Jacksonville, Florida here, school from &#x27;88 - &#x27;01. Both public and private schools.<p>I&#x27;ve been punched in the face and chest multiple times, spit on, thrown into a creek by three kids, pushed down stairs, you name it. But it was mostly constant emotional abuse. For how much I was called a faggot, you&#x27;d swear the WBC kids went to school with me. I can&#x27;t even imagine how much worse it&#x27;d be if I actually were gay. Kids in the &#x27;90s were <i>obsessed</i> with anti-homosexuality. I&#x27;d usually ditch the cafeteria and eat alone in the stairwells. The worst parts of the day were between-classes. I took to just carrying all of my books with me all day so I could jump from class to class as quickly as possible. Well, that and gym. Gym was always a nightmare.<p>It was at home where I received by far the worst physical abuse. But, I&#x27;m not looking for a pity party for myself here. I&#x27;m doing just fine today, and managed to cope with most of it.<p>And to be fair, I really was a weird kid. The sock thing in the article caught my eye. I would have killed for socks without seams: I was always taking off my shoes and folding the edge of the sock because the seam would drive me nuts. I had all kinds of weird tics, many caused by actual (not trendy) obsessive-compulsive disorder, others by misophonia.<p>I&#x27;d just really like to see people take bullying seriously instead of as a rite of passage. Imagine if you had a coworker call you a faggot and push you down the stairs at work. And so you told HR, and they told the coworker, &quot;hey, don&#x27;t do that again or we might make you work an extra hour!&quot; and that was it. Yet somehow this is perfectly okay with children, because &quot;kids will be kids.&quot;