H.G. Sansostri

I’m really honoured and pleased to introduce a very special young man as my latest guest blogger. H.G. Sansostri is still at school, he recently decided to tackle head on the worst of childhood school experiences. Bullying. A must read for all young people going through that terrible experience. ‘The Little Dudes’ Skool Survival Guide’ by H.G. Sansostri is available at Amazon: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Little-dudes-Skool-Survival-ebook/dp/B00FPXO4KE/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1381313027&sr=1-1&keywords=The+Little+Dudes+Skool+Survival+Guide
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The Book that was Never Meant to be!

Hello readers! I am H.G Sansostri and I am writing this to tell you all about how I WAS bullied and how my book
‘The Little Dudes’ Skool Survival Guide’ came to be…
The bullying started in Year Four. I was doing well in my Maths, English, R.E and other subjects. I had a large group of friends from Year Three and Year Four (our school was experimenting with mixing the two year groups to form one class). It was all running smoothly like normal.
Then this boy came!!!
He was the same age as all of us, looking like a brand new friend to us all. I found out later on that he was and still is special needs. Me and all of my friends wanted to be there for him and help him out, telling him that we would be there if he wanted to know anything or talk to us about something. He started to feel comfortable with our school, and fitted in with a lot of my friends.
Unfortunately, I was oblivious at the time that that wasn’t a good thing. Of course I wanted him to fit in and be comfortable, but he started to get a little ahead of himself. He started to call me names, say things behind my back and just get angry at me for no reason.
I remember in Year Five, after an incident of bullying was reported, being him again towards me, he put his hand up and said ‘Miss, Harrison is trying to get his own back at me.’??? for some reason he had a vendetta against me which I just didn’t understand?
Even the teachers would explain endlessly to me, that he had problems and needed help, WHERE WAS MY HELP!
Some teachers even asked him why he was angry with me and why he was targeting me, and he simply replied ‘I don’t know Miss. I don’t know.’ Some people say that the truth will eventually be found out, and this occured a few days later.
Anyway back to Year Four…
I was quite taken aback from seeing how he just started to suddenly turn on me. I honestly didn’t know what I was doing! He would walk up to me in the playground and say something rude to me and suddenly walk off. Now, I eventually found out that some of my so called friends (not any more) started taking advantage of him and kept asking him to walk up to me and say stupid things.
He has also attempted and I repeat attempted to do this to me once recently in my new secondary school, no chance! but everything has calmed down now. As he knows its game over!
So we moved on into Year Five, with one of my favourite teachers ever. The incidents with the new boy and my friends slowly moved from ‘arguments’ to ‘fall-outs’. Some of my friends would just say something horrible to me, as they listened to him? I would then defend myself and argue back, not knowing then my newfound solution ‘ITI’ (ignore total idiots) which I invented to deal with my unhappy days at school (this is in my new book out ‘The Little Dudes Skool Survival Guide). I fell out with almost all my friends as they were downright mean to me and I felt really lonely too!
Half the time I played on my own, pretending to be a person blasting aliens into oblivion as most ten-year old boys did, or I would sit on the school bench in the playground and think and think about all the kids playing happily, little did I know that this would become great material for my book in which there is a chapter called ‘The Specifics’
The only people who were there for me was my girlfriend (and still is now) and two of her own friends who eventually became my friends. We played a lot together and sat next to each other in class.
That didn’t really sort out what was going on at school though. I was alone a lot and I felt really sad.
Sometimes the boys and even some of the girls from the other class would evict me from their games, leaving me on the bench alone. I didn’t understand what I had done at the time, but now I know it had to be something to do with jealousy. I really didnt understand what I had done?
Just hopping back in time again for a minute as the jealousy, I think, was linked to the fact that Im a child actor, I also think now that this is why it all began…
At the beginning of Year Four, I was in a West-End Theatre Production called ‘Lord of the Flies’. I played the ‘littlun’ Percival and I had great fun acting with the rest of the cast. Even my Headmistress came and watched me perform and she awarded me with a certificate the next day at assembly. Everyone in class was asking about it at the end of the day, swarming me with questions.
The next morning, if I was to say something about my acting or the certificate, as I was still buzzing from all the excitement about it. ‘Harrison,’ they would reply ‘honestly, no one cares?
Well I then moved on into Year Six, with another great teacher that I had for my last year of primary school. This was were ex- friends started again the bullying and really got stuck in, with the ‘new boy’ as the leader of the group but at the very start of Year Six, I remember that there was a moment of friendship between us all and I felt really happy, not for long though! We had all got the ball taken off us because two boys started fighting on the pitch, so we were just sitting there not doing anything and sighing in boredom. I sat with them as well, marvelling at the fact they weren’t bullying me anymore. Then…

One of them suggested a game, where the new boy played a famous celebrity and the rest were his bodyguards. I had to be a crazy paparazzi fan wanting to get to them, and the bodyguards had to keep me away from him. I stupidly agreed to be the crazed fan, not knowing what I was getting myself into.

It started fine and amazingly fun, all of us laughing and saying funny things to each other. Then…I honestly don’t know what happened. They heightened the way of playing and so did I and…it eventually got to a point of total madness. I feel bad still that it was a silly plan they had just to have a pop at me and belittle me. They started shoving me away hard, yelling things at me and continuing to shove me away. I, still thinking this was part of the game, shoved back. Luckily this didn’t cause a fight because the bell rang a few seconds later. Saved by the bell, what a cliche’!

The big bullying episode happened halfway through the school year, where I was with the group or trying hard to be! They suddenly attacked me, one kneed me in the stomach and the other one pushed me down and sat on top of me, whilst one kept kicking me from behind in the bottom.
The new boy laughed with enjoyment as he watched me yell at them to get off. I can’t even remember why I was standing there with them anymore. I ran off, hid and cried on my own!
The only reason this was ever stopped, and didn’t go on into Year Seven, was because of one boy.

He was okay and never got involved with the group. He watched by as they attacked me in the ‘game’ and asked them to stop. I never told my Mum a thing, thats where I went wrong! I then invited him over the following Saturday and he told my Mum everything that happened to me at school. She thanked him, and when he left, she sat me down in a chair and asked me to explain every single thing that had happened, she then took notes, after that she told me off for not confiding in her or dad. She had every right to. I dont know why I hadn’t told anyone or even tried to stop it, I was really unhappy though! Maybe almost ashamed?

We did get it all sorted out. We visited our Headmistress, who was really good about it all and very sad for me too, she got the boys and two witnesses to explain what they saw. My Headmistress took a statement from me as well and I told her everything like there was no tomorrow! Literally everything and I felt so much better that I cried and cried!

The very next week, on the exact same day, I was called to the Headmistress’s Office. The boys who bullied me and the witnesses came and sat in the lobby area, waiting to be called in. They sat me down in a chair facing another one and brought each boy in one at a time. They all apologised, including the witnesses for not telling the teachers first thing. I honestly didn’t want to hear those two boys apologies, because they didn’t need to. The best thing, in my opinion, was to have told my Mum above everything else, she was on a mission and wouldnt let a thing go until she had nailed everybody, including the parents! Go Mum GO!

Then the new boy came in.

The headmistress talked to him for a bit about respect and being the ring-leader of the pack. He growled all his answers back to her, staring at me with a cold glare. I stared back at him. He eventually apologised with a low growl, and was escorted back to class.
‘Do you forgive him, Harrison?’ Said the other teacher who was in the meeting as well.
‘Um…’ I sigh. ‘No, miss.’ I dont!

Despite all that’s happened, though, I now understand that he wasn’t the ring-leader. The other boys were taking advantage of him and manipulating him, making him do all those things. Granted he laughed at me when I was attacked, but I think he just didn’t know whether to help or just leave me be. As he had problems too?

Later on in Year Six, I started writing. I wrote down solutions on how to deal with arguments, fights and classroom problems, using two characters Billy and Ethan as my boys to solve situations. I had an endless amount of material to write about, because those bullies along with a load of other unkind kids supplied it for me 🙂 I wrote and wrote and wrote until I reached the end! YAY but then Mum acidentally deleted a fifth of my work! Mum? she was trying to email the last part to her own PC but instead deleted it, so I rewrote the last part again, but still feel that the original ending had more guts and sincerity, if you understand what I mean?

The unfortunate episodes that I went through at primary school were written in my book to tell other children how to avoid them and the horrors of bullying in general.
Hey, you know what? Me and the new boy became good…friends, for a little while. We had to make a short film with a moral storyline, so we chose bullying. I played the person who was getting bullied, the new boy and one of my ‘witnesses’ a bully and another boy the camera-man. We showed them all off at our little makeshift ‘Class Film Festival’ and ours was chosen to show younger year groups the horrors of bullying. Hmm I wonder if thats because I was a convincing ‘bullied boy’ given my real experience of it?

The last school day was the 20th of July, 2013. We all waved each other goodbye at the end of the day.
I looked back at my primary school for one moment. I knew I was going to miss it, despite all that had happened to me during my primary school years. Although a lot of my friends came with me to secondary school we are not in the same class anymore and Im happy about that, I do feel better there, oh yes and stronger too!
By
H.G. Sansostri

Big THANK YOU to Harri for his excellent contribution. You can find out more about him here:

WEBSITE – http://www.hgsansostri.com

TWITTER – @hgsansostri

Facebook – hgsansostri

WHERE TO FIND THE BOOK – ‘The Little Dudes Skool Survival Guide’ written by a kid like you
available on amazon –