VV#1 - Marking A Space in Time
A vital bully?
Do you have memories, dear reader, of being bullied when you were younger? Or maybe it was you who was 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 Canadian 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 the next level of Mega Man, an 8-bit Nintendo video game. When suddenly, a much bigger kid stepped out from behind an adjacent fence to stand right in front of the path of my bike—his eyes dead set on bringing my slow and casual ride to a stop.
His name was Shane, and he was known in town as the neighborhood bully. My heart started to race. You see, we had some close calls before and had even exchanged insults from a distance before I had managed to run away. Although he was known as a bully, I had provoked him at times and made things worse by taunting.
But this time, it was different. We hadn’t been so close before. The sense of satisfaction in his smile that I was finally within arm’s reach was palpable. Before I knew it, he had grabbed both ends of my handlebars firmly and was standing directly in front of me with my front tire 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 grasp.
I was a naïve 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 (and really, kind of pathetic), for it was then that his fist found its way around to the side of my face.
I must admit—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 unnerved and a bit teary-eyed, I was surprised afterwards to find out that I was okay, that it wasn’t so bad. I realized that I would live to see another day, and that—to my surprise—I might even have a little more confidence next time around.
Who’d-a-thunk-it. This kid was okay.
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 that I could get through. And that, after getting knocked down, I could, as the (terrible) song goes, get back up again. So you see, my local neighborhood bully was, in a sense, a vital villain. And although a bit late, I did keeep my appointment with the inimitable Mega Man.
