Oh man, did I ever.
I'll never understand what his problem was, either.
He'd been in my Boy Scout troop for years, but he was always this super quiet guy that I just never seemed to cross paths with.
Then, in 6th grade, halfway through the year I transferred to this private Catholic school that he and a handful of my other friends went to.
It was hell.
I didn't know I was gay yet, but everybody else seemed to have figured it out for me.
I was constantly being hit with stuff from behind, pushed down stairs, called every name in the book. People would get up and move if I sat at the same table at lunch.
Once I was in the bathroom doing my business and some people took wads of toilet paper they'd wiped the urinals with and dipped in filthy, used toilets and tossed them over the stall onto me.
And it was always that same quiet, unassuming kid that led the charge.
I don't know if he'd just always hated me and never had the right environment to act on it, or if he was emboldened by some of his friends there, but he was a monster.
Kids I'd known and been friends with literally since pre-school turned on me and told me they could be my friend, but "only when nobody else is around."
I was supposed to go hang out at my friend's house after school one day, but he disappeared after class and I sat on the curb for an hour until I finally got up the courage to ask the office if I could use the phone.
He'd told his mom I'd changed my mind or something because he didn't want to be seen going home with me.
I constantly had things stolen and hidden from me, and I only ever found/got them back maybe two-thirds of the time.
Eventually it got to the point that bullying me was seriously some kind of school-wide meme.
Kids who didn't even know me or my face would walk by in the halls and I'd overhear "Did you know SoulUnison's gay?"
February of that year my dad passed away, and I went to school the next day. I have no idea why. I guess my mom and I were just kind of in shock and on auto-pilot.
I remember we were doing some art project in the morning, sitting at our desks cutting pictures out of newspaper.
I remember looking up at the guest art teacher blankly and just matter-of-factly saying "My dad died last night."
That wasn't off the table for them, apparently.
I sat alone on a bench on the far side of the playground during lunch and the usual kids bothered to hunt me down.
My dad hadn't yet been gone for 24 hours and I was hearing shit like "I bet he died to get away from you."
I came back from the bathroom once to hear the teacher giving the entire class a "Why the hell can't you just be nice to him?" speech, though she never once actually stepped in when things were happening directly in front of her.
I used to sometimes go to the bathroom after lunch/recess and just sit in a stall until somebody managed to find me and bring me back to class. I just couldn't make myself go back in that room voluntarily, and she had to have known that was the reason - most of the time she'd find me in tears - but she'd chew me out every time and make me go up to the front of the class and write my name in the "Detention Book."
We took a class overnight trip to this campground and this girl from our class asked me if I'd push her on the swings. Innocent shit, right?
I'm pushing her and a teacher wanders by and suddenly she's screaming and crying that I was "touching her butt" while a bunch of other in the background are snickering. Like...What? What 11-12 year old boy wants to touch girl's butts? Especially me? I was so upset that I went back to the bunks and just wrapped myself in blankets and hid and cried. Unfortunately I missed the call to gather for a meeting, and that's like the worst thing you can do, I guess, so my teacher made me pack up all my stuff in front of everyone and do the most humiliating march of my life to her car, where she drove me home in the middle of the night.
It got to the point where my Boy Scout leader flat out told me "They keep giving you trouble you hit them in the face and you don't stop and I will come in and vouch for you with everything I have." I just wasn't that kind of kid yet, though.
Eventually the principal got so sick of having me and a small rotation of others in his office, like, every other day, but instead of every fucking DOING something, his brilliant, compassionate suggestion was "How'd you like to start summer three weeks early?"
Basically trying to frame an expulsion/sweeping me under the rug as some kind of gift.
So, yes. I had a bully. I had a perfect storm of bullies, even.
And, god, that's only the stuff off the top of my head.
For better or worse, that six months tempered me as a person.