Growing up was interesting. Not just because of the people I've met, the places I've been, or the experiences I've shared. It was because of how I grew up with other kids laughing at me, making jokes, and shouting nonsense that you think would never hurt anyone. But it did hurt. Cliché I know. My last name, pronounced ‘poo’, and you could say I got a lot of ‘crap for it’. It made ashamed to have my family’s name knowing that kids would push me, have puns for my last name, or simply laugh at me as they repeated some witty statement they made just to demoralize me for it. Why they did it? Was being a bully somehow beneficial to them? I still don't know. Perhaps it was for self-satisfaction in being able to dominate over someone. Maybe they thought they were funny. I sometimes feel as if it was because they were trying to prove something. That somehow by beating up on someone else, me in this case, they would be considered cool or funny, for the sake of their own friends. Looking back now I think it was because it was elementary school and the kids didn't know better. That’s not to say what they did was right. It sucks and it still does now.

Even now as a high school student I still deal with the teasing. Bullying as of now, for me, is more subtly done. People throw around sarcastic comments or jokes that for the most part I try not to be offended by. I would say it's not as bad as it was in elementary school, but that fact that even around people that are eight to ten years older than second grader, who have the judgement to know whether or not what they are doing or saying is derogatory or negative, and still feel the need to ask me something offensive like, 'hey, can I call you s***?' is almost baffling. The sad part is that I do not to voice my dislike for what happens because I would get further ridiculed by my peers for not 'being able to take a joke'.