It's all fun and games until the adults say bullying isn't wrong

I was bullied quite a bit as a child. There were probably a number of reasons for this, including the administration's refusal to intervene, the antipathy several faculty members had for myself ad my mother, class differences, the parents' refusal to dicsipline their children and tell them that their behavior is unacceptable; however, the fact remains that I was bullied almost every day between kindergarten and 6th grade. 

No doubt, at first, it started as just play. There were parts to be played, and I just somehow ended up with the victim more often then not. But, I can't help but feel like it didn't remain that way for long. While I've lost quite a few memories of my childhood to protective amnesia, from what I can remember, my classmates delighted in excluding me. They adored making me cry, hitting me, calling me fat and ugly while parents and faculty looked on and did nothing. The fact that I was the one to get punished if I said or did anything to defend myself made it all the more exciting to them; to me, it felt like a nightmare. I was the scholarship kid at a private religious school for the children of Palo Alto billionaires, and as such, I had no power within either the social hierarchy or the administration. With no way to defend myself, forbidden from calling my mother for help, and my mother eventually banned from campus because she fought so vigorously in my defense, all that was left to me was to shut down, and save my tears of rage and helplessness for home.

Play can be dangerous. It isn't just hurt feelings or injuries that can result from a game gone wrong. When children are encouraged to believe that they're right no matter what, and it's other people's fault for getting hurt, it can lead to victims with permanent scars. Play between children with an imbalance of power encouraged by adults is dangerous, because it begins to impose that hierarchy on the children, and they include it in their interactions. It leads to children who say "daddy pays you, so you have to do what I say" to nannies. It leads to children who believe they're entitled to whatever they want. It leads to little girls punching their father's hands while screaming and crying because there's nothing anyone can do to protect them.

There's a line between bullying and play gone wrong. It's more defined than many people think.