Somebody reads me.
To a columnist, I don’t think there is anything better than a face-to-face encounter with someone who admits your column had an impact.
On Friday, I had the pleasure of meeting not just one such reader, but a room full of them — the Grade 5 students at Billy Green elementary school on Paramount Drive.
In December, I wrote a column, Confessions of a school yard bully,  in which I reminisced about bullying in my elementary and high school days. In the column, I regretted the hurtful name calling that took place in elementary school and the acts of bullying I witnessed, but did nothing to stop.
Unknown to me, Ruth O’Connor, a Grade 5 teacher at Billy Green, used the column as the basis for a writing exercise. The students were instructed to write a letter to the editor in  response to my column.
With the students’ permission, Billy Green school principal Pat Petruccelli shared a few of their letters with me without revealing the authors’ names.
I was impressed. They were all thoughtful submissions from the Grade 5 students. Some admitted to being a bully and some admitted to being a victim; a few admitted to being both.
Petruccelli said the students had enjoyed reading the column and writing their responses. He said the students were “shocked” an adult would admit to being a bully when they were young.
He asked if I would speak to the students.
I was happy to accept, although I wasn’t sure what to expect. I have spoken to students before, but always about newspapers and the role media has in society.
I had never spoken to students, or anyone, about bullying before and wasn’t sure what to expect.
They were an enthusiastic audience. They asked some tough questions, some of which, I admit, caught me off guard: “Why was I a bully?”
I explained that I never actually physically attacked someone, but through name calling and acting as a bystander while others were bullied, I allowed it to occur.
The students peppered me with questions. Their hands kept popping up faster than I could answer them and they were good questions.
They asked honest questions and I hope I responded with honest answers.
As for advice, I referred the students to their teachers.
Many people my age fall into the trap of looking back at our childhood as the good old days. Those were simpler times. We had two or three television channels at the most; there were no cell phones, video games or home computers with the Internet.
But were they better when it came to bullying? I don’t think so. There was the threat of a scolding from a teacher or the strap as the ultimate punishment, but it did little to curtail bullying.
We never talked about it in class or even amongst ourselves and we never wrote assignments about it like the students in Ms. O’Connor’s class.
Like many other Hamilton schools, Billy Green is dealing with the issue of bullying. The school is in the middle of getting a peer mediation team of Grade 7 students off the ground.
I don’t know whether bullying can ever be eliminated in schools.
But I think the students and teachers at Billy Green school are on the right track and I wish them luck.
Hamilton Community News Managing Editor Rod Jerred can be reached at rjerred@hamiltonnews.com or follow him on Twitter @HCN_editor.