In my first post on What Happens When Bullies Grow Up?, I discussed a recent bullying incident involving my son at school. Now, let’s take a look at another bullying story…

It was a sunny day on Catalina Island and a group of fathers and sons (ages 5-12) had traveled here for a weekend of father and son bonding. It had been a mostly relaxing weekend full of hiking, archery, rock climbing and of course, plenty of eating. There was also some friendly competition planned between the Dad’s. The main event, was a canoe race. Here’s how the race was to unfold:

1. There were 12 teams of dads.

2. Each race would consist of 2 canoes racing against each other

3. Each canoe was to be crewed by 6 Dad’s

4. The race would start with a whistle blow

5. Each team would launch their canoe from shore

6. We would race about 1/2 mile out to round a buoy and return to shore

7. First man out of the boat would run to the finish line and be the winner of that race.

Pretty simple…You would think?

After much debate about who would make up our team of 6 canoing Dads of which I was one, we headed to the beach with our sons, who would watch the race from the shore. We grabbed our canoe and had even more debate on who going to sit where, what side we will be paddling and who was in effect “the captain” of the canoe. As we are having this debate, the team that we are racing against is also having a similar debate - but their debate was about how much they were going to beat us by, already planning to be on the shore having a beer as we paddled in. Of course, this was nothing more about men talking smack amongst themselves, no more than you would hear during Football Night in America.

When it was time for the race to begin, I was at the front (bow of the canoe), with my team all in position behind me. The whistle blew and jumped in our canon and began paddling. We were off to a great start -paddling straight and steady, starting to pull aware from our opponents. And then out of the corner of my eye, I saw it happen. The opposing team rammed their canoe right into the side of our canoe - we were T-boned as we would refer to it as we described the story later. As they rammed our canoe with cheers and laughter, our canoe rocked to the left, tipping to the side to fill with the cool ocean water. I quickly turned around to see that our canoe was sinking. We all exited the canoe.

Here we were 100 yards off shore, wearing life jackets, but faced with swimming back to shore with a submerged canoe. There was no way we were going to be able to flip it back over once it was filled with water. Of course, the other team wasn’t going to help. They were too busy enjoying themselves. So, we just started to swim back to shore with the canoe in tow. As I was swimming, I looked to shore where there was approximately 70 other Dad’s and 100 kids who were waiting to race or watching the races. None of them were laughing. Some yelled to us if we needed help. We did not. Some looked on with concern. I caught my son’s eyes, and I gave him the thumbs up from the water. He knew that would mean I was ok. He gave me a thumbs up back.

The other team didn’t finish the race. The turned back to shore after paddling around a bit. When we were all back on dry land, the other team of canoe racing Dads came over to us, laughing. “We didn’t think we would sink you!” one says. Another says “We owe you a beer,” (a fellow man’s way of saying their sorry)

Now, I came back to the office and shared this story with some of the team at Better Parenting University. We were all having a laugh about it, when Shari, our resident psychologist asks me:

“So how does it feel to be a victim of a bully?”

Hmm…now, while I wasn’t happy about the events that transpired, I really didn’t consider it be much more than men’s competitive nature getting out of hand, or bad sportsmanship at worse. But, Shari pointed out that if a similar scenario played out on my son’s playground at school - it would be bullying. I guess, since I am an adult and a man, I really didn’t see it that way at first. But, Shari is right. Bullys don’t just impact children - bully’s are a part of life.

Better Parenting University offers an eye opening parenting seminar packed full of helpful information and tactics to deal with bullying.