Those everyday battles on a bridge

1981 was different to both 1980 and 1982 in my life.  1981 I was captivated by a new game—golf.  I loved the game so much as a 13–14-year-old that I towed my golf buggy behind my bike most days after school to the golf course to play 9 holes before evening mealtime.  But I had one anxious challenge in doing that most days.

It was the bullies on the bridge—and I can’t even remember who they were.  Just three or four older boys who teased me for playing golf.  Most of the time they verbally jousted with me, laughed at me, and occasionally they’d push me around.  Apparently, it wasn’t very macho for a teenager to play golf.

So brave were they that it was always at least two against one.

One day as I recall they were particularly mean.  They started getting the golf clubs out of the bag, threw some of the balls back and forth between them, and began uncoupling the bag and buggy from the bike.  I fought back and then started riding off and leaving the area they just dropped the stuff they’d taken and walked off.  I went back and retrieved it.

It was always on the way to the clubhouse that they did it, never on the way home.

One thing that struck me about early life and adulthood is we seem to become civilised when we become adults.  Well, at least that was my experience.  Though sadly, the conflicts tend to be deeper and more entrenched in betrayal when things do go wrong when we’re adults.

Those everyday battles on the bridge were something that inspired dread in me as I approached, yet it wasn’t until I contemplated the scene that I even remembered how it used to make me feel.  How many of those experiences when we were children do we forget until they’re prompted by some related stimulus?

Those moments of seeing those smiling boys, licking their lips as their prey approached.  And yet, after a few minutes on each occasion I passed on unscathed, able to go on and play my golf.  Those moments of being ridiculed and not knowing where to look or what to expect as they sought to take advantage of their vulnerable target.

I guess this routine must have gone on until the month that year that we moved into the next neighbourhood and suddenly I no longer needed to traverse that bridge.

Those everyday battles on the bridge, however hard they were at the time, are part of the experience of my youth years, and I survived to tell the story, as all of us do that face similar situations.  There are no ill feelings toward those boys, but then again, I’d never consider their taunts and occasional pushes and shoves as anything other than mild bullying.

But until I went back to that cherished bridge, I’d forgotten about these events.

I’m thankful for the pleasant reminisces.  Probably what I’m most thankful for, however, is that I was only ever a target of the behaviour of being ganged up on, and never initiated it.

One more thing I’m thankful for, but also saddens me for youth today; at least bullying in my day was limited to face-to-face interactions—these days in an electronic age it can be impossible to escape the taunts.