No one likes to be bullied.

I was a skinny kid who loved sports and tried to play a few of them somewhat adequately.

I also was shy, a bookworm, loved to read and write and was a fan of “geeky” stuff like science fiction shows.

As hard as it is to believe, yes, I was bullied in school.

Shocking. I know.

What was shocking was the extent of the bullying.

It was hurtful and malicious.

My teammates and classmates shunned me.

They belittled me in school, in practice and on the bench. They didn’t cheer for me when I did well and laughed and ridiculed me when I did poorly.

The locker room — a safe haven for most — was a hellish nightmare for me.

I was assaulted verbally and physically.

I had my ankles and wrists duct-taped together and was thrown out of the locker room in my underwear.

It damaged me. I wear the emotional scars to this day.

That’s why what has happened to Jonathan Martin inside the Miami Dolphins locker room has resonated with me.

We may never know the real story. But having experienced bullying in a sports setting years ago, I have an idea of what Martin was and still is going through.

If it was bad enough for him to walk away from a game he loves, it must have been intolerable — even if some of his teammates thought it was innocent pranking.

It doesn’t matter. If Martin himself felt belittled and scared, whatever was being done to him was over the line.

End of story.

This NFL investigation should last all of two seconds. Martin leaving the team and checking himself into a hospital is all the evidence that is needed to ascertain the “pranking” went too far.

What’s worse is someone in the Miami locker room should have come to his defense. Apparently, no one did.

Luckily for me, there was one person who came to my aid from time to time. If it wasn’t for him, the bullying would have been far worse.

Bullying is a very serious issue, not just in sports, but in society as a whole. It has been brought to the forefront with recent news stories like the one out of the NFL as well as cyberbullying stories that have made headlines.

I talk to a lot of high school athletes for my job, and I know for a fact there are some Butler County athletes who are being bullied by their teammates.

My heart goes out to them.

I’m sure bullying will never be completely eliminated. But perhaps the instances of it will dramatically decrease because of the awareness being cultivated by what has happened to Martin in Miami.

I certainly hope so. No one should feel afraid inside the locker room, at school or online.

Mike Kilroy is a staff writer for the Butler Eagle.