Did your bullies end up better off than you did?

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Back in high school I always knew I'd end up better off than my bullies and that I'd have the last laugh. I saw my future self as highly successful and my bullies as future prison inmates and drug addicts.

Turns out some of my high school bullies are doing a lot better than I predicted. I saw one of them at the mall the other day; he was all dressed up and holding hands with a gorgeous 6 ft tall blond woman and with two kids running by his side. And there is another bully I haven't seen but heard that he is now a manager at a major bank in the city.

Then you have me, a lowly-paid lonely dude who could get fired from his job and only his supervisor would notice.

Who ended up better off?

The three I know about, did better in terms of what most people consider financial and vocational success than I have done so far (or am likely to do). However, none of them seem to have outgrown their tendencies to bully, or their general personalities as I used to know them, and a couple of them seem to have never gotten any closer to having a conscience. I imagine that's going to really backfire someday, whether outwardly or inwardly, and some of it already can't be all that comfortable for them whether they look like it or not.

Maybe you saw him at his best moment, otherwise he might be much worse off than you think.

I've been taking intensive crash courses on how to ignore my bullies (I sometimes slip and answer, but less and less)

(I sense your provocations will now become much, much worse)

what do i care?

I was a bully in primary school.

I wouldn't recognize most of them if I ever saw them again. I've only seen one of my past bullies(He'd twist what I said and got people to laugh at me and spread the gay rumor), he was sitting in what I think was a 1980's Toyota celica at a red light near sin city near Regency Mall, my brother and I were in my crappy 1997 corolla. I saw him first, he looked over and must have recognized me because he smiled like he was laughing at me. When the light turned green he sped off and I haven't seen him since.

I'd guess he's no better off than me, especially if he's living in sin city(He was heading toward it, I was turning left). I wouldn't care if he was better off than me though. He's still a little s**t.

I think some of them are doing better than I so far - but many of them were rich and full of acquaintances to start with.
It's not over yet.

One guy is in and out of prison.

Another died before our 10th reunion. He was killed by a liquor store owner he tried to rob.

Another ekes out survival in the small-time underworld: dog fighting, prostitution, burglary...

And the fun goes on and on...

Most of them (18 to early 20's) I have seen are overweight, smoking and pregnant, and I wouldn't call that successful. And I'm pretty happy where I am right now. So no.

I have not seen many of my bullies. One of them, who I then kinda got along with as we got older, is a manager in a McDonald's I think. Another one was getting a Ph.D. in Chemistry from CalTech (yes, he was a bully believe it or not).

I'm currently getting a Ph.D. so I guess my bullies either did a good as I did or less so. So far I don't think any one of them has done better than me, although I would not be surprised to find out otherwise.

Some of them appeared so, but odds are good that they're still total jerks.

Problem is, the working world LIKES jerks and bullies - especially in management... until they bully the wrong person, but most socially-connected bullies don't make that mistake.

It's no coincidence that my old sociopathic supervisor made great effort to be very good friends with the director of HR, her supervisors in the management circle (she was only a minor supervisor herself) and suck up to her low-ranking employees who would then suck up to her - especially the handsome, heroic 17-year-old firefighters-to be. Ironically, she didn't know one of the boys she didn't suck up to was family friends with the CEO, so she got a stiff dressing down when she handed him a pink slip when mass layoffs happened.

Her firing me on my last day of work has become legendary...



...sorry... I drifted away from the topic.

The only real bully I had (in 2nd and 3rd grades) changed dramatically in 6th grade. She was trained to be a snob but in 6th grade got fat. Her mom put her on a diet and I think it really affected her self-awareness and esteem. During that year we became friendly and in 7th grade she actually defended me against a new bully.
Sadly, she appeared to develop anorexia and going into her senior year in high school died in a car crash-she was driving. She took another friend of mine with her.

This is why I don't believe in karma.

If anyone who was a bully to you ended up out being more successful than you, you should be happy for them. If you hold a grudge then your just going to dwell on it and be miserable. Besides, does it really matter what they did as a kid anyway?

You NEVER know! I knew one person that bragged about having a 1 Million dollar home in beverly hills. It turns out it was only $900,000, was his parents, he was a black sheep, and the home was on the outskirts of beverly hills. It is still high priced but, frankly, not NEARLY as nice.

He ALSO turned out to ENVY me! He thought my car was NICE(At the time he had a car that was just as nice, and I was still paying for mine), and he thought my teeth were REALLY white(they are actually off white due to a lousy dentist. They were white BEFORE the braces, and the enamel under the braces just disappeared, etc...). He SERIOUSLY thought I was so much better off.

I once knew a girl that lit up every room she was in. She seemed to be the life of the party and happy. I liked her, and would have been HAPPY to hear that she was as she appeared. It turns out that she was always DEPRESSED! She told me so.

HECK, I wish I could remember the name of this one body builder that got some organ damage and had to stop taking steroids. He deflated like a ballon!

One "friend" I had, that destroyed our chances to get a nice scholarship and job, became WORLD FAMOUS! I was SHOCKED to find out! He palled around like a sychophant with ANOTHER famous person(Who ALSO became world famous). Anyway, my "friend" turned in the other guy to stay out of jail. He was banned from several colleges and became persona non grata. 10 years later I drove down a road in my car relaxing from the week at my nice job, and saw him almost unchanged from highschool waiting for a bus. And what happened to the guy that he sent to jail? Well, he did his time, got out of jail, and now owns/runs a well known respectable company.

BTW he destroyed our chances by always destroying work I did on a program for the competition. The next 2 winners wrote EXACTLY the program I was planning on doing, so we had a GREAT chance of winning! He wanted to trick others into revealing their passwords.

BTW I knew one person that was a manager at a bank, and he seemed to be doing fine. My company was involved with a sting, and the final result was that that manager got thrown into a federal prison. He worked for the mob, and committed bank fraud by recycling bearer bonds.

So who knows.

Some of the bullies HAVE hurt me in a number of ways. If I had it to do over again, they would probably not even want me to see them for fear of what I might do. But I doubt any of them are that well off.