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Bullies Target Obese Kids: Being overweight is prime factor regardless of race, family income, study finds

I was bullied as a child. I was chunky (although not nearly as fat as I thought I was; I got a lot of my self-image from my mother, who had her own issues with her weight).

I was nearsighted with thick 1970s glasses.

I wore clothes my mother made for me, mostly polyester pantsuits (it was the 70s). I don't think I owned a pair of jeans until junior high. I remember them well--pink with elephants on the back pockets. Okay, so that was also the late 70s. I didn't wear jeans regularly until my senior year of high school and in college.

I was also a terrible know-it-all without social skills whose self-esteem was rooted in how well I did at school, and although I didn't really realise I showed off, I did.

So there were several factors to my being bullied. Plus I always got along better with kids younger than myself and adults. The ones in my class were older (I skipped a grade) and I guess I just couldn't relate that well to them, with the exception of a few close special friends.

I have certain snapshots from my childhood of bullying, although there were constant barbs throughout:

One kid picked on me in our neighbourhood in Louisiana and I never really fought back until he started bullying a four-year-old (I was nine, he was eight), whereupon I hit him and gave him a bloody nose. I think it's the first of only two times I've ever hit anyone for real.

I was jumped by some Hispanic and black girls at school in California. They broke my glasses and tore my coat. There were all the factors above, plus I had a Louisiana accent at the time that they may have thought worthy of making fun of. I lost that accent by the time I got to Kansas and now the only people who think I have a Southern accent are people in Minnesota or other places far north. My mom, after getting me new glasses, drove me around the base searching for them. I'm not sure whether she planned on calling the security police or taking care of them herself. It made me feel truly loved.

I was once threatened by a black girl with certain pain and possible death at school and spent two weeks finding excuses to get my mother to pick me up rather than walk home. This is why: I was having nascent bisexual feelings and really admired her athleticism (we were in gym together). I was in my horsey-girly phase, in junior high, and constantly drew horses. I went to give her a compliment and the first athlete I thought of was a jockey. In retrospect I think she thought I was calling her a lawn jockey, which is understandably upsetting. I didn't realise what I had done until I related this story to a co-worker who was of mixed race when I was about 36. Almost all of the lawn jockeys I'd seen growing up were white, and not painted with the stereotypical black features they used to be.

Bullying had the effect of making me fearful of a lot in life and certainly didn't help my self-esteem, which has been chronically low, any. I'm much better now, but it's taken years and years to come to grips with myself and like what and who I am, and to realise that their opinions never really should have mattered.