Posts Tagged With: bully
This ’4-eyed Nerd’ Was Horribly Bullied. Wait Til You See What He Grew Up To Do….Whoa!
This ugly duckling story is real and completely authentic. Meet a young man that was basically born a nerd. From infancy, he was seen as a geek, a nerd or a dork. Just do us a favor and listen to his story of transformation. He ended up something so completely different from a nerd, he could give anyone hope:
I started wearing glasses since the age of four. When I was young, I remember being called “four-eyes.” In retrospect, it sounds like a pretty cool thing to be called, like I have a super hero power or something; at the time though, I think the name calling hurt. I was an introverted kid and I think I identified myself with being a bit of an outcast.
In junior high school I remember being shoved up against a locker and the kid who did it told me I was “a nerd.” When I asked him why, he stammered for a moment and finally came up with “because you wear glasses.” I thought this was a bit humorous and from that moment on became a self proclaimed nerd/geek. I was very happy with my personality and did not care to change at all. Even though I was picked on a bit, I had great friends and rather enjoyed junior high and high school.
I did most of the stereotypical nerd things in high school. I was the band president as well as the chess club president.
I also was in some plays. I carried a yo-yo around with me all the time and would play with it in between classes. During lunch time, I would play ping pong and juggle.
I have always had a quirky personality. I think I often tried to be weird on purpose at times. I always wore goofy hats and never knew how to smile for the camera.
Playing trombone in front of the local library. Even though I have always been happy with my personality and never had a desire to change, I have also always been very shy and self-conscious about my looks. By the time I was 23 I had only ever asked out one girl on a date.
After graduating from high school and starting college I realized how much I wanted to get married and start a family. I began to fear I would never be able to marry the girl of my dreams because she would never be attracted to me. While ice blocking one day, I did a faceplant and broke my glasses. Rather than replacing them, I chose the cheap alternative and just decided to switch things up and stop wearing glasses. After having worn them for 20 years I felt naked without them, but it turns out that I had 20/20 vision and never really needed them in the first place.
A couple of years after I ditched my glasses, I realized that I would not die if I tried to change my appearance a bit. I wanted to marry a girl I was attracted to and figured that
girls would probably want the same thing. I have always been totally clueless when it comes to fashions, styles, and clothing, but I decided I would try to change the hairstyle I had done for my entire life. I tried to let it grow out so it could be curly. This is probably one of the first pictures of me having NOT combed my hair.
I experimented with different lengths of hair. I always prefered it really short because it was easy to manage, but I eventually tried growing it longer just for kicks.
As an added bonus, growing my hair out meant that I could dress up like Art Garfunkel.
By the time I had one year left before graduating from my university, I had a bit more confidence but was still very shy. Even though I would go on dates, I felt like the girls were just being nice and didn’t want to hurt me by saying no. I rarely went on second dates and still did not have a girlfriend. I still felt that I didn’t look very attractive. I was a bit conscious about my weight and quite frankly didn’t know how else to change my appearance so I decided to start working out. I replaced my desk chair with an exercise bike and worked out for about 1-3 hours almost every day. I ended up losing about 20 pounds.
After I graduated, I still had no girlfriend and prospects were not looking too good. After trying for so long just to get a girlfriend it was a bit depressing for me to not see any results. One thing I can say though is that I began to be more confident. I felt like I was doing all that I could. I was trying to look better and was working out. I was just trying to be a nice guy, and be the kind of guy I thought girls were attracted to.
I went off to Alaska to work and had even less luck there. I would go on a date about once every other month. I was about ready to give up and then…..
When I was 29 years old, I finally had my first kiss and got my first girlfriend! Getting a girlfriend really helped me to be less shy and more confident. I finally knew that there was someone out there who liked me enough to be my girlfriend. The girl I dated is wonderful and appreciated my quirky personality; ultimately though, I realized I was not in a lifelong relationship. We dated for less than half a year, but in that time I gained a lot of confidence and learned a lot about myself. In the subsequent years I had more luck with dating and was more confident with myself.
About a year later I got a new coworker. I was still quite shy and it took me more than a month to finally get the courage to talk to her. When I finally did, I felt like we instantly clicked (apparently she was kind of weirded out by me… but no matter. I am a weird guy). We started dating a couple of months later.
We dated for a year and I was happy as could be! I knew I wanted to marry her. She put up with and even appreciated my nerdness. She even let me put Linux on her computer (though she never uses it). I felt like I finally found someone who appreciated me for who I am.
We kept dating and I proposed to her about a year and a half after we first met.
I am 31 years old and am on my honeymoon now. I have been married for a week. Ten years ago I never would have thought I would end up marrying someone as wonderful and as beautiful as my wife. I am still very much a nerd/geek but she loves me for that. I am so happy that I met my wonderful wife. If I were to give advice to my younger self, it would be this: “Things may not happen when or where you want them to. Just try your best; that is all you can do.” That is pretty awesome that I ended on a rhyme, so I will just stop typing now.
This man proved many things. For one, never let your bullies define you. Never be ashamed of who you are. And with enough work and perseverance, you can accomplish anything you want. Most of all, never ever give up.
http://www.viralnova.com/nerd-transformation/
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I Want to Look More Closely At….(post by Kirk Weisler)
I want to look more closely at our words and our tendency to be critical of things we can’t imagine. ( This is a revised review of a T4D from 2008 that I felt the need to revisit)
We were having a family discussion about why some kids and adults seem to find it necessary to tease, berate, call names or bully others. I was impressed with the reasons my kids came up with which follows.
- They are insecure
- They don’t feel good about themselves and don’t want anyone else too feel good either
- They feel threatened in some way by the person they are attacking (lot’s of possibilities with this one – Jealousy & Envy
probably the leading causes) - They don’t like themselves
- They don’t really understand who they are
After a good discussion about how what we say to others and how we treat them is much more a reflection of us than anyone else I felt a renewed confidence in my children’s ability to respond to people who are critical of them…or just critical in general.
It’s been my experience that people who have the strongest sense of who they are spend the least amount of time talking critically of others, or worrying about what others may think.
Part 2 –
Recently someone criticized a political candidate that I admire in many ways calling him a phony. I asked the critic on what grounds did he consider him a phony. His reply, “Nobody has a family like that, they’re all a bunch of fakes.”
“Like what?” I said, probing for specifics.
The critic referencing a recent interview he had watched responded, “You know, that they all don’t all get along like that. Who has family discussions without talking over one another, acting all respectful and stuff? Families just don’t look, talk, or act that way…they were a bunch of fakes.”
I knew immediately the video clip he was referring too… it was one of main reasons I identified with the candidate. What my friend was calling phony, was to me, a living reality. What he couldn’t fathom as being real, is how I would like to think, my own family culture operates “most” of the time. But since what my friend saw was so far from any reality of his own life experiences, he couldn’t bring himself to accept that it could be genuine. In his mind families really could not act and communicate in that manner. In his mind the only explanation for it was it must have been a phony. He saw the world not as it was but as he was. Or more accurately he saw the world differently than I saw it. But my concern wasn’t so much that we each saw it differently – it was in considering what is lost to us and our potential when we close in our minds because we are convinced that we are right.
As I was pondering on these 2 thoughts – an idea came into my mind that I have tried to capture below.
What we can’t imagine or envision as a reality in our own lives, we often dismiss as a fanciful fantasy or phony in the lives of others. In so doing we stop ourselves from not only seeing another potentially better way, but of becoming better ourselves. ~Kirk Weisler
Mzsunflower's Say What? 