Don't Look At Me!
This is a story that started in my high school P. E. class during my sophomore year, but the worst part comes after that, and that lasted until the end of my Junior year.
It was utter hell.
In fact, it was so bad that I didn’t include it in my “Most Embarrassing Incidents” series, because while it is humiliating, it’s more depressing, at least in retrospect.
It also didn’t qualify because it wasn’t one incident. This story is about an event—a two-year-long series of moments that started when I was 15 and finally ended when I was 17. So really, this is two stories, and I still cringe and blush when I think about it.
I guess this is my long-winded way of saying that this event scarred me. Deeply.
But the reason I’m publishing this, nearly 30 years after the fact, is that it’s the reason I never sought revenge against my ex-wife, even when nearly everyone in my camp, including the US State Department, were telling me it was justified, so I’m hoping to spread what I learned from this story, to help others see the futility of enmity.
Put another way: Revenge is cruel and solves nothing.
The Story Starts Here:
When I was a kid I was naturally thin and athletic. And this isn’t just my memory. There are pictures of it, and I even have a journal from the 3rd grade where I wrote (obsessively) about racing every day in the 50-yard dash and coming in 2nd or 3rd each time (Thanks again to that one kid who beat me every time. You know who you are!)
But this all changed when I was nine and my family moved across town. The new kid at a new school, I felt awkward, vulnerable, and shy, and I guess this led to me learning to “eat my emotions.” I don’t know, maybe that’s all psychobabble, but my point is that I started to put on weight when I was nine, and it got worse and worse every year until it hit a crescendo in high school, where I found myself dreading PE class because it was a class of 50 boys, with all the mean bullies from my grade in it.
Every day was like an episode of America’s Got Talent, only the game was designed to promote the “meanest kid in the school.” This meant that, since I was one of three fat kids, I got a third of their ridicule as they auditioned for “meanest fat jokes” in the locker room when we changed and no teachers were around.
To be fair, they also took turns making fun of the nerds, dorks, and dweebs, and I definitely got the least flak out of the three fat kids because 1. I was nice and had a good sense of humor, 2. one of the other fat kids wore dress socks and had a name that was hard to pronounce, and 3. the third fat kid was way fatter, so he got it the worst.
At any rate, my mom and dad didn’t know about any of this, because I didn’t want them to feel embarrassed about being a parent of a “fat kid,” but one day, I confided in a friend’s mom. She said, “kill them with kindness,” so I tried it, and it worked!
Well, sort of. It worked on almost all of them. But not Carl, a short kid who wasn’t popular, but whose older brother in the grade ahead of us was very popular, thanks to his role in varsity athletics. Carl thus walked around like royalty, and no one would put him in his place because no one wanted to upset his muscular, tough older brother.
After three months of suffering from intense humiliation thanks to Carl’s fat jokes, I started making excuses to miss PE. I invented ankle issues, I worked on limps, and I even took weird risks when playing with friends, hoping for injury (but it didn’t work).
Then one day after school, I was watching a rerun of Charles in Charge where some kid complained about being teased for being fat, and someone told him to tell the aggressor, “Well at least I can lose weight. You’ll be ugly the rest of your life.”
I know, I know. That comeback is cliché as all hell, but at the time, it blew my mind!
Armed with “the best comeback ever,” I arrived to the locker room with a smile on my face, and sure enough, a few moments later, when Carl came by to cajole 40 other kids to laugh at my ‘flabby fat,’ I pointed at my love handles and said, “You’re right, Carl. I am fat. But someday I’ll lose weight, and you’ll still be too ugly for any girl to kiss.”
The room erupted in laughter, and the rest of the day I felt like Don Rickles.
Carl looked shocked, then pissed, and then, well, I can’t tell you what he looked like after that, because I stopped paying attention. He’d been a total jerk, all year, and now that I’d finally given him a dose of his medicine, I felt like I was on top of the world.
The rest of the day went quickly, but I should admit that I was proud of myself when two kids who weren’t in that class ask me if I’d “really” gotten back at Carl in P.E!
“Yeah,” I said with a smile. “But he had it coming, right?”
“He sure did,” they agreed.
And that was how things ended. Yup. I was the hero, Carl got put in his place, and the rest is history. Well, at least, that’s what I thought as I fell asleep that night...
TO BE CONTINUED…
This Week on Coffin Talk: Michael Hawley is a death doula who offers a circle of care approach to help people at the end of life. He views death as a natural and inevitable part of life, akin to birthing, and he’s very good at explaining this! LISTEN HERE.
Can’t wait for next week
Great read thank you !😊