Musicians & bands

Mercedes Bentso recalls her tough school days in Jonna Joutsen’s book. Jukka Lehtinen

Plasterer Mercedeseli Linda-Maria Raninen30, says the host-journalist Jonna Joutsenen This is how you win over your haters in the book (Readme) about his dark school days. The bullying made him feel bad and dream about hurting his classmates.

In addition to the nomination, Mercedes, who has a Romani background, was teased about, among other things, her family’s poor financial situation and the fact that her father was not in the picture.

The bullying also continued in middle school at the new school. According to Mercedes, the teacher had tried to intervene in the situation, but nothing changed.

Then the feelings of anger that had been simmering for many years erupted violently: he began to have violent thoughts towards the bullies. The rapper says that he started dreaming of the moment when he would get a permit to carry a gun.

I thought they had to die for me to survive there. Nothing else helps. There was no way out. Where the primary school teacher had joined the chorus of comments, the secondary school teacher had done everything to stop the bullyingthe rapper recalls.

I realized that I have already changed schools once; it didn’t help, the teacher has tried, it doesn’t help. I didn’t see any other options. A child’s world is so small and school is a big part of ithe continues.

Mercedes remembers when, in the 8th grade, the older students came to talk about bullying and took the younger ones to talk in pairs about the topic. He ended up with one of his worst bullies.

My bully said quite bluntly that “the kind where you could just bully everyone”. I, on the other hand, “the kind where the bullied could choose the way the bullies die”. There were really healthy answers from both. You’d think that would have been alarming, but nothing came of itthe rapper says.

According to Mercedes, the statement she gave was used against her very soon after Jokela’s school killing happened.

The bully came to class with a magazine story about the shooting, waved it, showed it Pekka-Eric Auvinen picture and said: “Linda the second, shouldn’t you have come here and killed us all? In fact, you wouldn’t even be able to cope with a student in Vitos class.” I said that I probably wouldn’t make it, but around then I started fantasizing about suicide. I thought someone’s death was the only thing that could end thishe says.

Then one of Mercedes’ classmates became her friend, first secretly and then openly. The rapper also names his dreams of a music career as his salvation. He also says in the book that he later went through the situations in detail with his therapist.

Jonna Joutsen: This is how you win over your haters (Readme 2024). The book was published on October 8. Italicized passages are quotes from the book.