Summertime and the living is, well, easier. For most, summer is heaven. For some, it's a blessed relief. For some schoolchildren, it's a lifeline - peace and tranquillity can, for a few short months, reign, writes Ailish Connelly.
They won't have to go around with their head down, in fear of looking crooked at the wrong guy, awaiting a thump or worse from another pupil. They won't have to worry, to fervently wish to skip school, to puzzle over feeling different for no discernible reason other than because bully boy X or alphagirl Y can sense their vulnerability and is prepared to go in for the metaphorical kill.
For an extended length of time, for two entire months or more, their daily torture is at an end. Can you imagine going around feeling like that every day? Having to melt into the background just to avoid a physical or verbal thrashing?
Imagine having to become unobtrusive merely to avoid having your lunch taken, your clothes ripped or your personal property stolen; to avoid being ritually ridiculed and humiliated; to avoid being the butt of cruel jokes and jibes; to avoid being pointed at, laughed at, pushed, shoved, urinated on, punched or assaulted in myriad ways. Children are hugely imaginative in their play - and in their bullying. You think I exaggerate?
Unfortunately, for far too many of our schoolchildren, this behaviour and its effects are a horrible fact of their waking hours. The question is, why is more not being done about it? And why is it the victims who pay the price?
I've heard oodles about kids having to move class or school because some child targeted them. I've never heard of a child moving school because he bullied someone. And I've never heard of bullying behaviour being written into a pupil's record.
What lovely children we are rearing.
But not mine, I hear you say. Mine wouldn't do that. Mine said she didn't do it, didn't know it was going on, didn't realise it was wrong. It was only a joke, they didn't mean to hurt his feelings, the kid being picked on is too soft, you'd want to toughen him up, you would, so he can survive in the real world. Nice.
Because nice guys finish last, don't you know. Witness our politicians soundly dealing with each other during the recent leaders' and deputy leaders' debates. "Inda" trying to shout down Bertie and Bertie like a hound sprung from a trap, out to annihilate. Bertie is used to the rip roar of debates - 15 years at the top would do that to a man, his defenders would say.
Really? I'm sure he's a very affable chap and all, but if I were "Inda", or Trevor or whoever, I wouldn't be showing him the whites of my eyes any time soon. While it might make for squirm-inducing, full metal jacket television, I think politicians shouting over each other and refusing to listen to each other is a bad example to set to our young people. Flex your verbals and you'll win. Be a winner at all costs, mow down the opposition so that they can't get a word in edgeways. Way to go, the rude boys win and forward we go as a society.
Respect seems to be very far down the list. Even the language we use in our daily lives, and especially for business, is wrapped up in one-upmanship: top dog, go-getting, cut throat, winner takes all. You wouldn't want to be sensitive, now, would you?
You have to be the best and, sorry, there is only room at the top for so many. So to get there, where the air is filtered and lavender and everyone is high on their own testosterone (and that's just the girls), you gotta crush the opposition. Squash 'em down while you shout to all the dullards beyond: "Look at me - aren't I only marvellous? Mine is way bigger than yours. I got the cojones to prove it."
We laud the oppressor and our kids aren't dumb. They pick up on it and they do as we do. We all have the ability to bully, to feel the stab of jealousy that demands a nasty riposte - the loathsome base desire to whip the rug from under the feet of anyone who dares not to "fit in".
Do we really want to encourage our children to follow this path? There is a kind of inevitable, albeit rare, conclusion to all this.
According to one mother I spoke to, it results in incidents like that which occurred outside the Burlington Hotel on a wet Friday night, several years ago now, with a teenager dead on the pavement, a kid on the verge of adulthood, his whole future ruthlessly snuffed out. Brian Murphy must have looked crooked at someone that night, poor kid.
The mother feels that the bullying that goes on in schools is indicative of our ambivalent attitude towards bullying in society. We celebrate only a certain kind of success, material success and all the trappings, lording it over the weaker with a callous disregard for those who are in any way - even in an insignificant way - different. There are arguments that bullying is part of life but, seriously, why should a five-year-old or a nine-year-old have to accept it? Why should a 15-year-old accept it? Why should a 35-year-old office worker accept it?
I've heard stories from grown women who had to have years of therapy to overcome the effects of being tormented during childhood. One woman told me her father had worked three jobs to give his offspring the things in life that he hadn't had. And she was remorselessly bullied for it. How dare she and her brothers have that little bit more? Who did they think they were?
Then there's the startlingly bright, musically gifted girl who had to move class, and there's the innocent, wide-eyed kid who is picked on just because of that childhood innocence. He'll be moving too.
What about bullyvision central, Big Brother? The mainstay of Channel 4's summer schedule, it is trotted out as suitable, silly-season viewing, family viewing, even. It is the original and the worst of unreality TV, where weeding out the weedy, the needy and the sad seems to be the whole and only point of the show.
Then there's the parent who could never admit that her child could possibly be the bully in the class. It is very difficult to accept that your child is the one doing the deed, because, of course, there is the guilt attached. It's learned behaviour, after all. We are grooming our children to succeed, to a point where anything less than first is, well, a big let down.
The schools are taking the issue of bullying seriously. Many have a defined method of dealing with such behaviour and are guided by advice from experts based in organisations such as the Anti-Bullying Centre at Trinity College Dublin. The centre's website (www.abc.tcd.ie) is a good source of information for anyone dealing with the fraught issue of bullying, whether they are the victim or the perpetrator.
And, of course, we know the perpetrators are victims too. It's just hard to keep the eye on that particular ball when their victim is cowering in his room all weekend, for fear of crossing the other victim.
Breda O'Brien is on leave