the day i ran out of cheeks

A.J. posted a note on facebook that brought back some unpleasant memories.

I believe I was in ninth grade. I remember having to deal with two kinds of bullying - those from blacks and those from whites. I didn't settle the black issue until I was a junior in high school, but the bullying stopped from whites when I was in ninth.

I considered myself a Christian, and did my best to go day to day "turning the other cheek" when a jerk came up to make sport of me. One thing about being a Christian as a kid, you are an easy mark. People don't think you'll defend yourself, you'll take the beating and they'll walk away feeling all good about themselves. I don't know why, but they did. So much in fact, they'd keep coming back for more. It was a different matter if I saw someone else being picked on - I'd jump in. I don't recall anyone ever jumping in for me, but I thought it was my duty as a Christian to take the vicious blows.

The day the bullying ended for me was in a math class. The teacher had this habit of giving an assignment and then leaving the room to go smoke, gossip, and scratch her butt in the teacher's lounge. You could pretty much count on her being absent for most of her class. She'd call roll, give (or not give) and assignment and then walk out until a few minutes before the class period was over.

Anyway, I was assigned a seat in the back of the room with a bunch of rough characters. This guy behind me decided that he was going to show off in front of his pals and whack me upside the head with a text book - and did. It hurt like hell. I turned and asked him to stop. With a smile on his face and sarcasm in his voice, he said he was sorry. I turned back around knowing what was going to happen next. WHAM! He slammed his book into the other side of my head. My ears were ringing and I tried to keep the tears back. I turned back around and told him to please stop. He gave me the same answer and he and the other guys laughed. Again, I knew what was going to happen next as I turned back around. I prayed "God, I've run out of cheeks."

WHAM!

I turned around and made direct eye contact. He was still laughing and already in the process of telling me how sorry he was again. I grasped the front of his desk and tipped it over with him in it. His laughter stopped as he frantically tried to wiggle out of his overturned desk. There was only one way out of that desk and I was standing there. I wore my Dingo boots back then. I kicked the crap out of him until he wept and cried for me to stop. I don't know why I stopped. I was in a boot kicking angry stomp dancing mood, I don't even know why I stopped. I looked up as he whimpered and I saw the entire class looking at me in disbelief. I guess I took every ounce of pain caused by every bully I'd ever encountered out on that guy. Before he got up, I told him that if he ever touched me again I'd kill him.

He never touched me again. Nobody, white that is, ever touched me again. I spent the rest of my stint in junior high without anyone laying a hand on me. It was a great relief to earn a healthy (my health) respect for those who got their self esteem by beating the crap out of someone they perceived as weaker. From then on - if someone was going to try to make me feel pain - they would soon realize that they were at risk of experiencing pain too. I found that when I did get in fights (that I never started) I would fight minus any hate. I fought because I realized that it wasn't doing the bad guy any good to let him have his evil way. I fought because there was a lesson in it for him too. Bad boys were no longer going to get away with it...or at least they were not going to get away with it without it costing them something.

Isn't that a terrible lesson for a kid to have to learn in school? I forget that it's a different world being a kid.