True story time:
circa 1991
I was standing all by myself outside of James A. Farely Middle School (grades 6-8), with all the other kids. If it wasn't too cold, we were supposed to wait outside before the teachers arrived. This was a good opportunity for bullies to push around anyone smaller or weaker than them without getting caught.
Jeff hated my guts and loved to fuck with me. This kid had some major issues. He was in my classes in elemantary school when he had this big obsession with the military. He'd wear uniform-like clothes and whenever our class went anywhere together all lined up, if the line stopped moving he'd continue to run in place. Like a good solider, I kid you not.
This was sixth grade, circle one of the most hellish time of my life. By this time Jeff had outgrown the whole army thing and was friendly with the other scumbags at his bus stop. It was a social outcasts worst nightmare: one bus stop would bring in all the psychos who liked to mess with you. Jeff wasn't the worst of them, but he was really fixated on messing with me.
Anyway, I was standing outside by myself. Through the corner of my eye I saw Jeff looking at me and laughing with his friends. He approached me to yell and startle me, but I swung my fist at him and it grazed his nose. Jeff walked away laughing not noticing I had hit him until he walked over to talk to his buddies. The front doors swung open and we were told to come inside.
I may have been saved by the bell, but that was only for now. He saw me in the hallways and pushed me vowing he would "get me" for that.
Also at some point, the scumbags on my bus got in trouble for having relay races up and down the bus. They claimed my Mom had called the Principal and complained. This was impossible cuz I never knew of such races nor would I ever give my Mom that information. That didn't matter to them, I was the scapegoat and that was that.
I'm not sure if it was that same day or a few days later, but I was on the going home on the bus sitting next to Nick, a childhood friend who was now a sometimes friend-sometimes enemy who would make fun of me. Sitting behind me was Jeff and Eddie, an older kid from the Scumbag Stop. Jeff kept getting up from his seat to reach over and slap me in the head.
At this point I was furious: Jeff and one of his goon buddies sitting behind me and fucking with me, Nick sitting next to me with some sort of empty fish tank on his lap and out of the goodness of his oh-so-generous heart decided that he would feel sorry for me today.
I then got up from my seat and rushed Jeff. I threw a flurry of weak but determined punches at his face. He doubled over shieldhing his face from his hands. I punched his back and did the best elbow strikes I could manage on a moving bus that I learned from Karate (I was still very inexperienced at this point). Jeff still stayed down shielding himself.
I then grabbed his head right where it was and gave him two or three knee strikes to his forehead. For some reason I stopped, Jeff looked up and pushed me back into my seat, he could only manage a few harder, but unfocused punches cuz the headshots I gave him left him too disoriented. He fell back into his seat and left me alone.
That was probably the most fun I ever had in sixth grade.
After that episode, all the guys at the Scumbag Stop got on the bus one morning and high-fived me yelling "KICKED HIS ASS WOOOOHOOO!" Jeff was the last guy to get on the bus, sporting a nice big bump on his forehead, put there courtesy of my kneecap. We exchanged looks, and the rest of the guys just laughed at him.
The school authorities MIRACULOUSLY noticed the goings-on. Jeff and I were brought before the principal. From then on we were to sit in the front seats for the remaineder of the school year. How brilliant! Two enemies now sitting next to each other for the rest of the year!
Regardless, Jeff and I made up and became friends. How typically male: beat the shit out of each other and then you're friends for life. Also, Jeff later joined the same Karate school I was attending.
Fastforward several years: Remember the kid Danny I was talking with about Rosie in a prevoius loooooong entry? Well one of the many things we talked about was what happened to Jeff.
According to Danny: Jeff had some real problems. Back in the day, Jeff, Dan and Nick would hang out and watch gory horror flicks. Jeff's Mom would yell at Dan and Nick saying these movies would have "bad effects" on them, but she never thought it would effect her good lil soldier son Jeff! How wrong she was: Jeff turned out to be the least stable of the bunch.
Danny also said that Jeff had some bad bouts with drugs. While both of them were sobering up, they would go fishing together. I'm sure they had some long and personal talks during this time. During one of them Jeff had admitted "I'm not much of a fighter, a few punches, but then I run out of wind, and that's it....." I can't help but to think there was a deeper underlying expression of vulnerability in that statement when Jeff said it.
The last Danny heard of Jeff was that he sold all his belongings to buy a big red pick-up truck, which he later crashed into an ex-girlfriends house or something.
I'm not a violent person. I am more mental in nature, and prefer to solve problems with my intellect as opposed to my strength. However I will say this, one regret that I have is how easy I went on Jeff that afternoon on the school bus. I know it sounds like I'm holding an age old grudge, but it's not like that. If I saw Jeff one day when visting NY again I'd wave at him and be cool and all.
What I'm trying to say is that the taste of my fury he got that day was not even the tip of the iceberg; a mere lit match compared to the blazing inferno. Sometimes I wish that I had pulled his head up by the hair and re-arranged his ugly face, then a few body shots, keep going till his bus stop came, then drag him out of the seat and boot him down the isle towards the door.
When I look back I sometimes wish I had worked out more to gain some strength. I wish I fought for my honor and wasn't so afraid of getting into trouble. It was disturbingly clear how useless teachers were in protecting me. People keep making mocking the seriousness of school bullying, even though scnearios similar to Columbine keep cropping up. It's a very seroius problem that's been getting progressively worse over the years. I remember listening to the song "Lunchbox" by Marilyn Manson in sophomore year of high school. (Back then I had misinterpreted the words: I thought it was about bringing a gun to school in a lunchbox, when it was really about how Manson used his lunchbox itself as a weapon to protect himself at school) The song made me wonder why we didn't have kids everwhere bringing guns to school to confront bullies. A few years later, that question would be answered.
For those of you out there who have children or are planning to have children, take note: if your kid has high self-esteem and comes from a happy home, chances are he/she will be fine. What you need to worry about is if your child is the kind of kid who wears their heart on their sleeve; mean kids can smell sensitive kids from miles away. My cousin had to change schools cuz people were being so damn mean to her.
There is nothing I can do about my regret over not giving Jeff the full force of my rage. Confronting him nowadays would be stupid and wouldn't solve anything. But when I look back, I wish I had gone much further......
"You were there like a punk,
just to get in my face
Wanted in me wanted to be
till I gave you a taste
Don't need your goddamn pressure
frontin' stress
I'm superman motherfucker
without the "s" on my chest
Trying to step in my circle I'm leaving you purple and black
on your back
drop your ass like a heart attack
Rippin' through your life like a motherfuckin' hurricane
Fist full of Novocain for the pain
You're nothing
in my life
in my head
You're nothing
in my life in my land
Nailed inside my head
You're under my fuckin' skin
------
If you really think
you got what it takes to be me
Then walk a mile in the skin
of my head case mental being.
So you want a piece
of this life that belongs to me?
Well make a cut on the line and take a deeper look inside of the freak"
- Mudvayne "Under My Skin"
circa 1991
I was standing all by myself outside of James A. Farely Middle School (grades 6-8), with all the other kids. If it wasn't too cold, we were supposed to wait outside before the teachers arrived. This was a good opportunity for bullies to push around anyone smaller or weaker than them without getting caught.
Jeff hated my guts and loved to fuck with me. This kid had some major issues. He was in my classes in elemantary school when he had this big obsession with the military. He'd wear uniform-like clothes and whenever our class went anywhere together all lined up, if the line stopped moving he'd continue to run in place. Like a good solider, I kid you not.
This was sixth grade, circle one of the most hellish time of my life. By this time Jeff had outgrown the whole army thing and was friendly with the other scumbags at his bus stop. It was a social outcasts worst nightmare: one bus stop would bring in all the psychos who liked to mess with you. Jeff wasn't the worst of them, but he was really fixated on messing with me.
Anyway, I was standing outside by myself. Through the corner of my eye I saw Jeff looking at me and laughing with his friends. He approached me to yell and startle me, but I swung my fist at him and it grazed his nose. Jeff walked away laughing not noticing I had hit him until he walked over to talk to his buddies. The front doors swung open and we were told to come inside.
I may have been saved by the bell, but that was only for now. He saw me in the hallways and pushed me vowing he would "get me" for that.
Also at some point, the scumbags on my bus got in trouble for having relay races up and down the bus. They claimed my Mom had called the Principal and complained. This was impossible cuz I never knew of such races nor would I ever give my Mom that information. That didn't matter to them, I was the scapegoat and that was that.
I'm not sure if it was that same day or a few days later, but I was on the going home on the bus sitting next to Nick, a childhood friend who was now a sometimes friend-sometimes enemy who would make fun of me. Sitting behind me was Jeff and Eddie, an older kid from the Scumbag Stop. Jeff kept getting up from his seat to reach over and slap me in the head.
At this point I was furious: Jeff and one of his goon buddies sitting behind me and fucking with me, Nick sitting next to me with some sort of empty fish tank on his lap and out of the goodness of his oh-so-generous heart decided that he would feel sorry for me today.
I then got up from my seat and rushed Jeff. I threw a flurry of weak but determined punches at his face. He doubled over shieldhing his face from his hands. I punched his back and did the best elbow strikes I could manage on a moving bus that I learned from Karate (I was still very inexperienced at this point). Jeff still stayed down shielding himself.
I then grabbed his head right where it was and gave him two or three knee strikes to his forehead. For some reason I stopped, Jeff looked up and pushed me back into my seat, he could only manage a few harder, but unfocused punches cuz the headshots I gave him left him too disoriented. He fell back into his seat and left me alone.
That was probably the most fun I ever had in sixth grade.
After that episode, all the guys at the Scumbag Stop got on the bus one morning and high-fived me yelling "KICKED HIS ASS WOOOOHOOO!" Jeff was the last guy to get on the bus, sporting a nice big bump on his forehead, put there courtesy of my kneecap. We exchanged looks, and the rest of the guys just laughed at him.
The school authorities MIRACULOUSLY noticed the goings-on. Jeff and I were brought before the principal. From then on we were to sit in the front seats for the remaineder of the school year. How brilliant! Two enemies now sitting next to each other for the rest of the year!
Regardless, Jeff and I made up and became friends. How typically male: beat the shit out of each other and then you're friends for life. Also, Jeff later joined the same Karate school I was attending.
Fastforward several years: Remember the kid Danny I was talking with about Rosie in a prevoius loooooong entry? Well one of the many things we talked about was what happened to Jeff.
According to Danny: Jeff had some real problems. Back in the day, Jeff, Dan and Nick would hang out and watch gory horror flicks. Jeff's Mom would yell at Dan and Nick saying these movies would have "bad effects" on them, but she never thought it would effect her good lil soldier son Jeff! How wrong she was: Jeff turned out to be the least stable of the bunch.
Danny also said that Jeff had some bad bouts with drugs. While both of them were sobering up, they would go fishing together. I'm sure they had some long and personal talks during this time. During one of them Jeff had admitted "I'm not much of a fighter, a few punches, but then I run out of wind, and that's it....." I can't help but to think there was a deeper underlying expression of vulnerability in that statement when Jeff said it.
The last Danny heard of Jeff was that he sold all his belongings to buy a big red pick-up truck, which he later crashed into an ex-girlfriends house or something.
I'm not a violent person. I am more mental in nature, and prefer to solve problems with my intellect as opposed to my strength. However I will say this, one regret that I have is how easy I went on Jeff that afternoon on the school bus. I know it sounds like I'm holding an age old grudge, but it's not like that. If I saw Jeff one day when visting NY again I'd wave at him and be cool and all.
What I'm trying to say is that the taste of my fury he got that day was not even the tip of the iceberg; a mere lit match compared to the blazing inferno. Sometimes I wish that I had pulled his head up by the hair and re-arranged his ugly face, then a few body shots, keep going till his bus stop came, then drag him out of the seat and boot him down the isle towards the door.
When I look back I sometimes wish I had worked out more to gain some strength. I wish I fought for my honor and wasn't so afraid of getting into trouble. It was disturbingly clear how useless teachers were in protecting me. People keep making mocking the seriousness of school bullying, even though scnearios similar to Columbine keep cropping up. It's a very seroius problem that's been getting progressively worse over the years. I remember listening to the song "Lunchbox" by Marilyn Manson in sophomore year of high school. (Back then I had misinterpreted the words: I thought it was about bringing a gun to school in a lunchbox, when it was really about how Manson used his lunchbox itself as a weapon to protect himself at school) The song made me wonder why we didn't have kids everwhere bringing guns to school to confront bullies. A few years later, that question would be answered.
For those of you out there who have children or are planning to have children, take note: if your kid has high self-esteem and comes from a happy home, chances are he/she will be fine. What you need to worry about is if your child is the kind of kid who wears their heart on their sleeve; mean kids can smell sensitive kids from miles away. My cousin had to change schools cuz people were being so damn mean to her.
There is nothing I can do about my regret over not giving Jeff the full force of my rage. Confronting him nowadays would be stupid and wouldn't solve anything. But when I look back, I wish I had gone much further......
"You were there like a punk,
just to get in my face
Wanted in me wanted to be
till I gave you a taste
Don't need your goddamn pressure
frontin' stress
I'm superman motherfucker
without the "s" on my chest
Trying to step in my circle I'm leaving you purple and black
on your back
drop your ass like a heart attack
Rippin' through your life like a motherfuckin' hurricane
Fist full of Novocain for the pain
You're nothing
in my life
in my head
You're nothing
in my life in my land
Nailed inside my head
You're under my fuckin' skin
------
If you really think
you got what it takes to be me
Then walk a mile in the skin
of my head case mental being.
So you want a piece
of this life that belongs to me?
Well make a cut on the line and take a deeper look inside of the freak"
- Mudvayne "Under My Skin"
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Thanks.
yeah i know...BT$ like whoa!