Don’t Judge a Bully by It’s Cover

A few days ago I got off a 17 hour flight followed by a 5 hour flight with stress and tiredness, both physically and mentally. This happened twice because in both cases I didn’t think they were bullies because of how old they were. During the 17 hour flight, it eventually became late and one by one people started slanting their seats so they could sleep in a more comfy position. When the guy in front of me slanted his seats, I too decided to go to sleep. I tried slanting my seat but the guy that was behind me pushed it back up (assuming he didn’t feel comfortable with me slanting my seat) and when I turned to look at this person I soon saw it was an old man so out of respect for his age I thought I’d wait a few hours before trying to slant my seat once more. Over and over again he pushed my seat back up whenever I tried slanting it. This went on for the majority of the 17 hour flight and it wasn’t up until the last 3-4 hours of the flight that he too fell asleep and I was able to slant my seat but I knew if I went to sleep then I would to be too tired and sleepless to even get off the plane without someone carrying me out.

With that done, I met my second bully which was a little kid, although I would've quickly realised his character but both my head and my body was located at different time zones but after a few hours of what he was doing I knew. What he did was by bumping his own chair he would make it really difficult to watch or do anything with the screen behind his seat and this kid was around 10-12 years of age.

What I did?

During both of the flights I practically did nothing because for the elderly guy, the stereo-typical information kicked in and (since I’m a good guy) I let him have a comfortable time during the plane while I drank 2 cups of coffee with 5 hours (not good for your health so don’t do it) so I could stay awake during the whole duration of the flight.

After realising what the kid was doing I pretty much had no choice since their parents had little control of over him bribing him not to misbehave, so if I had complained about their son I probably would’ve ended up in aggravating the kid even more and who knows what he could’ve done. After thinking for a bit I decided to ignore the kid since he too was one of those kinds of bullies craving for attention and soon he gave up the bumping (I assume he got tired).

“Bullies Are Bullies No Matter What Their Age”

My recommendation to others

If you’re in a situation that’s similar to mine, for example if the elderly person is: taking more space so that he could be more comfortable; doing something just to show how stubborn he or she is (trust me I know this kind, my dad is number 1 in this field). Firstly I wish all of these people the best of luck since taking on an older bully is much more difficult then taking on a younger one since they have quiet a lot of experience from previous arguments/fights. But just because they’ve got more experience than you doesn't mean that there is no hope, there is always hope no matter how big, powerful or intellectual they are. Only during an element of surprise they don’t have an advantage over you since they don’t have an automatic answer in their head to answer back. Ok, here’s my real suggestion on how to go about fighting your elderly bully, first observe just like any other bully and you might get lucky to see a weakness of theirs.

Note: If any of the elderly bullies you come across get down and dirty with offensive insult and inappropriate language, then this would be the perfect time for teasing. Now you might be thinking "what does he mean by teasing?" well do you remember (if it happened) when you were in primary school kids teased you about something that was (most probably) true, well you can use the same method to fight the same young kids and the elderly people. This is mainly due to the fact that kids don't have the mental understanding to block an insult that is true and by the time a person is old, that person become more aware of themselves on what's happening to the bodies/ image and therefore any true insults becomes a shot to the heart for them.

To fight you elderly bullies take a creative and honest approach to them when you’re fighting back but make sure you don’t use any kinds of persistence unless you know for sure that what you’re doing is working. The reason I recommend most not to use persistence is because they have way more persistence then you do and any persistence you show will only fuel them to be even more persistent, being stubborn and persistent is like trying to stop a bush fire with bottles of champagne.

Finally, if you're up against a little annoying kid, then it is most likely that that kid is bored and is annoying you not only because he can but also because s/he is trying to attract attention to themselves by annying you. Just take the liberty of ignoring the kid and it will soon get tired and look for other ways to get attention from other people.

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