-{ redgeek.net }-

I can’t remember why, but I was having a bad day. Perhaps Ms. Alexander had been overly harsh reviewing my last creative writing assignment, or maybe Jenny had spurned my advances. Regardless, I was displeased with myself, feeling anti-social and uprooted in the temporary schoolyard of my relocated seventh-grade class, all dirt and asphalt and trailers for classrooms.

Shane was a resident ruffian, tough and foul-mouthed but too white trash to hang with the top bullies at school. When he threw his shoulder into mine as he passed, I uncharacteristically responded. I think he was expecting me to just shrink and take it.

“Watch it, asshole.”

He spun me around with a yank.

“What’d you say?”

I looked him in the eyes as steadily as I could. I wasn’t known for my pugilistic prowess, although I wasn’t small. I just rarely fought, aside form that time last month when I belted an eighth grader for tearing off the necklace my family’s foreign exchange student had brought for me from Chile. He was so shocked he just massaged his chin and backed off.

I was jolted back to the present by Shane pushing me with both hands, backing me up and egging me on:

“What the fuck you going to do about it? Huh? Fuck you, YOU watch where you’re going.”

A crowd coalesced. A head above others caught my attention behind Shane, to the periphery. I changed focus. The Principle, pushing through the crowd.

That’s when he hit me. Once, twice, three, four times. All in the mouth, backing me up further. They were strong shots, but I didn’t go down, I’ll give myself that much. But I knew if I started swinging I’d be doing it right in front of the Principle, and besides, I might get my ass whooped further.

I waited.

Shane was taken to the office, and myself to the nurse. She looked me over, and aside from a split and rapidly engorging lip, fit to finish the day.

“Do you want to got home? I can excuse you.”

“No, it’s fine.”

It was less being a hard-ass and more peer presence. Everyone saw what happened, and although I knew I had Shane by the balls “legally,” so to speak, and I was free of administrative repercussions, it might not look that way to others. I had to finish out the day so everyone wouldn’t think I was a total pussy.

“Really, it’s nothing, I’m fine. I’ll go back to class.”

Releasing me with a kind smile, I returned to Mr. Pavlik’s History class and subsequently lunch. Inevitably I was assailed with questions from friends clamoring for details.

“It’s nothing. Don’t worry about it. He’s just an asshole, is all,” I lisped over my protruding lip. I removed myself to another table to get some peace and hid my face. I hadn’t cried yet, and I wasn’t about to start now, but I hated all the questions. They saw it, they knew what happened.

Shane didn’t make it to school the next day. Ten or twenty friends I didn’t know I had took it upon themselves to call Shane out and deliver a series of beatings that left him black and blue for weeks. I knew nothing about it, and was surprised to find some of the people that stood up for me, and the things they said. “You just don’t do that to Barclay,” I heard. I was astounded.

Sometimes just being your simple, honest, understated self affects people deeper than you realize, and provides a stronger foundation for future friendship than anything else. Everyone affects the world around them more significantly than we generally realize through our hum-drum daily lives, and sometimes it takes extraordinary circumstances to bring it to our cognitive forefronts.