A Vital Bully?
Do you have memories, dear reader, of being bullied as a child? Or maybe you were the one doing the bullying?
If you’re like me, you can clearly remember a time when things finally got a little out of hand, and came to a head.
I was about 12 years old, and it was in an alleyway adjacent to the school park in a small town on the prairies, where I was happily and slowly riding my bike home from school on a beautiful fall day, looking forward to finally settling down with “Mega Man”, an 8-Bit Nintendo video game…
When all of a sudden, a much bigger kid came out from from behind an adjacent fence to stand right in front of the path of my bike, his eyes dead set on bringing my slow riding bike to a stop.
His name was Shane, and he was known in the area as the neighborhood bully. My heart started to race… You see, we had some minor close calls prior, and had actually exchanged insults from a distance, before I had managed to run away (Indeed, although he was known as a bully, I had even provoked him at times and made things worse by calling him names).
But this time, it was different. We hadn’t been so close before… Before I knew it, there he was… he grabbed both ends of my handle bars firmly, and was standing directly in front of me, with my front tire firmly between his legs.
“Where do you think you’re going?” he said.
“Leave me alone, you jerk!”, I cried out afraid, trying to wiggle my bike from his tight grasp.
You see, I was a church kid.
Unlike others in the area, I didn’t have much experience with confrontation and actual fights, and I tended to run away if things were heading that way. And this was the first time that things had gotten to this point, and I was scared.
So being the uninitiated kid that I was, but yet still with some fight in me, I grabbed his hair and started to pull, demanding that he let go of my bike. And of course, such a thing was pure folly, for it was then that his fist found it’s way around to the side of my face…
I have to admit it. Although I put up a good fight, he clearly won. And after taking a few blows and finding myself on the ground a bit roughed up (and maybe my front tire slightly bent?), he finally left.
And although a bit unnerved and a bit teary, I was surprised afterwards to find out that I was actually ok, that it wasn’t so bad, and that I would live to see another day.
And also that, to my surprise… I might even have a little more confidence next time around…
And thinking of Shane now, over 30 years later, I by no means look back with resentment or anger, but rather, almost with gratitude… not because I’m grateful for a beating per se, but that this encounter with the “villain”, the neighborhood bully, clearly marked a space in time growing up, where I realized I could get through. And that, after getting knocked down, I could, as the song goes, get back up again.
You see, in a sense, my local neighborhood bully was a vital villain.
And although a bit late, I did in fact keep my appointment with the inimitable Mega Man.