Links, Page 32

"Tackle Bullying Now"

Within my link to the You Tube presented anti-bullying video “The Pain of Bullying,” I noted (in response to someone asking me) that the boy on the Welcome Page was not me. I have no idea who he is. As his photo is the only one of a boy included in the catalog of photographs which comes with the X-Builder website building software, I used him to represent my character and all bullied kids.

(As the photo looks rather dated, and as the van he is sitting in has the steering wheel on the right side of the vehicle, I would guess it is a childhood photo of someone associated with X-Builder, perhaps its founder. It’s an English company.)

For those who have been kind enough to read my short story, or will do so in the future, I suggested that a boy within the video, whose photograph appears within a bullying simulation, was a close approximation of my young character within “Pride’s Prison.” Unfortunately, the creator of the video has taken his work down.

However, I have recently come across another photo of a boy within an Irish health publication who is even closer in appearance to how one should visualize my youthful character while reading the story. As noted within “Pride’s Prison,” despite his surname he looked more Irish than German. The boy I am referring to is the one in the forefront being taunted by another youngster.

This brief article (below the Yahoo search frame—use the slide bar) discusses the phenomenon of school bullying within my ancestral homeland and the need for a national strategy to combat it, though individual school policies seem to be, most thankfully, working well. Nevertheless, the tragic response to school bullying of childhood suicide has not been unknown there as elsewhere. The article also touches upon adult bullying in the workplace, something I thankfully have never experienced or witnessed.

The issue of school bullying indeed knows no national boundary lines, nor Protestant or Catholic. Bullies never recognize any other youngster as “their own” whom they believe they can torment with impunity.

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Click to read “Tackle bullying now, TD says” from next link: irishhealth.com: