I stood there stunned. No crying, no scream of agony, no reaction whatsoever. My stare clearly scared him, the bully who had plagued me for years. Why didn’t I fall? Why didn’t I hit him back. It wasn’t that I was incapable of reacting; the punch wasn’t particularly debilitating. I was simply amazed he actually hit me.
It was a sucker punch. I was sitting, he was standing behind me, I started to rise and he struck me as hard as he could along the side of my eye socket as I was still only halfway up and turned toward him. It was a cowardly punch, but in retrospect something I would have expected of him. After all, he was the brawny (if not brainy) quarterback and I was the somewhat diminutive and scholarly introvert. Not a particularly fair fight even if he hadn’t been so gutless as to strike me from behind.
The first incident of his bullying me was in seventh grade. He would follow me around and knock the books out of my hand. One day he did it while I was crossing between buildings, the books flying into the newly cut grass. Making a mocking show of helping me pick them up, it was only when I opened my book in my next class that I found he had surreptitiously tossed in a few handfuls of grass clippings. During this time my brown bag lunch would mysteriously disappear from my hallway locker on a routine basis. Early in eighth grade my pre-algebra book was stolen. I could never prove it was him, but the school refused to replace it and I barely passed the course. Consequently, I was forced to retake the class during my freshman year, thus leaving me a year behind my fellow 10 percenters in math throughout high school. I did make advanced placement English, Biology, and History; those books hadn’t been stolen.
One day in high school I was pinballed down the hallway by a half dozen of his friends out to terrorize. As I walked down the middle of the aisle, one of them stepped out from his position along the wall and shoved me into the opposing wall, where his buddy shoved me back to the other side, only to be shoved back by a third bully. Repeat until after five or six of these careens I finally lost my footing and slammed headfirst into the concrete wall as I hit the floor. All this happened within a few seconds and I never knew if any of them got into trouble, although my concussed mind seems to remember a teacher rushing into the fray. I don’t recall if my obsessed bully was one of the group, but I do remember that at least the first one was his friend.
Then came the day of the sucker punch my sophomore year. We were in chemistry class together. As usual for this less than top student, he was goofing around with the Bunsen burners, setting various stray items afire to show off. As the teacher approached to monitor him, my bully rushed over to the desk I was sitting at along the side of the room in an effort to hide his complicity. Given our history, I was obviously not interested in covering for him, and when he pushed me and threatened me by placing his fist over my papers I told him to get away. I started to rise from my seat – one of those combined chair/desks that constrict movement (I think of Senator Charles Sumner trapped by his desk as a crazed Congressman beat him to near death with a cane in 1856). Before I got halfway up and turned he had punched me with all the force behind the extra 50 pounds he had on me in weight.
To this day I recall the fear in his eyes. Whether it was because he feared retribution from the school or from me I don’t know. After staring at him in disbelief for what seemed hours but was probably 10 seconds, I picked up my stuff and walked out of the room without saying a word. The loudspeaker blared my name and his – “Please come to the principal’s office immediately!” – as I crossed the soccer field in front of the school, not caring about the rest of the day’s classes. I kept walking. By the time I got home there was a phone call from the principal telling me to meet the next morning.
My bully was there too. My eye by this time, indeed the whole side of my face, had turned a ghastly palette of yellow and green before settling into the traditional black and blue for the next week. I said nothing but was made aware he had been dressed down the afternoon before. I don’t recall if my bully got suspended, but it was clear that I was off limits to this person forever. He didn’t become a model student – in fact, he apparently continued to be a less than stellar citizen throughout high school and into life – but he never came near me again.
As I look back on the incident I still marvel that he actually hit me. Others had tried to pick on me before – bullies like to go after the little guy because the big guys might beat them in a fight – but no one ever was able to strike me before or since. I learned early on about using a person’s balance and momentum against them. I was quick and flexible enough to avoid attempts to trap me or hit me. And no one ever succeeded. So when my bully connected so demonstrably his fist to my face, even considering I was half standing, half turned, and fully defenseless at the time, I was pained not so much by the actual punch but by the fact he had actually punched me.
No one ever did again.
David J. Kent is a science traveler and the author of Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America, in Barnes and Noble stores now. His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity (2013) and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World (2016) and two e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.
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Hot White Snow 
It would be interesting to try to write the story from the point of view of the bully. I don’t think I would know where to start.
Some folks either genuinely don’t have memories or pretend not to have memories of their own bad behavior in youth. Or maybe such behavior was so common for them that is it not memorable.
Nowadays, one might be chased down to monitor for concussion.
I split my eyelid open on an elbow in the 80’s and could not staunch the bleeding. A trip to the ER at that time meant a minor inquiry about the source of the violence but no worries about my major headache.
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Interesting idea. I wrote a story a while back of an interaction I had with a high school teacher but from the point of view of the teacher. The act of writing it gave me some insights that I didn’t have when looking at it just from my own point of view. Thanks for the suggestion; I think I’ll try it.
I thought of the concussion aspect. I’ve been knocked out several times over my life so maybe I have something in common with football players now.
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In all honesty, this was was a little hard to read.
Regarding what motivates these kinds of people… There was very popular football player who was repeatedly crude to me in high school… I guess his ego couldn’t tolerate that I wasn’t impressed. Left me with a reputation as being “unapproachable” (in a female dog sort of way). I always saw him as a sociopath.
About ten years later, I met him again (at a pool hall, no less). Completely different person… deflated, perhaps. Recognized me and introduced himself. I almost walked away, but he was very friendly. He mostly talked, for just a few minutes. Turned out he was working for a railroad as rail-maintenance manual labor… just hard, miserable work. He was kind of admitting to me that he was a loser. I almost felt sorry for him… almost.
I wonder how much these kind of things are motivated by a lingering flame of self-loathing, maybe seeing it coming. Kind of a, “Screw the world,” because they don’t see a way to sketch themselves into the bigger picture? Maybe that’s the real fear you saw in those eyes?
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Interesting that you ran into him again. I’ve never crossed paths with this person again, and my only insight into what he did with his life was offhand comments from a fellow classmate decades later. Once he left me alone I didn’t put any thought into what he became, and it was about what I had expected.
I suppose motivations could be different, but it always seems to come down to mental insecurity. Maybe they didn’t feel they were very smart and disdained intelligence. Or maybe they had the self-loathing you talked about. Perhaps that’s why bullies always target those they feel are “easy prey.” It shows a kind of cowardice that I find embarrassing for them.
As for the fear I saw in his eyes, I doubt it was a reflection of his realization he was a loser or any such thing, although he may (or may not) have come to that conclusion later in life. It’s possible he suddenly realized he went too far and could be expelled. But mostly I think he saw a volcanic explosion ready to erupt from the otherwise calm introverted kid he had tormented for years. It sounds cliché, but my sense (in retrospect) was that he feared for his life, or at least his “big man” reputation. I’ve never hit anyone in my life, neither before nor since, so his fears would have been laughable. But I do think he thought I would suddenly respond in kind, to his great embarrassment. Others had been, and would be, embarrassed, so in that concern he would have been right. But I saw no point in ruining my life because someone else was willing to ruin theirs.
But again, this wasn’t something I dwelled on. The memory is vivid, for sure, but I didn’t lose a lot of sleep thinking about him or his treatment of me. If I were to run into him again I’m sure I would just ignore him. I have better uses for my time, and more interesting people to talk to.
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I long ago wrote my somewhat more philosophical take on bullying… which isn’t the same thing as “fighting”. I got into a few scraps on the hockey field… but they also ended on the hockey field. I think women tend to have a perhaps more subtle perspective, that those bullying kinds of “punches” aren’t merely physical. The ultimate target is the ego, an attempt to damage one’s sense of power over his or her own life. It’s about the manipulation of another, and most women know that that doesn’t even require violence.
I wasn’t particularly interested in talking to… whatever his name was… either. Nevertheless, it can be enlightening to understand the source of the drive to such displays. I worked professionally for many years in some of the most frustrated-testosterone-ego driven environments imaginable, from shallow military-industrialist managers of people whom they knew were far more intelligent and better-educated than themselves, to culturally misogynistic Asian salarymen who suddenly found themselves having to carefully follow instructions from a liberated Asian-American woman lest they get themselves killed by the thing they were working on. So I also recognize the fragility of an ego clothed in the thin veneer of an illusion of that kind of stereotypically “masculine” power while perched on the knife-edge of reality.
People who work past this discover that none of us are islands, and that the only real power in life comes when we stand up for each other. And that can be a good lesson for **any** outliers, regardless of how we find ourselves plying the edges. It’s always wise to surround one’s self with well-considered teammates.
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Well said. Extremely well said. Thank you.
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Responsibility and guilt seems to vary. I suppose most folks have some incompletely addressed guilt that haunts them from time to time, but then maybe not.
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My guess is that most people never address guilt for past actions, and also rarely do those past actions haunt them. The exceptions are “born again” types, but they mostly turn the blame on everyone around them in an effort to absolve themselves from any guilt and convince themselves they are one of the “chosen,” and thus better than all others. To me that is even more sociopathic than being a bully.
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