At sometime in our lives every one of us has had the misfortune of running into a bully. Either as a witness to some brutish terrorism of another, or perhaps unfortunately, a meeting with one on a more personal note. So it will be understood in this little conversation that we all know what a bully is and what they do for fun and profit.

It is generally believed that bullies are always the larger guys picking on the little guys. But that is not always true. Big or small, it all comes down to who is willing to force their will on someone else. Likewise, big or small, it also takes someone who will submit to this other person without resistance. Now when I say resistance I do not mean that you have to be able to beat the bully up. Many times that is just not physically possible. But here is something that many people just don’t understand. It is something that my brothers and I were taught at a very young age by our father. You do not have to always win the fight, but you do have to stand up for yourself.

Now my Dad had some great lines, as I’m sure most of you will also remember your fathers’ lessons on life. Like your fathers, mine repeated his all the time. Somewhere dads, and moms, learn that if you want kids to learn something you tell them so many times that the kids start to mumble it in their sleep. Remember? Here are just a few of my Dad’s sayings to his sons, I am sure many of you heard something similar.

1)     Say what you mean, mean what you say.

2)     Mike! Mike! Wh… what the he… get… get… get over here… what the hell are ya thinkin’ son? (He also inserted the names Ralph and Scott on many, many occasions.)

3)     No matter how tough you think you are, there is always someone out there tougher than you.

4)     It is not how big and strong you are but what is in your heart.

(My brothers and I figured this was Dad’s version of the old ‘size of the dog in the fight’ theory.)

5)     Wait until your father comes home!

                  (No wait that was Mom’s favorite and I think we heard it everyday.)

      And when we were older:

6)     If someone buys you a drink make sure you buy him one too. Unless you don’t like the SOB then to hell with it. 

      But the one saying that I have always remembered the most is:

 7) Never go looking for trouble, but don’t run from it either.

      My father expected his sons to stand up to the bullies we encountered. He told us that he didn’t expect us to win every fight but we damn sure better not just give in and hand it over when somebody said, “Give me your lunch money.” He told us that bullies only get away with what they do because most people do not stand up to them. That even if that bully beat us up and took the money anyway, at least by fighting back we could get a couple of good licks in. He said bullies don’t like to get hurt anymore than you do, so if you hurt them, even just a little, they will learn to leave you alone. Now I remember this because the first time he told me I was thinking, “Geez, he’s gonna get me killed!”

      So that’s what we were taught by our Father, and this is what we learned. We learned that he was absolutely right. Yeah, we took some lumps. But we dished out a few too. And you know what, after a while nobody bothered us. We learned that the bullies left us alone mainly because they knew we would resist. By resisting and fighting back these bullies paid a price for what they did to us. And because we would resist we developed an attitude of, “Hey, you might beat me up and take my lunch money but you will pay a price.” Attitude, it means a lot. Just showing the bullies that we would ‘go’, as the kids say today, was enough to keep them from preying on us. Another thing we learned is that when a bully takes a kid’s lunch money they always do it in the most demeaning manner possible, usually with plenty of other kids watching. By doing this they take from their victims something much more valuable than their lunch money, they steal their pride, dignity, trust and self worth. My brothers and I soon realized it was actually these valuable, intangible possessions that my father wanted us to keep and what was worth fighting for, not just lunch money.

      So what got me started on this? No I am not trying to make myself out as a tough guy, my brother is, but not I. Actually I always got along very well with most people because most people like me, well some do…okay my family does…alright then, my grand-daughter thinks I’m okay.

      And no I am not trying to tell fifth graders what to do, nor am I trying to get kids beat up because they won’t give up their lunch money. Besides everybody knows that there is no such thing as a bully anymore. They are simply, “socially handicapped young persons who feel the need to dominate others and get disruptive at the word No.” Or however the PC’ers refer to them today. 

      What I am doing is setting you all up for a new voters’ selection idea that I believe has merit. Really! Let’s face it, America, and the World in general, has not been much on standing up to the bullies in our world for a long time now. Remember up there in paragraph two when I said that bullies can be big or small and that the victims can be too? Well America, one of the bigger kids on anybody’s block, sure has been letting itself be pushed around by a whole bunch of smaller bullies for a long, long time now. Remember Vietnam, the Iranian hostages, Somalia? How about this maniac midget over there in North Korea with his nukes? Yes he is a bully. Well peace marchers and politicians gave our lunch money to Vietnam, and when they were loosing to boot. Carter, who you just know gave up his lunch money everyday back in his school days, tried to sneak a small group of courageous Americans in the back door instead sending a very large group of brave Americans to kick down the front door. They perished in the attempt so he sat on his hands in D.C. And Somalia, man what a waste of brave men, Clinton gets pressured about our troops being there and he does a cut and run. That shrimp in Korea, well he wouldn’t even be on the radar screen right now if the UN had not coughed up the lunch money to his predecessors who were backed by those two big bullies, China and the Soviet Union. Whatever did happen to that big, bad, old Soviet Union Bear anyway, oh yeah, it got beat up and quit.

      The saddest part of this bullying situation is that we have had a very brave group of young Americans who were more than willing to punch these bullies square in the nose and to keep punching until they left us alone, only to have the politicians come in, stop the fight and say, “Wait, wait, here’s our lunch money.” It has been a long time since ‘the kid’ has been let loose long enough and with enough power to really kick somebody’s butt and finish the job because they wanted to take something away from us. It is not just our politicians either; it has been world wide, especially the U.N., they just can’t wait to give away the next pocket full of lunch money.

         So here is what I am going to do in the next election, and I hope you will all take my advice and follow my lead. I am going to look for the candidate who may not be the best speaker, may not be the best diplomat or the smartest and most educated, may not be the sharpest dresser, richest or the most appealing to the eye. I am looking only for the next politician who is least likely to give up our lunch money! And its simple, all we have to do is imagine what these geeks, er…I mean candidates, were like back in the good old school days. For some examples we’ll go back a few years ago and to our last Presidential election. All we do is imagine what they did when put in a situation were they are being confronted by a bully and the bad guy says:

“Give me your lunch money or else!”

BOB DOLE: Bob starts talking and soon the bully falls asleep.

BILL CLINTON: Billy, always the charmer, not only gets the bully laughing at himself but he soon finds his pants down around his knees. Unfortunately little Billy then gives him the lunch money anyway just to show the bully that there are no hard feelings.

GEORGE W. BUSH: GW (pronounced G-dub-Ah) has his father hire bodyguards and consultants to insure that no bully ever gets close. The consultants map out the schoolhouse and playgrounds and tell little GW, every fifteen minutes so he won’t forget, what hallways, bathrooms and dark corners he must avoid so as not to get picked on. GW forgets anyway, but the bodyguards always arrive in just the nick of time and beat up the bully. After just the second punch is thrown GW announces that the fight is now over. GW then spends all of his lunch money, along with that of the consultants’ and bodyguards’, on “…just having a good ol’ time, cause I’m still young y’all.”

HOWARD DEAN: Scares the ever loving out of the bully with his loud reply, “WEEELLLLL, SOOO YOU WANT MY LUNCH MONEY? WELL WHHHOOOOO HEEEEEEE! YOU COME RIGHT ON OVER HERE AND GET IT BOY!” Where as the bully, and everyone else within earshot, runs like hell to get away from this crazy bas…. I suggest, seriously, that we take their cue.

JOHN EDWARDS: C’mon, you just know that this little pretty boy gave up more lunch money than the national debt! In fact, one day when he had already coughed it up, a second bully came along and demanded it and poor Johnny didn’t have anymore so the bully beat him up. It was there, on that day, in that emergency room, where little Johnny E. decided he was going to become a lawyer and sue the hell out of hospitals when people were injured. Nope, forget John Edwards. The only question here is if we should go after him or that second bully for putting him in a position to come up with the inspiration that made it impossible for any American to get cheap medical insurance.

JOHN F. KERRY: Or as he is known in this household, F. Kerry. Can’t you just see him? Dressed in an apricot ascot and blue blazer with a red and gold coat of arms patch that has JFK in Olde English sewn on it. Hey, I would want to beat him up! Anyway, John boy here buys everybody’s lunch, and why not? The guy is dating the two richest girls in the school. As a special ‘favor’ to any student who will not say, ‘The Pledge of Allegiance’, or will not sing ‘God Bless America’ and ‘The National Anthem’, or just generally shows a distaste for the school itself, he makes sure they all get a second helping of goulash in the cafeteria, or meatloaf on those gourmet Tuesdays. He is always going around telling tall tales of his fights with the bullies and of how he was so badly injured while fighting them, yet he never missed a single day of school! On Friday nights during the half time of the football games, and especially if his team was ahead, he would sneak over to the opposing schools’ locker room and negotiate a forfeit so his school would lose the game. Later that week he would give the opposing team’s players all of his schoolmates’ lunch money. He would… oh never mind this is just too easy.

HILLARY CLINTON: Hillary, Dillary, Dock. Hillary never had to worry about bullies. This girl was so cold, so intellectual, so goal orientated, so opinionated, so pushy that nobody wanted to even come close. Bullies shied away from her! Again I suggest we all take their cue. Mainly because even at a very young age it became well known that anybody and everybody who came into contact with her always walked away with less money in their pockets than when they had said, “Hello”. However she does still have all of her lunch money. You couldn’t trace it with the FBI, CIA, VA, IRS and the NAACP combined, but all of her lunch money is out there collecting interest and not paying taxes somewhere!

DICK CHANEY: Hah, you thought I forgot him didn’t you. Well I saved him for last and you know why too. Come on you know. Because Big Dick was the bully! This guy has taken more lunch money off of people than Wal-Mart pays China for their crummy products. Come on, you know it, I know it, everybody knows it, but Big Dick is such a bad ass nobody is willing to say it. Well just remember what my father told me years ago, no matter how tough you think you are, there is always somebody tougher than you. Someday Big Dick will get his in the end.

So what do you think? Are you with me on this new voting method or not? Well I’m going to try it. It’s the best way I can think of until Mr. Black gets that monkey thing going.* Until then I hope you will all pray that whoever gets elected in the next election will hold onto our lunch money. Not to mention our pride, dignity, trust and self worth. God bless.

Semper Fi,

Mike