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3 Grade School Fights and What They Taught Me.
Each had a different ending. Each shaped me for life.
I was a nerd as a kid.
I still am, though now we use the more fashionable “geek”. But back then, I had thick glasses, a skinny frame, and usually about three or four books in my backpack at any given time. I wasn’t fashionable, I didn’t fit in, and I got bullied a lot in almost cliched ways (like literally having my milk money taken from me on the way to school for a few months).
During that time, living in the northern New Jersey suburbs, I got into exactly three fights at school. Each one taught me something different.
The First Fight: Clinton vs. Nerd
Clinton was not a bully by nature, but he wanted to be popular, and picking on me was a way to be entertaining to his friends. On one particular warm Spring day I must have said something that made him mad, because he said the dreaded words:
I’m going to kick your ass after school.
His whole cadre of friends heard him say it, and I was caught between being seen as a coward by doing the smart thing and running home, or facing him and almost certainly getting my ass kicked. There wasn’t really a conscious decision, though — I knew he could outrun me…
