Anecdotes from my Past

When I was a child, I befriended a black kid named Justus. I can't remember much about him, but I remember one time I saw him getting the shit beat out of him by three other kids. I rode my kick scooter up to them and immediately started attacking them with the scooter. Justus got up and I don't know what he started doing. The assailants called me a coward for using a weapon, so I threw it on the ground and kept attacking with my fists. I remember thinking of the situation at the time as 2 vs. 3, so of course, we as the 2 were going to win, since we were the protagonists. Now I realize, Justus probably didn't want to keep fighting after being beat up so bad, so it was more like 1 vs. 3. Odds in that case were even better for me. They didn't want to fight me and just sort of went away. Justus reunited with his mother. I can't remember anything about what caused this incident, or what the repercussions, if any, were.

In middle school one of our assignments was to make a powerpoint presentation about any writer and present it to the class. One of my screen transitions was a fist coming out of nowhere and punching the screen, complete with sound effect. One of the girls in the class freaked out about this. I probably made fun of her for that at the time, and genuinely disdained her fearing something on a screen. Now that I'm an adult I can see that she had probably been abused.

Also in middle school I had this group of four girls who would sometimes find me and harass me. Can't remember much of what they did, but I remember the teasing being relentless and encountering them was one of the most unpleasant things about my life at the time. I remember one question, "do you want to be the friction in her pants", one girl asking of me of another, which even in retrospect I don't really understand (like, if I'd been suave about saying yes, would I have been able to... well, nevermind). One morning my wonderful lutino parakeet, Pashmina, died in my hands. I was a broken mess that day. The girls found me crying by myself in the cafeteria. They switched from bullying to asking me what was wrong. I told them, and flustered and crying, told them to leave me alone. They kept trying to offer comfort, having discovered some humanity in themselves, but I just kept saying "leave me alone!" They never bothered me again.

Also in middle school, in P.E. class there was one kid who bullied me every day. One day I couldn't take it anymore and punched him in the neck. I got punished with in-school-suspension, basically two days of even more boredom than regular school, but he never bothered me again. It was easily worth it. You know, when you report someone for bullying you, the authorities don't fucking do anything. You have to make them stop yourself, and then you're the one who gets punished. That was my entire life for years and years. Fuck school.

In high school there was a moment where I had to walk through the narrow space between two tables and there were two dudes looking at me from one of the tables. Some part of me must have sensed their hostility and upped my reaction speed, or something, because when I walked through they tried to startle me with a sudden loud scream and movement, like a gimmick in a haunted house. But instead of flinching back I just automatically struck one of them with my outstretched and bent hand. It was a really slow arm movement that did no damage. All three of us laughed about it.

There's no purpose to this post, but if there were one, it would be: schools need to be burned down. The suffering of young people is great and it matters.