BAD THING about BULLIES..

Bullies..! I hated bullies. When I was in 8th grade at Central junior high school I was very self conscious and suffered from a low sense of confidence and esteem. Mostly, in retrospect, due to my home life or lack of. I was easy around my buddies and good in sports but even then I was very self conscious. There was a kid named Donald M. who was a bully to a lot of the kids during recess, mostly. He was a little bigger than me and most of the other kids but mostly just mean looking. I pretty much stayed away from him as did most of the others. This went on for a couple years or so. One day during recess, he got pissed at me, for what I don’t remember now. He started shoving me around and yelling at me. For some reason, I guess I lost it. I swung at him and hit him in the face and knocked him down. When he got up he started to threaten me and said he was going to “kick my ass”. For the first time I really looked at him and realized I was looking down at him. I actually knew I had no reason to be afraid of him. Somewhere there, the bell rang ending recess. There was a school carnival coming up that along with all kinds of activities, one of which was a couple boxing matches. I turned and, in front of everyone, I told him we could settle this at the carnival in the boxing ring. He agreed. The evening of the carnival, I wiped the floor with him. It wasn’t even that hard. His hold on everyone was purely mental. I was a very popular guy at school for a while after that. Donald and I were actually friends after the fight as is usually the case. It’s a guy thing. But it was a big hurdle in my childhood.