School bullying – I feel the pain of those that are bullying victims for sure!
The pictures here are of me in the 3rd and 4th grades. I went to elementary school (grades 1-4 only) in the small town where I grew up.
My class was SMALL and by small I do mean that there were 7 of us. 4 boys and 3 girls! It was fun at times but mostly difficult the way that I recall it.
The three of us girls seemed to have a hard time ALL getting along. There was always a battle to be the best friend and always seemed to be an odd man (girl) out! How sad is that?!
I remember being teased like crazy from the 4 boys as well as the boys in the class ahead of us. At the time, everyone (my parents) would say the famous “they just tease you because they like you”. That may have been true, but it certainly didn’t feel like it. Looking back now as an adult, there really was some pretty serious bullying going on.
I can remember being physically hurt. In fact one day my parents got called in to the principal because I had been punched in the stomach. Yikes!
I know it was more than just teasing to me because I can remember not wanting to go to school and I can actually remember the feeling of wanting to die – yuck! Not being overly dramatic…it’s just the truth.
I admit to watching Lifetime movies sometimes on the weekend and I recently watched “Odd Girl Out”. This movie was all about a poor young girl that went from being popular in school to getting bullied ALL because of a boy. (Her friend liked the boy and the boy liked her!)
The movie ended on a good note with the girl taking a stand and sticking up for herself against the bullies but this was after much turmoil including an attempted suicide.
Wow! We cannot be too careful with our children/teens when it comes to this fragile period of their lives. With today’s increase in technology there have been horrible cases of cyber bullying which have ended with teens taking their lives.
My story also ended on a good note. 😉 Years later, (in fact it was my high school graduation) the leader of that elementary school bully pack had shown up at my graduation party. He had moved away years prior to that. He pulled me aside with a gift and told me how sorry he was for the way he had treated me in grade school. Crazy, but good!
I’m a big child/teen advocate and believe that we must stop bullying before this situation gets even worse among our children and teens.
I absolutely LOVED to do this. I would seek out other vantage points around my 
Here I take a little journey through thoughts of my adolescent body image as I recall it.
Here again, you can see that I was of pretty average weight. I don’t remember my parents feeding me anything other than the occasional treat when it came to sweets at this age.
In both of these pictures to the left, I was 12 years old. I believe I was very aware of my changing body and how I looked at this stage relating to my adolescence body image. Not sure what was going on with my jeans in the first picture. LOL AND it certainly doesn’t seem that I had an issue with showing my legs in the second picture. 😉
Introducing…Paula the Water Skier!
My grandfather and aunt taught me how to water ski when I was pretty young and they felt confident enough about me being in the water. I can remember sitting in the boat watching my aunt ski who was really quite good and desperately wanting to learn to water ski. Finally the day came and she loaned me a pair of water skiis. I’m sure that I did not get up that first day.
I have wonderful father daughter stories and memories of my childhood. Of course I loved my mother just as much as dear ol dad, but there was something about spending time with him that I loved. Perhaps it was because I was the first born and a girl at that. (My brother wouldn’t come along until 2 more daughters and several years later.) I guess one might have called me a tomboy in my youth and I don’t think I would have minded.
Memory #2 and why I know I did many things just to hang out with my father…aren’t little girls cute? 😉 I was my fathers daughter and I wanted to be by his side even if it meant the freezing cold of winter toting a gun and mindful of the tears freezing on my cheek because I was so uncomfortable. I did the gun safety course just as any son …errr daughter would do, but even before I could carry a gun I was going on these deer hunting expeditions with him.
