 
At nine, I changed to
an English prep school.
And there was bullying.
You know, there were larger
kids who would hurt you.
There were people that
you steered clear of.
And then occasionally,
there would be things
that you would get
caught up in yourself.
I remember one of the
most horrible things,
looking back on it, was a
kid who came to the school,
was a relatively new boy and
was just kind of awkward.
We all just started
spitting at him.
And there is this
kid down, you know,
standing on the ground and
we're all up on the first floor,
the top of the staircase, and
he has to come to the lesson
and he can't.
And he's just standing
there, crying.
And there are 30 kids
just sort of pfft spitting
in his direction.
And I don't even think
we were spitting on him.
I mean, it was much more
of a - of a sort of you
can't come here.
Looking back on it I think, how?
How did you get to
be part of that?
Why were 30 kids, most of
whom were really nice, really
sensible, you know, suddenly
doing this strange crazy thing,
which actually
stopped at the point
when the teacher turned
up for the lesson
and saw what was going on.
I was so glad that
somebody had stopped this.
And I - it's one of
those things that, you
know, 40 years later,
I feel ashamed about.
If I could put myself back
in that situation today
I wouldn't have done it.
If I could put myself back
in that situation today,
I would have been turning to
everybody else there going,
why are you doing this?
Sometimes people only
behave appallingly
because nobody is saying no.
And at the point where they
realize that they are not
getting tacit approval from
the crowd or from the world,
it only takes one
person to say, you
know what you're doing
isn't okay to turn
the entire world around.
And to have everybody going
actually what you're doing
is not okay, one bystander can
make an enormous difference.
 
