Craig Conover Bullied in High School: ‘I’m Just Going to Rub It in Everyone’s Faces’
Craig Conover from Southern Charm revealed in his book “Pillow Talk: What’s Wrong with My Sewing” he was bullied in high school and recently said his success is definitely karma.
When he signed his contract for Southern Charm, Conover thought about the torment he endured in adolescence and joked about how he hopes the kids who targeted him are seeing him soar.
Craig Conover was bullied a lot growing up
“So I think it’s something that I saw as validation, you know, it’s talked about in the book, but I was bullied a lot growing up, which you don’t realize how many people actually were bullied,” he said on the LadyGang podcast.
“And I remember signing my contract and being like, ‘I hope those a**holes have TVs in the jail at home.’ Because that was driving force and I was like, I’m just going to rub it in everyone’s faces,” he added.
Conover previously told Showbiz Cheat Sheet that girlfriend Paige DeSorbo cried when she read about the bullying. “She texted me the first night, and she was like, ‘It’s so good, I cried reading some of the bully stories.’ But then she was like, ‘I need their name and their number!’” he exclaimed.
He has no idea why he was bullied by the older kids
So how bad was the bullying? Conover wrote about being constantly worried about being attacked. “There’s no need to recount all the episodes of bullying that happened to me as a teenager,” he wrote. “The best way to describe it is that it was just this persistent state of being for me, something that I had to deal with every day.”
He was targeted by some of the older players on the school soccer team. To this day he still has no idea why he was targeted. “I was small and skinny, so I suppose that had something to do with it,” he mused. But he was also a confident teen, which he thinks was off-putting to those who targeted him.
The bullying eventually wore down any confidence he built as a child. “I still carry these scars with me today,” he wrote. “I developed a need to be liked by everyone, accepted as an equal.”
The scars remain with the ‘Southern Charm’ star
Conover recalled that the bullying was more psychological than physical. At one point, the kids stole his favorite textbook and bound it using an entire roll of athletic tape. “When I finally got the book open, I realized they had also smashed Doritos between the pages, leaving an oily residue that completely ruined the book, which I had to pay for,” he shared.
Conover went through his early high school days constantly looking over his shoulder. “Some days were better than others,” he recalled. “When the bullies simply forgot to make me a target, but that only led to agonizing uncertainly and paranoia.”
Eventually, the kids who bullied Conover graduated. But the experience stayed with him forever, “Scars that would stay with me for many years,” he admitted.
“Pillow Talk: What’s Wrong with My Sewing?” is currently on sale at major booksellers.
