It's the game they all play.

Kids would bully in school in the crudest ways, but they were only imitating the teachers and their parents, who generally had more subtle ways of bullying, except when dealing with kids.

The game is everyone has to be the same.

If you look or seem different in any way, they bully.

How dare you be different when they are too cowardly to be different.

I remember a news story from maybe the nineties about a kid who was playing at being Christ. He was a childlike pretty boy, who was just walking homeless around the country, staying in people's houses when he got invitations, and blessing them.

It looked like fun, but I couldn't pull it off. People wouldn't invite me to stay in their homes. Worse, I would make Christ look bad, because people would bully me and I would end up beating them up in the street, and looking a little worse for the wear.

I sometimes wonder what happened to that kid.