When I was in third grade something really odd happened. A kid enrolled in my school for a brief time. I had no conception of time then and it was very long ago so I can't say how long he was there. He was at least a foot taller than any of us. Very tall and very thin. And a psychopath I believe. He used his size to intimidate. I can vague recall him holding me down on the playground and choking me. He had so much rage. He seemed evil. If you've ever read Shadowland by Peter Straub, this kid was Skeleton Ridpath. I think he would gleefully have killed any of us if teachers hadn't prevented him. I'm so curious about who he was and why he was there and what ultimately became of him. I think I know why he was only there for a brief time.

[Takeshi]

I had a classmate in junior high who was a very violent kid, I wonder too what became of him. Could he have killed? Later in his life perhaps, or ended up in juvie before that and saved his life. The truth is, I don't know what sort of environment he grew up in, he was one-man bully type, and on the opposite end, there was this hero type kid who did sport, I knew him a little so, that's that.

I'm sorry that you still recall that incident, as for me, he was just bumping shoulders against anyone's in a hallway, this other kid, who was bigger than the bully was just taking a punch in the stomach, I still remember walking past it 'cos I was scared.

Psychopath/sociopathic tendencies in today's kids and the ones back then. I'd love to hear if you have more to say about the topic.

Not more more I can tell you. I'm cursed w/ a very good memory which most of my friends don't share, unfortunately or fortunately I've known very few bullies. A few of the type you mentioned who were basically just assholes. My best friend through most of grade school and middle school was a part time bully but he pretty much zeroed in on one guy.
No, this wasn't a typical bully. There was something very seriously wrong with this kid. Almost evil but mindless evil. He wasn't overcompensating for some insecurity or self perceived social handicap. He just wanted to hurt... possibly to kill. My memories of the attack on me are vague and on others even more so. I just remember being on the ground with his hands around my throat and looking at his face and seeing pure hate. And then seeing him being pulled away by adults as I was trying to hold onto consciousness. I only vaguely recall him physically. So much taller than the rest of us and so thin. Gaunt, skeletal face, sunken eyes always searching. Whenever I thought about it later my speculations were along the lines that he'd been institutionalized and someone thought he should have an opportunity to attend a regular school and see how he did. Following that scenario I'd assume that it was quickly decided that it was too dangerous and he was placed back in an institution. It does seem very odd that a third grader would be in that situation. I can't think of another scenario other than he was expelled or forcibly withdrawn and the family moved. If that was the case then I would think they moved quite often but I really believe he was put away. It probably seems odd but I go for very long periods of time w/o even thinking about him and the only thing I feel is curiosity. Where was he before and where was he taken? Was he there one day? Two days? A week?

[Nammu]

I've often wondered what happened to the middle high school bully from my school. She tried intimidating me but mostly picked on others and I would defend them from her. She wasn't evil but she disappeared, maybe they moved?

[Takeshi]

I had the typical overcompensating d***wad, I think you're guessing it right. He could've gone right or wrong, he was no evil.

Witnessing such an incomprehensive mind and being at the receiving end of his murderous hands would be anything more than I could imagine. I'm still thinking though like, that shouldn't have happened to you.

Would you ever wanted to understand the mind of serial murderers, demonic psychopathic mind or something as an adult? In any case, I hope the curiosity will shield and protect you from what's out there. The presence of mindless minds as you described it would be hard to deal with for any of us, this may sound asinine or even naive to some, but I'd say we'd rather not go there, no good will come out of it, yet he was a part of the sum.

It's not odd at all, I'm just glad you're the way you are right now. You don't forget easily, and then you can munch away good stuff for thoughts, instead of tasting any more evil.

Did his name perchance rhyme with 'Ronald Frump'?

My dad went to school with someone who did later go on to become a child murderer, his recollection of this man was a socially isolated boy who wouldn't say boo to a goose.

I attended the same Connecticut public high school a year ahead of Weezer's Rivers Cuomo (then living under a different name); I didn't know him personally, but his behavior did not suggest that he would become a bully, a psychopath, or a prolific and internationally-acclaimed musical genius.

My name is Jonas

[-jimi-]

We had many bullies at school and some just did it to make up for low IQ. Then there was this kid who was also a bully but different. You could see he was a sadist. Even at 14 years old. He wasn't one of the loudest bullies so he didn't get most attention. Still I feel he was the most evil one. His eyes were very dead, still piercing. The odd thing is his mom was totally unaware of what he did and people he tortured. She worked at school even! She was very sweet and kind. I forgot his name now, would be very surprised if he got something resembling a normal life.

I think maybe you need to be a kid to see it. When I look back at my class photos, everyone looks so young and innocent. You can't see from there which ones were bad. I had other people guess. Maybe adults are blind to kids being evil...

[Rose76]

I bet the story behind this kid being there was something kind of sad.

I remember there being one kid in my third grade class who was obviously older than the rest of us. I just assumed he had been kept back a few times as he seemed academically challenged. But I wasn't sure of his background. He was nice and got along with everyone.

I am surprised at how many bad memories people have of grammar school. At the two grammer schools I attended, kids were generally pretty decent to each other. These were inner city schools in blue-collar neighborhoods. Guess I was lucky to be at the right place, at the right time.

Originally Posted by George H.

When I was in third grade something really odd happened. A kid enrolled in my school for a brief time. I had no conception of time then and it was very long ago so I can't say how long he was there. He was at least a foot taller than any of us. Very tall and very thin. And a psychopath I believe. He used his size to intimidate. I can vague recall him holding me down on the playground and choking me. He had so much rage. He seemed evil. If you've ever read Shadowland by Peter Straub, this kid was Skeleton Ridpath. I think he would gleefully have killed any of us if teachers hadn't prevented him. I'm so curious about who he was and why he was there and what ultimately became of him. I think I know why he was only there for a brief time.

Hunh. We had a kid named Robert who was in 7th grade when I was in 8th. But he was viciously strong and the best natural athlete that I'd known at that time. He was a natural leader and by 7th grade he had a gang of 5-6 boys. He and his gang were so removed from any school social life, and had been for so long, that there was a sort of mutual understood ignorance. Like most of the houses in this area, there were servants quarters behind the houses that were in horrible shape and really needed to be torn down but Robert and his gang would use them as meeting places.

They (accidentally) allowed one entire structure to catch fire (these were 4 attached buildings, two storeys, sleeping quarters on top, carriage rooms on bottom) and after all of the gang had spilled the beans on Robert, he was as calm as could be. The way the boys told it (and I don't remember the sequence of how things happened) Robert had been sexually abusing them, forcing them to abuse one another, catching dogs (I always think it would be cats) and performing vivisection upon them and that they had caught two bums, within a couple of months of one another, and began their live autopsies on them. The finds of the fire inspectors bore the truth of the boys claims.

Robert became someone that people didn't talk about. I don't know what had happened to the guys. When I came home for Christmas break in high school in 1975, though, my dad told me that Robert had been killed in a bar fight in South Carolina. No one had the details (no one really cared except his mom, I guess).

Like your "friend," Robert was very strong and it was unusual for a day to pass without him beating up someone. When I later learned the meaning of the term psychopath, I thought of what a perfect description it was.

It is a mental health topic. I just don't think a lot of psychopaths come here to post! Interesting post. Someone I've not thought of in decades.

Originally Posted by Nammu

I've often wondered what happened to the middle high school bully from my school. She tried intimidating me but mostly picked on others and I would defend them from her. She wasn't evil but she disappeared, maybe they moved?

Nammu,

We had a guy in my 5th-8th classes, in a private RC grammar school named "Ron" who was always the QB of our pick-up football games because he was accurate and could pass long. But there was something 'off' about him socially. I can't explain it exactly; he didn't have any friends at school, certainly no girlfriends; anyway...

...he was a bully. He would occasionally hit people (other guys) but he was more of a verbal abuserer (something that I could identify with). He preyed on those weaker and wasn't really happy until he had someone crying so that he could make fun of that. He brought out the first instance of verbal abuse that I recall ever having. Ron's favorite target was a kid named Johnny. At least once a week Ron was hurting Johnny in some way. We didn't have much supervision on the playground and telling the nuns and priests didn't take care of anything so my best friend and I got three other guys together and decided that we'd beat Ron up the next time he began bullying someone.

So we're playing football on a patch of ground, no grass on it, and Ron throws a pass to Johnny that Johnny fails to catch. Ron walked over, picked up the football and threw it at Johnny's face creating a mass of blood. Ron laughs, picks up the football and just as my vigilante group are about to pounce, Johnny's up, barreling toward Ron, tackles him from his back and Ron goes face first into a lake of mud. We dragged Johnny off of the crying Ron who, when he could finally see, ran into the gym.

A lot of the boys were delighted that day. Ron didn't come back to school for a week but I know that he and his parents had visited the school during that week, just never knew what they said. This was one case where I was glad that I didn't have to do something in place of the person being bullied. It's probably sad to admit that Johnny had to use force to regain his dignity, but Johnny was glad to feel, I think, that he had evened the odds. My group and I, witnesses but not victims of the bullying, would have destroyed Ron. Never saw either again after grammar school.

I always want to think that I must have "learned" something when I have a strong memory like that; that there must be a kind of "moral" to the story. That's very seldom the case, though, and I sure can't think of anything now!

I've never personally been the victim of a bully. The standard form of bully behavior would have been a disqualifier for high school and silly if found in college.

Ron wasn't evil, either. He wasn't a psychopath. He was angry, I think. And maybe he felt so humiliated that his behavior had been repaid by his own victim that he managed to curb it for awhile. I remember how I wanted to hurt Ron for the way that he had hurt others. I don't know if that's a right way to deal with bullies or not.

I don't recall bullying as being so widespread in the 1960's as it is now. I'll have to check the 'net; there are probably good tips concerning how to deal with bullying.

I do remember one thing – on a church camping trip a guy with bright red hair, named or nicknamed 'Clay,' pushed me off of a 3-feet high bridge and into a creek. I grabbed his leg and brought him into the water with me. I pushed his head under the water and I wondered if I could drown him. One of the dad's interceded so I didn't get a chance. That's one of the few times, prior to this past year, that I remember really feeling mad. I doubt that I would have killed him. He kept his distance from me and I had a discussion with Fr. Matt, though.

[Nammu]

I don't rember the school I went to having many bullies either. I think classmates did a better job of standing up to the bullies...maybe. But we didn't have computers and iPhones to hide behind either.

I'm sorry if my post stirred up any bad memories. As Rose said there may have been something sad behind this guy's story. He may have been abused. On the other hand there may have just be some basic problem with the way his brain was wired. There are a few people like that who simply defy any other explanation. As I said before, for my part it's basically curiosity about him. He had no great impact on my life.
As long as we're on memory lane I can tell you about Scotty. Scotty was a bully from my earlier years. I didn't see him much and he only tried to bully me twice. Once when I was 7 after which I didn't see him again until I was 16 and he somehow ended up in one of the many cliques I spent time with. He wasn't much of a bully by that time as far as I could tell although it still lurked deep inside. One night while some friends and I were together, for some reason he tried some silly martial arts move on me. I countered and he ended up on the ground. I helped him up and that was the end of that.
When I got to high school a small group of rednecks hinted that I could use a "good old-fashioned country haircut" and they'd like to help me out with that. I wasn't afraid of any of them on an individual basis and didn't pay much attention to the threats. Nothing ever came of it. I found out later that a friend of mine had heard a group of them talking about it and explained to them that it wasn't in their best interests to pursue it. I have to say that I had some very good friends.

We could be desribing my step-son. Despite pleas from the schools and myself, his father refused to seek diagnosis and help for the boy, constantly making the excuse his behaviour was normal 'boys will be boys' and that his abandoment issues regarding his biological mother caused him to act out.

The teachers were terrified of him. Parents in the neighbourhood warned their own children against him, and I was constantly fearful he might hurt me or my own children.

I myself think he is fetal alcohol sydrome with sociopathic tendancies.

One night a week after his 16th birthday I locked him out because he was higher than a kite. He broke in through the basement window waving around an army knife at my son. I had the police haul him away. And damn it, his dad still refused to acknowledge the boy had a problem. Naturally it was the final straw.

That boy is now a 23 year old high school drop out with a lengthy rap sheet with the law and a host of problems. Dad supports him financially and still denies the boy's problems are psychological. Instead it is other people's fault for introducing him to drugs, thus he can't be accountable for his problems.

[Artchic528]

I had an experience with what I can only describe as an attention seeking, self centered brat of a bully in my middle school years.

Middle school is already difficult for a kid, what with their bodies changing, new hormones flooding their systems, altering their judgements, moods, and behaviors. It's also the time in a kid's life when they begin to start really discovering their sexuality, and whom they are attracted to. It's enough to make one's head spin.

I was a small, scrawny girl of 11, who had deeply struggled with her developing sexuality. Being that my Grandmother was a staunch and highly conservative Catholic, she had all of the grandkids of the family enroll in Catholic education classes, called CCD, from an early age. So, yeah, asking about having these new developing feelings for other girls was a big no-no. Not if I knew what was good for me. My mother was, in a sense, a people pleaser and wanted to please Grandma (her mother), never wanting to cause a ripple of an argument to the contrary. So, she did what she could to keep the peace, rather than cause chaos with controversy. I couldn't even told my friends at the time, how could I? They wouldn't have understood, rather they would have felt uncomfortable and soon others would get wind and I would be bullied relentlessly by my peers.

So, with this internal struggle I had, and knowing I couldn't really ask my mother for advice, or even confess my confusion, I kept it all bottled up inside, shoving those budding feelings deep down, hoping they would go away, thinking I was abnormal. Well, as fate would have it, a fellow classmate, a girl I will refer to only as K, had decided it would be great fun to gain my trust, and then use the things she learned about me to belittle and demean me. She was very manipulative and attention seeking, and to keep being the center of the class, she began to spread horrible (and completely false) rumors about how she had walked in on two of my friends and I being intimate.

At first, it was just whispers and snickers wherever I went, but soon they begin to ask me if it was true, with much giggling. Soon I couldn't go anywhere in the school without being either laughed at, or being asked about the rumor. I kept denying it of course, it wasn't true, but no matter how much I did that, they would just laugh and say "sure". To this day, the feeling that I am being laughed at, and whispered about is still with me. No matter how much I tell myself I'm just being paranoid and that I'm not doing anything wrong, I can't help but feel I'm just an amusement to others, and that they are saying things about me behind my back. Not necessarily things having to do with those rumors from middle school, but behaviors or actions of mine.

It had gotten so unbearably bad for my two friends and I that we went to the principal just to make the relentless bullying stop. Well, the principal had my friends and I explain everything that had happened from our point of view. She heard us all out, and decided to suspend K from school for a week. However, K wasn't done seeking attention and decided to make things all about her, playing some sort of victim. When she came back, she had begun to tell anyone and everyone who would listen that her father had been so irate that she had been expelled that he held her hand over a fully heated stove hotplate. She would even thrust her hand out proudly showing off the supposed scarring. I saw her hand, there wasn't much more than a minor scratch on it at most.

I don't know if she was aware of the damage she did to me, nor do I care to find out. People like her are reserved for little more than pity in my eyes. Sad human bings who don't know, nor appreciate the value of being genuine and caring. I also feel so very sorry for any kids she may have had, and any spouse she may have married. I can only hope she has grown to the point where she can see the errors of her ways, and truly begin to feel guilty for the pain she caused.

Would I want to see what became of her? Not really, I have no interest of having a person who I associate with such a traumatic period in my life come back into it. I'm pretty damn fine not talking to her. In fact, my life is better off without bringing her back into it. Who needs that kind of drama? I surely don't.

Yeah Artchic, I sympathise.

My former bully went on to work in childcare. Yikes.

I strongly suspect she was abused at home, where else does such cruelty come from.