Bullied
Okay, honestly, it's not that I don't feel bad for the bullied bus monitor in the news right now. Being bullied sucks. I was a regular target of bullying as a child, so I know. I truly believe that I was the most picked on, teased and bullied person of my grade or the grade before or after.
For kindergarden, where my busdriver was possibly the worst calling me a baby (apparently because I picked up a penny of the floor) until the whole bus chimed of it and made me sit at the front top of the stairs beside him on a baby blanket so other kids would have to go around me and where kids would steal my hat in the winter and play keep-away. Ah, busdriver, I do believe that you are among the scum of the earth to have put a little child through that type of humiliation and set them up for that sort of teasing for one innocent action. A kid I can easily forgive, but you were an adult, yet your victim was a child - you should have known better. Throughout elementary school, where I would make any excuse to stay in at recess because on the playground was where the bullying was worse - even if the alternative was to have my head down on my desk, a typical punishment for children. It was so much better than being bullied. If I couldn't find a good excuse, which I usually couldn't because teachers wanted a break from kids, I would usually accompany the recess monitor. And all the way through high school, although once we got into Junior High it wasn't as bad, I think because then there wasn't recess. I remember my mom telling me in High School to enjoy these days because they'd be the best days of my life - and I remember thinking, 'I sure hope not. Because if that's true, I'll never be happy...' Hell, it still hurts today - I'm sitting here crying remembering all of that crap that I was put through.
I could never find a good way to escape it. I tried everything my parents suggested and that I could think of, everything from telling the teachers (who mostly ignored me) to trying to stand up for myself (for which I received a concussion in 5th grade and the bully got nothing). The only thing that ever worked was to re-direct the bullying to someone else. And for anyone who I re-directed the bullying toward, I am very sorry. I, who knew how bad it was, should not have facilitated, but I occasionally did to escape it myself.
So I know being the victim of bullying is a terrible thing.
The bus monitor, on the other hand, was being paid to work a job - and could have quit at any time. She was older, more mature (or at least should have been), and should have been able to deal with being teased by immature children. Heck, she should have known that if the children were teasing her, that meant that she keeping others from being teased and should have been able to go home at night feeling accomplished.
Instead, she sued the school, gaining enough money to retire on - but taking that money away from the school, which could have used it to implement anti-bullying precautions. If anything, that should have come directly from the bullies themselves, so they could learn that their actions have consequences, not from the school at large. She's gotten more than $575,000 in donations. And she's gotten an all-expense-paid week long trip for herself, her daughter, and grandchildren to Disneyland.
All I got for begin bullied (in a situation, unlike her, where I couldn't escape) was a distrust for people I don't know, a difficulty making new friends, a discomfort in crowds or large groups of people and a healthy disrespect for society and majority views.