I was always the new kid, growing up. We moved around a lot, so I was the one who sat in the back row. The teacher would introduce me to the class, which I didn’t want. All the kids would give me weird looks like I was the weird face in the crowd. And it was natural for the new kid to be picked on. New kids did look weird, not like the rest of us. You saw the same average faces every day at school until one day a fresh face came sneaking in, trying to be unnoticed. You felt compelled to hate the new face because it was unlike yours and your friends.

I was called names, from Ben Dover to Fat Boy. And that was when kids didn’t attack me like angry birds. I used to get welted in the shower by wet towels.

Kids who weren’t even popular would come up to me.

“Hey, Talbot. You want to fight?”

I would keep my head down on the walk back home from school in Florida, trying to disengage.

One kid pushed me to the grass. I was taught how to fight: to aim for the nose, the throat, the stomach, or the balls. But in those moments of fear, the strategy never came to mind. I just stood back up, brushed the grass off my knees, and continued walking.

“I said, ‘Hey Talbot, you want to fight?'”

I just kept ignoring the kid and walking home because I’d missed the bus—not that the bus was any more pleasant. Kids used to chant my name, Ben Dover, all the way to my stop. All I had to look forward to was tomorrow when it would start again.

And waiting for me at home was another bully. He stood over six feet and provided for us. But man, he had a temper. I never knew when he would self-destruct. My mother never knew either. But if one of us did something or said something he didn’t like, he would blow up at us.

Junior high was hell. High school would be better. I wasn’t picked on, I was invisible. That was good for what it was worth.

When I was in elementary school, I wanted to be the famous center of attention. But junior high had taught me not to be that. I was better off hiding in the shadows. And it continued through high school. I went from extrovert to introvert by the time I was a freshman. At least my father’s anger lessened just a little.

Now bullies are more insidious. They’re out there, but they hide and attack me when I’m not looking. They’re not like that boy who used to shove me into the grass. And they don’t just pick on me, they pick on millions. They tell us what to do. And if we don’t do it well enough, they fire us. Or they scam us out of our money. But bullies never win. They get caught sooner or later, or they meet their match.