Chapter 3

Young Junior High School was a gigantic building to my young and naïve eyes. It was constructed as a giant U-shape with the entrance in the section that connected the two wings. Immediately to the right and left of the entrance were the class rooms for the 9^th Grade, with the 8^th Grade occupying the long left wing and the 7^th Grade occupying the long right wing. The school offices were adjacent to the entrance and there was a lunch room and kitchen at the far end of the left wing. The gymnasium was a the end of the right wing, and the auditorium was sandwiched between the two wings. The monster playground was to the right of the right wing.

All of this was designed so as to keep the three grades isolated from each other as much as possible. Each grade had a different lunch time to facilitate that. The only time that the three grades were together was during the Tuesday sing-along held in the auditorium just before the last class of the day. This afternoon time was taken up the rest of the week with a short class in spelling, a subject that always gave me fits.

The avowed reason for this separation of classes was to keep down bullying, but it did not work. At least, not as far as I could tell. The school was a study in chaos whenever we had to change classrooms as we changed from subject to subject. There were no enclosed corridors so that all movement between classes had to be made along an open walkway. One side of the walkway was made up of the string of classrooms, but the other side was open to a kind of courtyard.

The walkway was elevated to compensate for the ground contour, so anyone on the outside of the walkway was in danger of falling 2-3 feet to the ground. This happened at least once every day, and I couldn’t help wondering if some of those falls were the result of a push. The walkway was covered by a roof for its entire length, but we occasionally had driving rainstorms which caused anyone using the walkway to be drenched. We boys thought that it was fun, but the girls hated it. Unfortunately, the only way to get from one classroom to another was by using this walkway.

The five trips per day I made along this walkway were fraught with hazard. I still had to use my staff to help me walk, except that I could lean against the wall if I could manage to get to that side of the walkway. If I leaned against the wall, I could use my baton to fend off people who would try to push against me. Though I never knew for sure, I suspected that there was a little game with side bets among a group of the boys because I would be buffeted by at least one of them every time I had to change classrooms.

It didn’t take me long to learn to extend my baton partway. That way, I could use it to catch my balance if I was bumped too hard, but I also found another use for the extended baton. If anybody looked like he was about to bump me too hard, I would stab down on his instep with the reinforced end of my baton. I never hit hard enough to break any bones, but I did cause considerable pain on occasion.

That did cut way back on the number of people who bumped into me, but it never completely stopped the bumping.

Once the bumping into me eased off, I began to look to try to spot other cases of people being bumped unnecessarily. Oh, gosh, there were plenty of examples of that! Most of the victims were girls who were less than pretty. The good-looking girls did not seem to be bothered, but the others had to be careful to keep from being knocked to the ground. This really pissed me off!

Most of the people doing the bumping of the girls were boys, but there were several of the girls also guilty of the attacks. The attacking girls were all relatively good looking, so I never could figure out why they were picking on the other girls. The boys were certainly giving them enough trouble. Was it innate meanness showing up in girls just experiencing the beginning of puberty? That reason did not occur to me at the time because, though I knew of the physical difference between boys and girls, I knew nothing of sex and was not interested in it at all.

As the number of injured feet grew, I began to have an easier time using the walkway. There actually was a small open space between me and the rest of the student body whenever classes changed. However, this open space did not last very long as it was soon filled by girls who were tired of being bumped. I never spoke to any of the girls about it, so I wonder now if they were just taking advantage of a good thing. Oh, well, they probably were.

Anyway, this was where my campaign against bullies began. I am still amazed at the number of bullies who populated my grades as I trudged through Young Junior High School. I never counted them, but I suspect that there were a total of 175 or so students at my grade level, and there were at least 12 confirmed bullies among the boys in my classes, and there may have been more that I never saw.

My walking staff was a bully magnet, and the teachers threatened to take it away from me several times because I was “abusing other children” with it. These threats were always squelched by my father with the claim of medical necessity. He knew that every one of my uses of the baton or staff against another kid was the result of bullying, and he backed me completely. The school finally quit complaining to him about me and my staff. Mom always disapproved of me “getting into trouble” by defending myself, but Dad’s backing of me kept her from doing more that making oral objections. She acted as if she thought that my actions would hurt her social standing.

The one time that I got into trouble more or less justifiably was a day that I had rather forget. I was still wearing my bracers to protect my arms if I fell, and I was wearing them one day in math class. Here we go again! The boy behind me was poking me with his finger, and he shifted to the point of his pencil when that did not get enough reaction. The finger was annoying, but the pencil point hurt, and I was not feeling all that good that day, anyhow.

I told him a couple of times to lay off his poking at me, but I got no relief. Finally, he poked me too hard one too many times, so I spun around on my desk seat and swatted him with the bracer on my right arm. I was so pissed off that I was swinging for his head, and, thank the Lord, I did not make contact with my intended target. Yes, I admit it, I was not thinking straight, and I might well have killed him if I had hit his head.

As it was, he jumped back and raised his right arm when I spun around. As a result, my bracer hit his arm instead of his ear. I was really mad, and I had swung as hard as I could, so I wound up breaking both bones in his right forearm. Let me tell you, his scream of pain woke up everybody in the classroom, including the teacher.

She had been lecturing us on some problem in long division or some such. She had been standing at the blackboard writing something when I struck the boy behind me. She spun around so quickly that she nearly fell. Anyway, she saw the kid holding his right arm and crying as hard as anyone possibly could. All she knew was what she had heard, and that was the scream.

Some kid piped up with, “Jack hit Billy with his arm brace.” That was enough to make everything my fault. It wasn’t that the teacher disliked me, but she didn’t like me either, so she assumed that I had started the whole thing.

“Jack, get yourself to the office. I’ll be along in a little bit as soon as I see what can be done for Billy.” That’s when I knew that I had really screwed up. I gathered up my stuff and marched to the office. The clerk had me sit down while I waited for the Principal to finish a telephone call.