannabes all the way to real bullies who had mastered the art of bringing harm to another. They were all inherently cowards who remain really angry about that fact. That is why they lash out at someone who has no defenses against them: no friends who have their back, no quick words in stinging rebuke, no fists that can effectively land a punch, nothing to prevent them from making themselves feel more powerful by doing harm to someone who is incapable of doing harm to them.

While I didn’t come to blows with my adult bullies, I did make some noises. I yelled something at them as I was making my rounds on the track and on another occasion said something to the scrawny teenager’s face as he was prancing around in front of me blocking me from running. I wasn’t afraid of my bullies mostly because they didn’t look like they knew how to fight. Not that I do, but these days I do know how to run my mouth. Thirteen years of living with a verbally abusive ex has taught me a lot about how to dish it out.

I know there are limits to this. You do have to size up your opponent. Words can lead to shoves, shoves to punches, punches to stomping. Even though I’ve never been in a bar fight, or any physical fight for that matter, I am enough of a survivalist to know there are times you just have to suck it up and stand down. I think about this a lot these days when it is especially harrowing to be out and about while Asian. I have often said that we are just one world incident away from becoming the preferred minority target.

Fortunately for me, my bullies weren’t scary and granted it only happened a handful of times. But it was enough to make me wonder what criteria I met in their minds for them to single me out of whoever else was around at the time. Was it my height? Gender? Race? All three? Did I, in the happenstance of my birth, unknowingly hit the bullying trifecta which placed a large, neon blaring bullseye across my forehead? Lucky me.

Those incidents at the track were clearly the behavior of bullies but there were other encounters I’ve had that I’m not sure come under the umbrella of bullying but I’m also not sure that they don’t.

In the search for produce that has actual flavor I go to a neighborhood farmer’s market every Wednesday since I am retired and to avoid the crowds of the weekend market. The people that are there on a Wednesday morning are right in my comfort zone, old people like me and stay at home moms with little kids in tow.

Unfortunately, there is no common understanding of how to operate in a farmer’s market. There are no lines to get into so you can politely wait your turn. Everybody converges at the produce filled tables, picking up and putting down, asking for bags, filling those bags, then attempting to get the attention of someone behind the table so they can pay. Everybody is doing this, all at once, so there is no clarity of who has the right of way or should be first to be served. It all comes down to each individual deciding whether they will patiently wait for their turn. Or not.

I have had encounters with a few, I’ll just say it, white women saying things to me about where they stood and where I stood in the non-existent line. It made me wonder if I was again being targeted for being myself. Did I fit some category that made it easy for them to say things and behave in a way that they wouldn’t had I been taller, whiter, and less female? I am already struggling with a chip on my shoulder from growing up as a minority so sometimes when this happens I put it down to that chip still being there and haunting me. It’s just me, I tell myself. I’m too hyper-sensitive, too quick to judge, too prone to over analyzing where slights like these are coming from. I wonder if they looked just like me would I simply put their behavior down to this person is a grouch, is having a bad day, would have said it to anyone. But since I don’t look like them I can’t help but wonder if my appearance represented something that made it easier for them to unleash their impatience and unkind words.

In my country, I know I’m different from the mean and stick out on the outer edges of the bell curve in more ways than one. Short in a world of tall people, female in a man’s world of power, Asian in a land that is not primarily Asian. Being different from most people in a variety of ways means I have a greater chance of fitting into someone’s version of “the other.” For some, that will create interest, for others it is an opportunity to vent their poison. It is a strange position to fill in a society. Not unlike the canary in a coal mine sent down to see if the air is life sustaining, I sometimes feel like I am likewise a test determining the amount of goodwill in the air around me.