Nobody Was Watching

Back in grade 2 there was this other boy in class

He had made the fist in such a way as to have one knuckle protruding out further than the other 3, and the thumb packing them all in tight. He said something about me and him, outside, and I was dead ☠️. Now what I need to emphasize here is that I absolutely had no idea what I’d done to deserve the honour is his invitation. I’m 57 years old now, and the only scenario that works for me is that he’d learned this new way of punching somebody on the head, and he picked me to inflict it upon. This makes more and more sense to me as I’ve gotten older because I’ve been frequently underestimated.

The next thing I knew, we were surrounded by all the other kids, shouting for me to punch him. I had him pinned to the ground, I took their advice, and he came up bleeding, was it over?

That was a Lincoln Elementary School, our family moved a little further north of there, just enough to change schools, but not recreation centres.

Between grade 5 & 6, I was at the swimming pool with my older brothers, in the summer time, the pool was packed. We were playing hide-n-seek. Suddenly coming up out of the water, in the shallow end, he got his revenge! The kid from grade 2! He punched me in the face. I guess it was over now.

By Grade 9, I was going to a private school that was 20 km away from home. There he was, sitting across from me, at the back of the bus. I guess I’d been staring at him, while I mused about our mutual past. He hadn’t changed much, I had however, I was quite a bit bigger than him.

“What are you looking at, faggot!”

Yup, he hasn’t changed at all.

I smiled, of course, realizing that it was my turn to punch him in the head.

I got off that bus.

Nobody was looking, and so I didn’t either