Bullying at Bishop Vesey's Grammar School
I remember the first time I saw Bishop Vesey's. It was like Hogwarts, with old staircases leading up into recesses and a big hall presumably used for wizard ceremonies.
My mom was worried I wasn't going to fit in. She thought I was too dumb for the school. So my mom phoned the school and conveyed her fears to the receptionist on the other end - "I'm just worried he's going to get left behind..." But the receptionist reassured her that there was nothing to worry about. In fact, the receptionist said that I was one of the smarter kids, if the results of the entrance exam were anything to go by. I would fit in just fine, she said.
Let me tell you that I did not fit in just fine.
When I started Bishop Vesey's, I noticed straight away that the kids were different to me. Their dads didn't work in factories and their moms didn't claim benefits from the council. Their dads worked in white-collar jobs like stock trading and car designing.
And these kids didn't go on holiday to South Wales. These kids went away for ski trips to the Alps. They summered in the French Riviera. They played instruments, and not just shit instruments like the recorder or the triangle, but impressive instruments like the baronet and the oboe.
Sometimes I got to visit the other boys' houses. The first thing I noticed when entering their houses is that their houses smelled weird. It was a sickeningly sweet smell. It took me many years to realise what it was. It was the smell of air fresheners. Their houses had plugin air fresheners that would release artificial smells into rooms in a controlled manner. My house didn't have plugin air fresheners that released artificial smells into rooms in a controlled manner. We only had a can of Febreze we kept on the toilet for when my dad did a really smelly poo, which was often.
When entering a middle-class house, I had to take my shoes off to avoid tracking mud onto the carpet. The carpets in middle-class houses were always wonders to behold. They were cream or white coloured, with dense plush wool tufts. The first time I stepped on a middle-class carpet, it felt was I was walking on a cloud.
Every kid in a middle-class house had their own bedroom. There was no sleeping in bunk beds here. Neither was there only one bathroom which opened directly onto the kitchen like in my house. No, these middle-class houses had two bathrooms, so when your dad was busy doing a poo in the downstairs bathroom, you could run upstairs and urinate in the upstairs bathroom, instead of having to urinate in the back garden.
I was bullied at Bishop Vesey's. I would like to tell you I was bullied because my family was poor, because that would be a simple reason, and everyone understands rich kids bully poor kids. But in truth that wasn't the reason I was bullied. Being poor didn't make you unpopular at Vesey, just as being rich didn't make you popular. There was one kid, whose name I won't mention for privacy reasons except to say it was Michael Whitehouse, who used to have a house with a swimming pool, a tennis court, and a team of servants, and he was one of the most unpopular kids at the school. So me being poor wasn't really the problem.
Perhaps the reason I was bullied was that I couldn't kick a ball. Ball games were a big deal at Vesey. If you were good at throwing or kicking a ball then you had a bright future ahead you at Bishop Vesey's Grammar School; you were going to fit in just fine. Teachers would respect you and other boys would befriend you. The school had numerous sports teams, including successful rugby, hockey, and cricket teams that would play other schools across the West Midlands. The school also had cross-country, rowing, and netball, rowing and tennis. Unfortunately, I was one of those kids who gets picked last for teams and who can't kick a ball even if the ball was sellotaped to his own foot. Hockey sticks scared me (because what if you get hit in the face?) and the furthest I could throw a ball was about five yards.
Maybe I'd better tell you about some of the bullying I endured.
Physical bullying
There are many types of bullying. One type is physical bullying. This is what people tend to think of when they hear the word 'bullying'. Getting punched in the stomach and shoved inside your locker, that sort of thing.
However, I never saw any physical bullying at Bishop Vesey's. I never saw anyone hit or kick anyone else to bully them. There were fights but these were generally between the more testosterone-driven kids.
The most that happened to me in regard to physical bullying was that a kid called Umar Hussein sometimes jabbed me with his ruler during Physics class. He did this simply because he thought it was funny.
Verbal abuse
The most common form of bullying at Bishop Vesey's was verbal abuse. This is where the bully calls the victim names or insults them.
Insults were extremely common at school. We called it 'blazing'. Instead of insulting one another, we were 'blazing' each other. We congratulated the bully when he made a particularly good 'blaze'.
Things other students made fun of about me:
- The fact my family was poor whereas most of the other boys were from middle-class families
- My complete lack of aptitude for sport
- The fact I enjoyed schoolwork, or at least didn't hate it like everyone else
- My hair (some of the front hairs used to stand up in a V-shape)
- The way I ate
- The way I spoke
- My Polish surname (Pietrzak)
- My bag (it was a cheap Head bag instead of an expensive Nike or Adidas bag)
- My dad's job
- My MP3 player (I had a cheap one and everyone else had iPods)
- The music I listened to
- The fact I liked Pokemon and Tamagotchis
- The fact I was somewhat autistic and came across as aloof to the other students
- Pretty much everything really
Some of this, I suppose, was done in good jest. It's normal to have some level of teasing between friends.
But most of it, I think, was done to maintain the social hierarchy at school.
In social animals, there always is an alpha male, the individual who dominates all the other group members. Then there are the beta males, and then finally, at the lowest of the chain are the 'omega' animals.
Bishop Vesey's was no different. The social structure was very much like that of a pack of wild animals. At the top were the hard boys, the ones who would threaten to punch you if you so much as looked at them. In the middle were the majority of the other boys, and then at the bottom of the food chain was me and my geeky, unathletic mates.
The alpha males constantly insulted the nerds to keep them in their place. This way, the alpha males could stay at the top of the social hierarchy.
The nerds quickly learned to hang around each other, where at least they'd be safer. This is what I did. I made friends with a group of outcasts like myself. In my friend group, there was a fat kid, a Jewish kid, a nerdy kid, and me. We were all brought together by our ineptitude at sports and our preference for geeky things like Pokemon. The rest of the kids called the four of us the "Gay Patrol".
(As an aside, being gay was the very worst thing you could be at Bishop Vesey. For that reason, no one ever admitted to being gay, even though a large number of boys must have been gay, given that something like 5% of the population is homosexual or bisexual. I consider myself lucky that I'm not gay, because if I was gay at Bishop Vesey's, then that, on top of my lack of social skills, my inaptitude for sport, and my dislike of football, would have caused the other schoolboys to murder me for sure and leave my body in a ditch.)
(Also, showing an interest in girls meant you were gay for sure. Only the most gayest of gay boys would prefer to be alone with a girl instead of enjoy the manly company of other males. The only surefire way not to be gay was to join the school's rugby team, where you could tussle around with other boys in the mud and enjoy homoerotic scrums, and afterwards chant "Vesey boys we are here, grab our girls, drink our beer" while enjoying a naked shower together.)
There was even 'blazing' even between the nerds themselves, to maintain a hierarchy within a hierarchy. All the nerds were losers but some of us were more losers than others. The top nerds would insult the bottom nerds to establish dominance over them.
For example, I had a friend called Sam Cobley. He was a loser like me. However, even though we were friends, he would insult and make fun of me every day. He did this, I think, to try to make himself look good. In some ways, he was even more of a bully than a friend.
He made fun of the way I ate. He said I ate like a giraffe. He made fun of the fact I was poor. He made fun of the bag I carried, the coat I wore, the pens I used, the way I walked, and the way I talked. It was a constant stream of jibes and insults. One kid – not Sam, to be fair – once even made fun of the size of my mouth, because apparently, my mouth was too small. I'm not sure what I could have done to rectify that problem and make that boy happy. Maybe he wanted me to have facial surgery.
I once confided in Sam that my dad was a part-time balloon modeller – it was true, my dad would go to Cannon Hill Park on weekends and make balloon models for money. But Sam went and told everyone that my dad was "a clown", which was not what I had said. People were soon saying things like, "Petey, is your dad a clown?" The main bully at the school, Michael Cotton, would pinch his nose and make a honking sound at me as if he was honking an invisible rubber nose.
Michael Cotton, by the way, was in the same class as me for English, Physics, Biology and Chemistry. That’s almost half of the classes I had for two years. He seemed to hate me more than any other student. He made it his job to make every lesson as uncomfortable for me as he could. If the teacher ever left the class for a minute, then he would spend that time honking his nose at me while the rest of the class laughed.
You might think I could have stood up to Michael Cotton. I could have called him a dickwit or told him to fuck off. I could have told the teacher or even punched him. I could have done all these things. But Michael was one of the stronger and more athletic kids in the school. So were his friends. I don't think I would have had much of a chance in a fight. And the thing about these bullies is that if you stand up to them, they have to put you back down again to put you back in your place. It would be as if you were an escaping prisoner and they had to catch you to put you back in your cell. If I had tried to stand up to him, by saying "Fuck you" for example, the next thing he would have done is promise to beat me up after school. I don't think he and his friends would have actually given me a beating like in The Shawshank Redemption but they could have. They could have done a lot of things. So I stayed quiet and let him bully me.
Theft
Another type of bullying is the theft of property. Theft of pens, pencils, school bags. Usually, the bully doesn't actually want the object they're stealing. They just want to cause a reaction in the victim.
Umar Hussein, for example, used to steal my pen or pencil during class and refuse to give it back. (He was a real jerk, this Umar kid).
I needed the pen to do school work. So I developed this tactic where I’d tell him, "My grandmother gave me that pencil before she died." He would then feel sorry for me and give it back.
One time, he stole my ruler, so I told him, "My grandmother gave me that ruler before she died." He was beginning to catch on though. “Did she really?” he asked. “Yes,” I said solemnly. He gave me the ruler back. But I could see he was beginning to doubt me. So I just made sure to keep my things out of his reach from then on.
Here are a couple of other things Umar did. He once pulled on my tie so hard that it made the knot really small and it took me twenty minutes to get it loose. He also broke my ruler in half after I proudly told him it was shatter-proof.
Umar was also involved in a prank one day where the entire class conspired to hide my school bag. I was doing school work and had my bag under my desk when Umar took it without me noticing, He then used his feet to pass it down to the next table. The other students then passed it between themselves under their tables until it reached the far end of the classroom.
Everyone was looking forward to seeing how I'd react to my bag going missing. Maybe they thought I'd panic. I didn't though. I was so used to the bullying by that point that at the end of the class, I just got up and retrieved my bag from the other side of the classroom as if nothing had happened.
There was another time when my gym bag was stolen. I don't think Umar was involved in that one, but I can't be sure because I never did find out who did it. That day I had to wear kit from the Lost and Found box. I never did get my gym kit back and my mom had to buy a new one.
I accepted my fate. I decided this was just how life was going to be from now on. I was just going to survive. So every day, I dragged myself to that school. Every day, I forced myself to go to a place where I knew I'd be bullied and ridiculed.
Every day, that is, except the days I'd skip school instead.
Skipping school
As the bullying got worse, I started skipping school. Those days would start with a sick feeling in my stomach that I now recognise as anxiety. I would stand at the bus stop waiting for the bus. Eventually the anxiety would be too much for me and I'd cross the road and get the bus going the other way, to the city centre instead. There was nothing like the relief of knowing that today, at least, I wouldn't be facing the bullies at school. On the bus, I would take off my school blazer and tie and hide them in my rucksack, so I looked less like a school kid. It helped that I looked older than I was. People probably thought I was an office worker instead of a teenage kid skipping school.
When the bus got to the city centre, I would spend the day walking around. Sometimes I went to the library because it was free and I could use the internet. Sometimes I would go to the cinema. I even got into a screening of Jackass, despite it being rated 18 and me being fifteen.
Skipping school for the day was exciting and easy. No one ever found out. When my teachers asked where I had been, I lied and told them I had been sick. They must have thought I had some chronic illness. My form teacher once asked me for a sick note, but I never gave him one and he forgot about it.
My parents never suspected anything either. Even my friends at school didn't know.
I only skipped school five or six times, and only on the days when I couldn't bear another day of school. If I had skipped any more days, I'm sure a teacher would have found out and I would have been in trouble. But thankfully, no one ever did find out.
Changing my name
My experience at Bishop Vesey's hurt me so much that I changed my name because of it. My name - Paul Pietrzak - was so bitterly tainted with taunts and insults from school that, at the age of 22, I changed it by deed poll to Paul Jones. It was a cathartic experience. Now my Vesey name, 'Pietrzak', had no more power over me. I could be someone other than the lonely, bullied kid at school.
Conclusion
I had the opportunity to visit my old school recently. And by opportunity I mean I went there of my own accord, uninvited, on a school day and stood on the road outside the school. This isn't as creepy as it sounds, mainly because I'm telling you it wasn't as creepy as it sounds as you'll have to take my word for it.
I got to watch the boys coming out of the school (again, not creepy) and I saw that most of the boys were just like I remember: testosterone-fuelled and defiant, just like James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause, a movie I've never seen and probably never will because it's in black and white and doesn't have an Avenger in it. There was the odd sweet geeky kid, sure, wearing glasses and struggling with a bag of textbooks that looked too heavy for him, but most of the kids just looked mean.
And if there's one thing I can take from that, it's this: I won't be sending my kids to Bishop Vesey's.
Comments
2022-10-15 Paj
Dude, i was in your year. Have many stories of my own. Lets connect and get some kind of voice/video call going?
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2022-07-31 Chad
IMO everyone bullies everyone about equally, it's just that some faggots can cope much less (and so identify as victims of bullying) than others (who feel they're having a laugh with their friends). The solution really is not to expel the strong and leave only the weak, but to give the weak as much help as possible in becoming less cuckish and more able to hold their own.
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2022-02-26 Keith Burton
I went to this school in the 80s and didn't really see much of this behaviour. It is really sad to hear what happened to you and the affect this had had on you as an adult. I hope you come to terms with what went on
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2021-09-18 Falu
I'm so sorry you went through this, I'm in shock, I am in tears ...I'm now terrified for the kids that go to this school.
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