Bullying doesn't just happen

at school.
I saw an incident of it out in the community yesterday. It was perhaps what should be called "elder abuse". I won't detail it here. All I will say is that two of us stood there and stared in disbelief at the behaviour of the younger woman towards her mother. She saw us staring and tried to justify her  behaviour but it was unjustifiable and she knew it. I felt deeply disturbed by what I saw.
It made me wonder how much more of this sort of thing goes on out there.  I hope it is obvious that I love the Senior Cat and he is my first priority. He is my responsibility. If he does something silly or dangerous and I growl we almost always end up laughing at the same time. If we didn't we couldn't live together. 
Other people seem to think there is something extraordinary about this. There isn't. It is what should happen if it needs to happen - and it does need to happen.
But there are also parents who bully their children. When the woman and her mother had left (with the older woman in tears) the person I was with told me of something she had seen on social media - footage of a young boy with "dwarfism" crying and saying he wanted to kill himself because of bullying at school. His mother has apparently filmed this and put it up on the internet. If that is true then I am appalled. I am appalled (but not surprised) that he is being bullied at school but I am just as appalled that his mother can film it and then show it to the world. Okay, it apparently garnered a lot of support for the child but how is he going to feel about being used in that way? His mother obviously isn't coping with the situation either. I don't doubt that she was sincere but it is still a form of abuse. There are other ways to handle the situation - and what is the child's school doing about it?
I got bullied at school. In the end I retreated into books - until I went to a new school of all girls. I had come from a small rural school to an all girls high school. I was homesick. The class teacher had ridiculed my handwriting in front of the other 52 girls in the class. I would never have dared to try and defend myself.
Something must have snapped in one of the other girls because the first thing she did was say,
    "Come and eat lunch with us."
There were three girls who seemed to sit together. I sat next to them and listened while they talked about "the Beatles". It meant absolutely nothing to me. I had come from a dairying district and cows prefer classical music - seriously. The students in the other school rarely talked about "pop" music. I couldn't join in. I thought, "This is it. They won't want me to sit with them tomorrow."
The girls had organised themselves to see "the film". I was boarding in a hostel and going to a film was not the sort of thing I thought I would be allowed to do. I wasn't even going to ask.
But I did see the film. All the girls who were going - and only the Exclusive Brethren girls were not - all put in a small amount of their pocket money, probably no more than tuppence each. (Yes, this was before decimal currency.) One of the other girls arranged for her father to pick me up and take me back to the hostel. Her mother had obtained permission and Miss G... who was in charge did not consult my mother (who would have said "no")  she simply thought I should go too.
    "Come on. It's all organised. You're going too."
I still felt homesick and the class teacher still ridiculed me but suddenly I wasn't being bullied. It only lasted two terms before I had to move again but it was good. 
It was just one girl to start with - and that's enough. One person can make a difference. 
I've gone on trying to remember that. I hope the boy I heard about gets his one person too...not the adults apparently rallying around him but someone his own age who "just wants to be friends."