School wasn't this bad...

...but I don't blame this guy at all for not going to his 25th high school reunion. He says, "I don't think that my experience was particularly unusual. I know a lot of people who had it worse."

But what he faced was:
--a guy broke his fingers just because he wanted to know what it sounded like. School admin tried to shrug it off.
--a different guy poured a swastika in gasoline on the street in front of Mark's house, then lit it.

Holy crap! I never had troubles like that. I was a standard sort of nerd kid, got my share of bullies, but never anything like that.

The worst bullying I got was from a punk into intimidation. Let's call him "Darren." I'm pretty sure that was it, and not "Bill" or "Billy" or "Mac" or "Buddy"--and he was plain ugly to me. There's only one encounter I even remember, and even then it's only because of my own reaction.

See, Darren the tough guy came into the restroom while I was standing at a urinal. It was just before the bell, Health class, pretty cool teacher. Darren took up the second urinal to my left and started his business. He opened his pie-hole and said something in Bullyish, the rough equivalent of "How's your day, pal?" or "Such exemplary weather, I should think, eh what?" but it comes out more like, "I'm gonna kick your farking ass after school."

I replied to him in his own language with, "Indeed, the sky is quite the shade of blue, my good man." which roughly translates to English as "Go fark yourself."

He reached out right-handed and punched me upside the face.

I repeated myself, in case he'd misconstrued.

He reached out right-handed and punched me upside the face.

At this point I did the only thing I could do: I peed on him.

Now, I'd love to play this off the way a cat would--"I meant to to that."

I wish it had been a cool, calculated slow-motion maneuver like a gangster tearing the ribbon off the long roses box, then reaching in and throwing the box aside while bringing his Thompson machine gun up and spraying the other guy from hat-brim to shoe-leather, emptying the magazine and remorselessly watching the guy twitch in his final throes, dead long before he hits the pavement.

Yeah, it'd have been VERY satisfying to have beaten the crap out of him, but I was never a fighter. In my mind's-eye view of the aftermath, I see a soggy Darren trying to explain how his shirt and jeans got soaked.

I don't know if he had to do a wardrobe change that morning. All I know is that he never bothered me again.