This TED Talk features political pundant Sally Cohn, recorded live at TED Women 2017.

So people tell me I'm a nice person, to the point where it's part of my personal and professional identity that I'm so nice and able to get along with anyone. Even my most

fierce opponents. It's like my thing. It's what I'm known for. But what no one knows is that I was a bully.

Honestly, I didn't think about it much myself.

I buried the memories for years, and even still a lot of it's really hazy.

Denial, by the way, apparently is also one of my things.

But the more people started to praise me for being a liberal who could get along with conservatives,

and the more I wrote articles about being nice and gave talks about being nice,

the more I felt this hypocrisy creeping up inside me. What if I was actually really mean?

When I was 10 years old,

there was a girl in my class at school named Vicky,

and I tormented her,

mercilessly. I mean, everyone did.

Even the teachers picked on her.

Doesn't make it any better, does it?

Vicky was clearly a troubled kid.

She would hit herself and give herself bloody noses and she had

hygiene problems. She had big hygiene problems. But instead of helping this girl who was

plainly suffering from hardships in her life, we called her sticky Vicky. I called her sticky vicky.

My clearest memory is standing in the empty hallway

outside the fifth grade classrooms waiting for Vicky to come out of the bathroom,

and I have a clipboard and a pen and a survey I've made up asking about shampoo preferences,

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