Could you still hold a grudge against someone from primary school?

[BeardofHagrid]

Just silly girls’ politics during primary school, falling out with each other, accusations of best friends being stolen etc, could you still hold a grudge against someone for that now?

The context is that I saw a woman I was at primary school with recently in a shop and she stormed out when she saw me. I hadn’t seen her for 30 years.

Yes, Antoinette and Caroline were bitches.

Yes I could! This particular one bully was merciless towards me throughout primary and secondary school. He was always a lot bigger than me but hit me all the time until one day I retaliated (sadly I credit school with making me quite good at boxing, which I train in as a hobby). He died suddenly a few years ago and I’d be a hypocrite to feel sad. The bullying I endured from various children, both physically and mentally, has sadly stayed with me and had far reaching consequences, including a huge lack of confidence and probably not achieving nearly as much as I was probably capable of doing..

Really 😮

I still hate the girls that bullied me from reception in primary school to year 11 in high school. We all went to the same schools and it has ruined me. I still hate all of them. They ruined how I see friendships and relationships for life. They beat me down and I didn’t want to be alive at 15. I’m 30 now. I still hold that grudge.

Not sure I’d storm out but I’d certainly blank someone completely.

Yes, wouldn’t recognise her now tho but dislike the name. Also had a teacher that bullied me constantly in front of the class, snide bitchy comments, really had to hold my tounge when everyone was waxing lyrical about her being wonderful on a fb group

I don't think I'd hold a grudge as such. But experiences in primary school still form the foundations of how I see the same people as adults. If they were mean to me then (as a general pattern of behaviour, not some one off argument) then I'd be less inclined to be friendly if we met now. Storming out is extreme.

Absolutely.

The shits that made my life hell in secondary school will still be the same as they are now, looking back and laughing at ' school japes'.

You see fully grown bullies now in their 40's, 50's and 60's. Can you image them at school?

The only thing that will make an old school bully stop and think is if they have a child at school being bullied now.

Slightly different but I still hold a grudge against my primary school headmistress who convinced my very working class parents it would be a good idea for me to take the scholarship to a private grammar school. I was so out of place, hated every day, made no friends because I wasn't like the other girls. She knew it was a mistake but looked good on her CV that she got a girl to that school.
It didn't help that she married my widowed father when I was 18.

Depends. Are you minimising?
Your "silly playground politics" could be her "that cow made life miserable" and she was thrown seeing your face again.
I can think of two people I really wouldn't want to see again and might have a similar reaction - turning and walking away if I saw them again!
Did she really "storm?"

Yes! Blamed for something I didn't do ... made by teacher to wash human excrement off clothes/fabric. Really pisses me off when I think about it!

I would and do! I still see my child hood bully once a year at a large annual event in the town I grew up in! I wouldn’t speak to her! I wouldn’t storm out of a shop either, I just try to act as though she’s not there! Not always easy as she’s was a nasty piece of work!

Thankfully I never had such experiences. (Some kids tried to bully me in secondary school but it didn't work.)

I think that if I had had such experiences, I might well still be affected by them personally but unless the circumstances were exceptional, I don't think I'd hold a grudge against the person for it (might not want to be their friend but that's different). I don't think children can be fully responsible at that age and horrible behaviour then is usually stuff they've picked up from elsewhere and aren't old enough yet to analyse and change it, or understand just how bad it is. You look at primary age children now and I can't accept that their personalities are fully realised enough to mark their entire lives and character. I've changed enough since uni, never mind the early years of school...

It’s interesting. I met our school bully as an adult and she told me a story of how SHE had been bullied at school. That’s not my recollection of it at all. Memory is an odd thing and sometimes people “tidy them up” in order to live with themselves. Maybe that’s what happened here? (I mean with the woman in the shop, not you, to be clear! )

She remembers things differently to you.

Absolutely. You may well have made her life a total misery.

I find that very easy to believe. Bullies are usually made, not born.

There was a thread on here some time ago by a woman whose childhood bully had moved to her area and the OP was thinking about rubbing her face in the fact that OP now had a much better life, and even considering getting the woman's five year old child involved (she got a lot of pushback on that). She did mention, as part of how bad looking the bully had become, that the bully had some physical feature that had caused teasing and trouble at school. So the bully had been bullied, but the OP couldn't see that. Not an excuse to become a bully, of course, but yeah... people can be both victims and perpetrators and they very often are.

Do teachers count? If yes, then even though it's been 40 years, I still absolutely hate my primary 7 teacher Mrs Crawford.

I do. I moved to a new area and had just started a new school in yr5. My school experience up until that point had been lovely so I wasn’t worried. My first day no one spoke to me then a few days later I over heard this person telling everyone not to talk to me because I was weird and from x town. I asked to be her friend when I saw her at a party and she said no I was too ugly. I spent 2 years with few friends and no friends outside of school that would admit to calling on me.I have really struggled with friendships and social interaction since. What she did was so unnecessarily horrible it changed me. She is now a parent of a child in my son’s class and is as popular as ever so it stings but I don’t think she even remembers or cares. I think these things can seem trivial to the people that do them but to the victim it can have life long implications- even with therapy the scars are there.

Inapplicable here as regards primary - however I do still hold a grudge against an utterly poisonous girl at my senior school - head of the ‘coven’ of bullies. Probably just as well that I’m never likely to encounter her.

Indeed. I would just pretend I hadn;t recognised them and had no idea who they were.

Oh yes! The tiny blonde monsters! I knew a few.

I was horrified to hear a trainee teacher (male) say the following:

"It's really hard to tell them off, isn't it, especially the little blonde pretty ones!"

Concerning on so many levels.

There were some pretty horrible kids in my class at school but I don't think I'd recognise them now if I saw them. There were also a lot of nice kids.

That happened in my friends younger son’s class. If you speak to my friend, then E was a sly, manipulative bully. Not the physical sort, but the moving stuff, telling lies sort. However, if you speak to E’s mum, then he was the one being bullied, and there was no mention of E ever being in trouble. Of course, both scenarios could be true, E could have been a bully, and been bullied.

I'm old enough now and have seen enough people die that I have vague feelings of well-wishing towards pretty much everyone I knew growing up, even the ones who weren't great to me and who I fell out with.

I do harbour resentment towards any adults who were shit to me because they were grown-ups and should have been better than that.