The Sunday Story: 'Playground Bully'.

An old school friend of my daughter's recently posted this class photo on Facebook, and it immediately reminded me of an incident which both shocked me, and reinforced my faith in 'natural law'.

My daughter, Tenpin, is the little girl in the middle of the photo; fat tie, patterned jumper.

I'd gone to collect her from school (it was usually Lady M who went), and she was very eager to show me how well she could descend the large playground slide. She took her place in the queue at the bottom of the ladder and, in lady-like style, slowly climbed as she awaited her turn. Suddenly some oafish, much older and bigger boy, barged past all the younger children on the ladder and went directly to the top; callously elbowing everyone out of his way as he went. My daughter very nearly fell from about 10 ft up; the idiot boy's behaviour was totally unacceptable.

Tenpin seemed to ignore what had happened and I proudly watched as she eventually slid down the long well-polished slide. When she reached the bottom, she looked around, searching for the queue-jumping oaf. She then purposefully walked to where he was standing, and, in front of his group of equally-oafish admirers, planted a perfect 'right jab' on his nose; which started to bleed. 'Now don't push past me', said my daughter, wagging her finger, 'or I may have to do that again'.

The boy ran off in tears to (I imagine) his 'mummy', whilst Cro and Tenpin walked away briskly, knees bent, pretending to be invisible.

I'm possibly an irresponsible father, because it sounds as if my daughter over-reacted, but I was extremely proud of her; she was only about 7. Hopefully the idiot bully learnt his lesson too; there were no reprisals.