Bullying has to stop. We need consequences.

In the United States recently, a group of school-aged children bullied an overweight, elderly woman who was the bus monitor. They told her that she was so fat she took up two seats. They said that she is so ugly that her children should kill themselves (around 10 years ago, her son had committed suicide). They said many awful things to her, but she is not pressing charges. In the old days, the bus driver or the monitor herself would have been able to call these kids’ parents, and the children would have feared the consequences of what the parents were going to do later that day. However, children do not have a healthy fear of adults these days. Remember when mothers used to say, “Wait until your father gets home!” and then the child thought of nothing else until the dreaded moment arrived? We need a little more healthy fear of consequences in our modern society. If I had a child and I found out that they had done that to that poor old woman, I would ground the child for months. No cell phone, no internet, nothing but homework for the foreseeable future. Oh, and you can bet there would be spankings. I wish the woman had pressed charges, because in this day and age, it is very possible that the parents are going to be not as much help as we might like. Of course, it is possible the parents will discipline their children properly. I hope that’s what happens. Bullying needs to stop. And bullies are stopped when they are stood up to. Bullies pick on vulnerable people because ultimately, bullies are cowards. They do not have the guts to stand up to someone who can take them on, so they select the weak or people they perceive as weak to harass. I wish there would be a televised trial so that these children would be publicly humiliated. Shame is what our society’s losers need. Yes, maybe the children who did this are abused at home. Who knows? But if the children suffer the consequences, at least they will know that these actions are wrong. Bullying is wrong. If you are bullied at home, bullying someone at school is not the answer. It just repeats the cycle and introduces even more ugliness into the world. The ugly person in this situation is not the old woman, but the merciless, cruel cowards who do not have enough common sense or decency to realize that you do not treat people that way.