6 minute read
Pulpit
Slapping, bullies, war and suicide
Andrew Luddington
IINTEND to stick my head above the parapet with regard to the recent Hollywood slapping episode and say that a good public slapping about the face is not necessarily always a bad thing.
When I was a 13-year-old schoolboy I was a shit.
I was a bully.
Not to my friends or smaller kids or the ugly, different, unpopular or down, but I was to a teacher.
I remember him quite well.
He was called Mr Clarke.
He was quiet, nice, a little weak but kind.
However, he hated sport and he had a hair lip with a mild speech impairment and for that my class and I made life difficult for him, especially on the sports field.
One day he was taking a cricket match.
He was the umpire and I was bowling and I was mobbing him up. Effectively bullying him.
I went beyond his point of self-control and I received a short, sharp open handed slap across the face.
It hurt, but the humiliation hurt more.
Soon after a friend asked if we should organise a Clarke hating campaign.
To that I said no. I deserved that slap.
After this incident I became quiet and insular.
Reflecting on the moment, I never had the strength or decency to approach Mr Clarke and to tell him that moment was well-deserved, but at least I did not martial the processes (significant these days but still available then) against him.
And if I met him today I would shake his hand and thank him.
Time moved on a year and I found myself in a Latin class with another teacher who was getting even more stick.
This time I did not join in.
In fact, I became very uncomfortable about it.
I sat in the corner mulling over what was my first real life experience – a damn good slap in the face.
I saw the hurt in that teacher’s eyes as his class day in and day out turned on him.
As I write today (April 2), it marks the seventh anniversary of my daughter’s death.
She was called Sophie and she was bullied.
She took her own life in my neighbours garden.
Two years after this I found myself at a reunion in Melbourne with three of my old school friends.
One of them asked me, “Do you remember that Latin teacher? We gave him so much stick he used to cry”.
I said nothing to that but the look on my face shut him up with immediate effect and I would imagine he now regrets his actions back in the day.
Now more recently I have come across quite a few bullying situations.
Those that hide behind computers.
Vile nameless trolls.
I don’t like the protest group Groundswell and wrote on their website why.
And for this I got a lot of ‘go back to the UK or whoever will have you’ and other racist taunts.
I had a very undesirable tenant on my farm for a while.
He was vacant, mentally impaired and was something of a threat to those around him.
He had spent a fair amount of time in jail.
When word got out about him, a person about 5km from my farm rang me and gave me this line.
“I don’t know a lot about Andrew, but I do know your daughter killed herself recently. If she were still alive today, how would you feel with her living next door to him?”
And you wonder who is worse: a disturbed individual who has done their time or someone prepared to use emotional blackmail to get what they want?
More recently still, a group involved with outdoor adventure stuff once a month that I was a part of, fell apart.
The reason being that a few individuals within the group did not like a venerable person.
They banded together and under the cloak of anonymity they threw her out.
In desperation she called me for help and that is precisely what I gave her.
I reinstated her to that group and that got this line: ‘“Oh Lucie’s (name changed) really furious with you for reinstating Sharon (name changed).”
“Oh is she?,” I said, “I don’t think she could even spell the word fury.”
What we have here is a situation where a few bullies will risk someone’s life to ease a few hours of their own.
Now the reinstated Sharon, the venerable person in question could then leave the group under her own terms and she did so brilliantly – “I leave you morally bankrupt”.
Never was a truer word spoken.
And now we have another bully to deal with, the world’s biggest bully, Vladimir Putin.
Absolute power has absolutely corrupted this man to be utterly oblivious to the suffering of millions and millions.
It is all about him, his ego, his power, his wealth and his security.
The situation arose because people did not have the strength to stand up to him.
More recently when they did, they found themselves jailed or dead.
It was too late.
We hear reports of young Russian soldiers shooting themselves in the legs with Ukrainian bullets to get themselves out of a war they do not want to be part of.
We hear of dead Russian soldiers abandoned where they fell so that the war pig Putin does not have to account for them as a statistic.
We hear of millions of refugees and entire cities destroyed.
And so, on my farm I now fly the Ukrainian flag.
For David that is currently standing up to Goliath and to slap the face of bully Putin as hard as I bloody well can.
ThePulpit
LOSS: Sophie Luddington took her own life in 2015. She was a victim of bullying.
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Suffering from depression or stress, or know someone who is? Where to get help: RURAL SUPPORT TRUST: 0800 RURAL HELP DEPRESSION HELPLINE: 0800 111 757 LIFELINE: 0800 543 354 NEED TO TALK? Call or text 1737 SAMARITANS: 0800 726 666 YOUTHLINE: 0800 376 633 or text 234
Who am I?
Andrew Luddington is a farmer who lost his daughter to suicide.
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