My first fight. (Patreon)

In the sixth grade I wasn't popular, but I had good friends. We used to pin the doors behind the gymnasium so we could sneak back into the school after it closed. In the dark hallways, it was easy to feel like we owned the school. We walked right into the girl's washroom and there was nobody to stop us. We pulled the wire out of coil bound notebooks and slipped the latch to the library, to the janitor's closet, to the gym office. We couldn't go into the main buildings, because of the motion sensors, but the hallways around the gymnasium were ours.

My friend S---- helped me to figure out how to pin the doors, and he came up with the coil notebook method of bypassing locks. When he and I snuck through the school it was for that wonderful feeling you get when you're somewhere you aren't meant to be, somewhere nobody is meant to be. A school hallway after dark. Anywhere in the dark. During school hours we practiced walking as slowly as we could, to see if the motion sensors would make that little click. We were trying to get good enough to sneak past them after hours, when they were armed. 

We were the nerd version of burglars, but in school S---- was always better at being a nerd than I was. When they gave us standardized tests at the end of grade six, nobody was surprised with S----'s scores. He did his homework every night and he got along well with all of his teachers. He was offered a place in the "Extended Achievement" program at the Jr. High without question. 

Not me. When they saw my results, they made me rewrite the test under supervision to ensure that I hadn't cheated. Then they let me into the program too. They probably shouldn’t have. I went on to get the worst marks they had ever seen in the "Extended Achievement" program. They closed the program down after me!

But that's not really the point. The point is S---- and I ended up in the same class in Jr. High, too. 

Except that, when I showed up for school on the first day of Jr. High, S---- and I were suddenly two different types of people. He wore jeans. Everyone wore jeans, actually. I was the only one still in sweatpants. I probably wouldn't have noticed this myself, but others were quick to point it out, and he laughed just as loudly as any of them. 

I was completely unprepared for Jr. High. I wasn’t expecting the scrutiny. Everyone was watching me for any sign of difference. Nothing slipped past my classmates. I had never given much thought to the way I talked, but everyone had a good laugh about the way I repeated everything under my breath. I did it without really thinking. I was just reviewing what I’d said to make sure it had been okay. People laughing about it only made it worse, of course. 

I was used to spending most of my time in books, living half in the real world and half in the fantasy and science fiction worlds of cheap paperbacks I bought at the flea market. In elementary school it hadn’t been a problem. They were just happy to see a student reading so much, and it hadn’t bothered my friends at all.

In Jr. High it made me a target. I read while I walked home sometimes. So when the school’s biggest bully followed me one day, I did not see him coming. When he slapped the book out of my hand I was so startled that I yelped. There were three of them and they all started laughing at me. I tried to laugh it off with a clever insult, the way the hero in the book would have. 

That probably would have been okay. If I had come up with a good insult, things might have gone better. My problem was that I tried to laugh it off with a SPECIFIC clever insult, an insult that the hero of my book had actually used. Word for word.

This was a high fantasy novel, with trolls and wizards, and I think we can all agree that my bully was behaving like a foul knave. So I called him a “foul knave” and then I smiled smugly at him.

Grade seven was one of the stupidest years of my life. The first year of Jr. High was also the year of my very first fist fight. Not with the foul knave, either.

One day in school S---- came up to me in the hall and called me an asshole. This was after months of no communication. He had a half dozen people all crowded around him, watching. He called me an asshole and I probably said something arch and cutting in response. 

He told me thatt we’d meet at 3:30 at the bus stop, and fight. 

I felt crazy for the rest of the day. I still feel this way sometimes, when I’m reading in front of strangers, or when the phone rings at 4 in the morning. Or when the lights in the grocery store are too bright. I felt crazy right up until I met him at the bus stop and then all of a sudden I was just sad. We were surrounded by a huge crowd, and they were all chanting fight fight fight. There were never usually this many people at this bus stop. 

When S---- came near me I grabbed onto him before he could punch me and I pulled him to the ground. This was a strategy that I came up with while I was sitting in class and worrying. I wanted to believe that the old S—- would have appreciated it. It was a pretty smart strategy. I just glommed right onto him. I didn't know how to fight. We rolled around in the mud, getting filthy, and then the bus came.

When we stood up, I stuck my hand out to him to shake. 

“Good fight,” I said, and he looked at me, confused and then with pity in his eyes. 

Maybe it was disgust, but probably it was pity. Then he turned around and got on the bus without shaking my hand or saying anything. Everyone was patting him on the back. I sat at the front of the bus, all wet and muddy, and a girl asked me why I had stuck my hand out for him to shake. She said it was stupid, and I didn’t know what to say. It seemed like the right thing to do. I wasn’t mad at him. I didn’t even dislike him, but how could I explain THAT? 

So I said “It was just a trick, anyway. If he tried to shake it, I was going to punch him in the neck.”

Joey

---------

(If you enjoy this kind of stupid thing please considering contributing to my patreon. I will try any be as amusingly stupid as I can for food!)