“Clonk!” The door closed. The teacher is out of the room. What is usually thought as a peaceful and quiet class has turned into a room of anarchy and running 4th graders. Back then, I was that one quiet boy who sat at his desk doing his spelling homework 5 months in advance, while outside of my own little quiet space hoots and hollers sounded from all around as the 9-year olds smashed lego bricks together. At that time there were 2 bullies, Aaron Shebanns, who nobody liked, much less wanted to get on his bad side. And Justin Lipovich, who mainly just picked on me and called me names like elementary bullies do.

         It was an indoor recess that day due to sleet. The typical games you could play were LEGOs, Checkers, Tag (very rarely, it was banned because of physical contact, yeah, it was one of those schools), and guess who. But a game you couldn’t play was run around my desk, chasing one person and swearing and threatening them at the same time, of course that’s exactly what game Aaron was playing with Justin, Aaron seemed very eager to be the catcher.

         By the way, Aaron was a tall kid, I’d say about 5 foot 4, he was from Texas and had dirty blonde hair. He also had that little young texan accent that made all his words end with a “sh”sound.

         Justin was a short and chubby kid from Louisiana, he had light blonde hair and had olive skin. And from the looks of it, it didn’t seem like he was that great of a runner.

         While Aaron was running around my desk playing the friendly game of “Kill the Other Player”, I was attempting to finish up my spelling homework that was due in 5 months. There was one more thing about me, I got VERY distracted by anything that gets my attention. So I couldn’t focus on thinking when Aaron’s distinctive vocabulary was invading my thoughts. This is when I got mad, I watched as they ran around my desk and on the 26th pass I sprung out of my desk and snatched the back of Aaron’s shirt which stopped him dead in his tracks. There was a small moment when the air filled with victory, that was before Aaron looked behind him with his signature “You’re gonna pay for that look”. He turned around and grabbed me by the sides of my shirt and threw me over his shoulder face first into the foam carpet behind me. That sent one of the biggest shocks-of-hurt through my body, and I felt good about what I had done…

          “Click” The door was being opened, the small crowd gathered around me steered their heads towards the door to see as the teacher walked back into the room, her tired coffee kept look changed almost instantly into a look of shock. You could imagine how she felt walking into the room to see one of her students lying on the ground with a crowd around him and Justin sitting on the jagged bookcase with a hand on his head, and an angry Aaron hiding in the cubbies. Oh, did I forget to explain that part? After Aaron threw me into a hard, frozen, carpet, he shoved Justin into the jagged birch bookshelf nearby. Also, Aaron goes to the office and counselor every day, he would do anything to avoid being sent there even more, this explains why he was attempting to cram himself into a 3 foot tall cubby. When the teacher walked in she immediately asked the inevitable question of, “What happened?” Me and Justin explained the story to her, I explained why I grabbed his shirt and how I got my face imbedded in the carpet, and Justin explained why he was being chased and what he had done to him. Apparently Justin had accidently pushed Aaron into a cubby whilst playing Chutes and Ladders.

           Of course, like you would expect, all 3 of us were called down to the office 2 days later, we had to explain the whole story all over again. When we finished they called in Aaron and asked him to explain, all 3 of us got in trouble. And to this day I’m still not sure as to why I got in trouble too. But after that day, Justin never bullied me again, and his friend David never did either… well for a few months that is.