The Jungle

        A young boy wanders the halls of Princess Margaret Secondary School in Penticton BC. Suddenly a cloister of students exit a nearby classroom followed by more. Eventually the halls are filled with mostly caucasian students with few East Indians in the mix. The lone boy gets swooped up in the jostling of books and peers as he is lost in the jungle of the hallway. After what seems like mere seconds to some students and hours for others the halls are vacant. The adolescent boy lies on the cold cement floor, his books splayed everywhere along with his pride and self worth. In those few minutes of switching classes this innocent boy was the victim of a bully.

        To this day bullying is a real and ever present problem. Most students are unaware of the situations that take place. This malevolent problem has reached out with its extraneously long bony fingers and has grasped a high school in Penticton and this young grade 9 boy is the first of many victims.

         When asked about his life at school the student responded quickly spurting out "normal and fine" as he rushed on to class. It almost seems that he is in a state of denial or he is scared that his predators my punish him for explaining the truth. Again the student was asked but this time if he was being bullied, the response was shocking "I am not being bullied I just have some friends that like to have fun once in a while." This reply depicts his attackers as his friends. The boy is showing signs of a paradoxical psychological phenomenon or other wise known as Stockholm syndrome because he is sticking up for his attackers and  announcing them as his friends when he is really the martyr to their maliciousness.

        This quandary explains how powerful and daunting bullying can be and become. Bullying can capture someone in a convoluted deluge of terror and confusion. Princess Margaret is inauspiciously unaware of the shadow that coats the school in a mystical obscurity that feeds on the fear of students.