Hi everyone! I hope you’re all well. Today is Wednesday, and it’s time for another post in the Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge hosted by Long and Short Reviews. If you’d like to participate in the challenge, you can find the list of topics for 2023 here. If you are interested in reading other people’s responses to this week’s topic, you can do so here.
A Celebrity People Say You Look Like
Personally, I don’t think I have a celebrity lookalike. I’ve also asked some people who they think I may look like, but nobody could come up with anything, for which, I might add, I am grateful.
At school, I was bullied for being ‘big’. It got worse when we started studying Lord of the Flies because, according to my peers, I looked exactly like the character of ‘Piggy’.
Unfortunately, when it came to watching the film version in class, even I had to admit that the resemblance was uncanny. I was a chubby kid with buzzed hair and glasses that could have been made from the bottoms of jam jars.
Ironically, one of the main themes of that book is bullying. We started studying in year 10 (I was 14/15), and for the rest of my school life, kids would pull up the front of their noses like a snout and then snort and oink at me and yell “piggy” at me.
It was the same every break time, at lunchtime, whenever I walked through hallways. In fact, any time there was a group of other kids near me, I was tormented.
Kids can be horrible, and it’s not like I could have done anything about the fact that I looked like a character from a book or film.
And it never goes away, that stuff. I still think about it sometimes now, and I’m 37. These feelings and memories are always lurking in my mind, waiting for me to have a bad day to rear their heads to remind me of that terrible time.
Some bullies don’t realise they’re bullies. Some kids join in with other kids for fear of being picked on themselves. Some take out all the bad stuff happening in their own lives on others to make themselves feel powerful or that they have some control.
I will say this: one of my bullies actually came up to me a couple of years after I left school and apologised for bullying me. He didn’t give me a reason as to why he picked on me – he merely offered an apology, which I graciously accepted. I shook his hand and told him I didn’t even remember it. Obviously, I was lying.
One thing I wish kids would realise when they’re young enough to embed it in their minds is that every human being on the planet looks different from the next, and that’s a good thing. Individuality and imperfection are naturally a part of what makes us human. What a person looks like, who they love, what they believe in, what they eat or what clothes they wear is not important – they are just pieces that make up a person.
If we could all learn this early on – I mean really learn it and accept it as the truth it is then the world would most likely be a warmer, kinder, more loving place to live.
Anyway, I didn’t mean to turn this post into an afterschool special about the effects of bullying, but ‘Piggy’ is the only person I’ve been compared to…
Hopefully, you all have better celebrity lookalikes than me! Either way, I’m looking forward to reading your posts to find out!
As ever, thanks for spending some time here with me today. I really appreciate it.
Until next time,
George
© 2023 GLT
Categories: life, Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge
GEORGE L THOMAS 
I’m so sorry you were bullied in school. I was, too. Kids can be so cruel.
You were very gracious when your bully apologized. I wonder what made him contact you?
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I’m hoping it was just some self-reflection. We all learn things about ourselves as we grow. You’re right kids can be awful. I think a lot of it has to do with needing to have some sort of control when, perhaps, they have uncontrollable stuff going on in their lives at home.
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I lived in living hell in 7th grade. Not many Anglos in a majority Hispanic Jr. High. A new principal came in for 8th grade and he changed the nature of the school, getting rid of most of the worst gang members. When I taught 7th and 8th grade English, I was on constant vigilance to keep bullying to a minimum. Bullies bully because they can get away with it.
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I agree, Patrick. We did have one or two great teachers like you who kept an eye out.
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As we hear what goes on in public life, with abusive messages recorded for posterity as a glimpse into bullying behaviour, we have come to realise that bullying goes on in all sorts of adult life. That is shocking; children are still developing their characters, adults have no excuse. Fortunately I did not look like any child stars, but when I was working at Heathrow a passenger did say I looked like the dark one in Cagney and Lacey, the nearest I have ever got to fame! ps it is only recently I discovered, twenty odd years down the line, my younger son was bullied at high school and my daughter subjected to various sexual harassment!
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Aw, that’s awful. Humans really can be terrible. If only we could all feel one another’s emotions. We might live in a more empathetic world.
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That’s horrible, and I’m so sorry for you. I was very lucky to get through school with a minimum of bullying; Secondborn had some issues with it last year, and one of his friends is having some issues this year.
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It is horrible I empathize so much. The great thing is that, thankfully, school doesn’t last forever.
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