I’ve read much on the heroics of confronting bulliess recently, that too has a dark side…

[JoePhilly]

36. There was a bigger kid who would bully me and my friends 40 years ago ... my friends still talk

about the day his bullying ended.

He was picking on the smallest member of our group, pushing him down, threatening him. He'd done this for a long time. He'd done it to each of us. But on that particular day, his bullying was becoming even more aggressive. The smaller kid would get up, and the bully would knock him right back on the ground again.

So I walked over and told him to stop. He did the standard bully thing and said "What are you going to do about it" ... and then he shoved me. Now he's threatening me, pushing me in the chest. But I won't move away. And then he did something that he always did, he flinched as if he was about to throw a punch. It was one of the various things he'd do to scare you.

And for whatever reason, when he made that motion, I simply responded. I'd never throw a punch at anyone before. He saw it coming and pulled his head back. But he wasn't fast enough, and I caught him with a round house right, hitting him on his left temple, next to his left eye. He fell to his right, and hit the right side of his head on some concrete steps.

As he sat on the ground covering his head and crying, I stood over him daring him to get up, trying to be as menacing as possible. Everyone thought I was enraged. In reality, I knew that I'd broken at least one bone in my right hand. It was killing me. So I was yelling at him to get up, hoping that he wouldn't be able to tell I was hurt. Fortunately, he didn't get up.

The next day we saw him. He had two black eyes. One from my punch, and one from hitting his head on the steps. At school, everyone wanted to know what happened to him. They wanted to know why he looked like a raccoon. And he had to tell them what happened.

And I had to explain the cast on my right hand. I'd broken the bone in your hand that is that connects to your pinky knuckle. It was a compression fracture, so now my pinky knuckle is now about 1/4 inch lower than where it had been.

He never picked on any of us ever again. And those friends, the ones who were bullied, still bring up that story.