What are you now?

Lately I have seen posts with comments of people I went to school with both elementary and high school. 

People who were down right vile, rude, mean and horrid to those they felt beneath them.
People who treated others worse than animals.  Who thought it perfectly fine to pin and grope girls breasts and private parts at recess at the age of 10+
People who thought it fun to threaten to kill you or find you and rape you if you said anything about the name calling, the pinching, the shoving into lockers, the nearly breaking your wrist in your locker.

People who are now adults with young children.

Do they teach their children to be better than they were?

Are they now hypocrites who are angered and outraged when their child is now on the receiving of the very same behaviour they themselves inflicted upon others?

People who seem to be good upstanding members of society.  Despite the darkness they spread for the first 17-18 years of their lives.

What are they now?

Do they acknowledge they failed at basic human decency when they were young?  Do they hide from it?  Pretend it never happened or that it wasn't as bad as we say it was?

Have they taught their children to treat others with decency or have they created another bully?

Do they also think their child can do no wrong no matter what the school says just like their parents?

Do their children get away with acting atrociously out of their presence because they to choose to be ignorant of the possibility their child could in fact be doing the things they were accused of?  And that perhaps it keeps happening and getting worse because the child(ren) know that no matter how they act that their parents will side with them always?

Do these people carry the weight of their actions?  Do any of them ever feel guilty? Do they ever have flashbacks to the wrong doings they did like those of us who were bullied by them?

Do any of them ever look their children in the eyes and decide that they will strive to be a better person to ensure their children do not be like them through their younger years?

It's hard.  To see some of these people exalted and hailed as upstanding members of society when you know what they were capable of as children and young adults.