The Day I Hit Back

My first four years of school, I was a flippin’ bully magnet. I’ve always been a little smaller than average; teachers have always loved me, and I’m told I was just plain adorable when I was a kid. I was a small, pretty, teacher’s pet. That’s the hat trick, yo; absolutely irresistible to your standard operational schoolyard bully. And thanks to military family turnover, you didn’t even need to move to be the new kid in school.

Third morning of 5th grade, Mercy Elementary School, Okinawa, 1970. I was walking to English class when I got shoved hard into a wall from behind. I don’t know if you’ve ever had your head bounced off the side of a quonset hut, but it’s a pretty transformative experience. Because who the hell I actually am finally showed up four years late; I whipped around and slugged him right square in the jaw. He dropped like a sack of wet meat.

Of all the kids who saw that happen, probably the only one who was more surprised than him was me. That wasn’t planned. It wasn’t even intentional; it was a reflex that I didn’t know I even had in me. A punch is a punch, though, and even the lucky ones count. He was down, dazed, and defenseless. That was going to be a problem for him; I had four school years full of open humiliation that someone needed to pay for. It was not looking good for this kid. I was amping up to go all Bill Superfoot Wallace on him. I was gonna kick his head completely off his body.

But life loves unlikely plot twists. Nothing about that moment felt like anything to be proud of. I’d been coping with bullies by convincing myself how mentally and morally superior I was to them, and here, within 30 seconds of having the upper hand for the first time ever, I was about to seriously scuff this kid up as payback for four years of misery he had absolutely nothing to do with. I was raised better than that. So rather than unloading on him, I reached my hand down to him instead. I helped him to his feet, then just turned and walked to class. That just felt right at the time; it wouldn’t be till decades later that I understood what a power move it was.

He found me on the playground at first recess the next morning. Welp, it was nice while it lasted, but here comes payback. That wasn’t it, though. He walked over to apologize for the “trouble yesterday.” I told him that wasn’t anything I really wanted to hold on to, and that I’d just as soon forget it even happened.

Hey, I was in a giving mood; that “trouble yesterday” turned out to be the best thing that had ever happened to me at that point in my life. And here, 56 years later, it’s still in the Top 3. In the time it took for him to drop, I went from being absolutely terrified of school to knowing that, at least at THAT school, I was off the menu. You don’t need to make a bully think you can kick his ass; you just need him to know you’ll swing back. I had no history with anyone on that island; far as anyone knew, that was the first time anyone ever tried to bully me, and he went down in flames immediately. I’m sure all the other bullies at that school guessed my big win had been a complete fluke, but it wasn’t worth the risk.

Charlie and I became friends pretty quick (and he needed one; after losing a face-off to a kid who looked like he was animated by Disney, his bully career was damn sure over). We had a hell of a lot of fun knockin’ around the Okinawan jungles and cliffs before I came back stateside 18 months later. And 18 months at a school where I had no natural predators was just what I needed; by the time I got to my next school, that little swagger in my stride was permanent. That one morning in the 5th grade turned out to be the last time anyone ever tried to bully me.

I still to this day won’t allow anyone to be bullied in front of me, because I remember exactly what being bullied felt like. It might get more complicated the further it gets from the schoolyard, but what it is doesn’t change.

There are probably a few useful life lessons in all of that, and you’re welcome to use any you can find. Here are two that I’ve used every day for nearly 60 years:

1: A bad guy isn’t necessarily irremediably evil. I’m sure there’s a lot of instant gratification in sinking down to a bully’s level, but you’ve got a shot at doing some genuine good in this world if you can pull him up to yours.

And 2: I stopped being a victim the instant I stopped carrying myself like one.

_____________________________

Michael writes for The Havok Journal and makes gear as Crimson Tied Paragear. His background includes work as a rodeo cowboy, a professional stuntman, and a longtime bouncer in biker bars and juke joints across the Deep South. For The Havok Journal, his writing often draws on personal experience and a direct, lived-in perspective to cover culture, politics, family, and everyday life. He also credits knots he learned from an Army Ranger Scoutmaster at Boy Scout summer camp in Okinawa in 1972 as the foundation for the work he does through Crimson Tied Paragear.

As the Voice of the Veteran Community, The Havok Journal seeks to publish a variety of perspectives on a number of sensitive subjects. Unless specifically noted otherwise, nothing we publish is an official point of view of The Havok Journal or any part of the U.S. government.