speech

Friend Not Foe

Bullying isn’t a good thing to deal with nor to do.

But before I get started, be honest, who has been bullied?

Many people get bullied. Everywhere you go there's bullying. There's no hiding from it.

There’s always a reason why there’s bullying.  Right? It’s probably that there are problems in the bully’s family or they’re getting bullied as well, so they are taking it out on other people to make themselves feel better etc etc

It’s bad when you go home and you're really upset and take it out on your family. Can I tell you something? It isn’t going to end well! Sometimes people keep the bullying to themselves and it starts to affect their life a lot.  This can lead to really bad things.  

How I know this is because it’s happened to me many times before.

At every school I have been to, I have been bullied or people I know have been bullied. I have been to three different schools and can share three different stories. Each one was either about my friends or about my height. I won’t tell you everything about the stories today but I’ll mention some of the main things about each one.

The First was that I was apparently too short, but it was just because everyone was too tall. The Second thing, was about my two best friends. Both of them have problems in their lives, not too major, but they do. The one started saying mean things to the other one and used her disabilities to push her around. I didn’t tell anyone because I thought that it would go away, but it didn’t.

It carried on for a while until I actually spoke to someone. It changed a little bit, but not much. This went on for the whole year. I was at that school for about two years until we moved to Waikanae. It carried on even after I left. Until one of them changed schools. The third was also about my friends but not as bad as the last one. I’m not going to mention any names but this person said that I was taking away her friend’s. She used that very same thing against me every time she got in a fight with her friends and said that it was my fault. That did stop after about three terms.

My point about my speech is that bullying is that it can change a person's perspective on life of being happy to being messed up. I know that it sounds bad but it’s true. We need to make a difference. Let’s start by treating people the way we want to be treated. Think twice before you speak.

Next time you make fun of/ tease someone put yourself in their shoes. How would u feel? What effect would it have on that person's life. Speak life not death. Positive not negative. Smile at someone today… Just because. It might save a person’s life.

BE A FRIEND NOT FOE!               Ash-lee