Kids are evil. (October '06)

This was inspired by a thread on The Otherground at mma.tv

The thread is a discussion of horrible things we all did as children. If anyone bothers to click on that thread, it will help to know that The Otherground is populated by a unique subset of the population, and a subset that is probably a bit more evil than most. It will also help to know that a fair number of the posts are probably lies told by insecure middle Americans living vicariously through the internet.

With that out of the way, I'll move right on to my little contribution.

The details of the various things I did are no better or worse than the stuff written there, but one overarching theme seems to stand out in my memory of childhood events.

I was always one of the smaller kids, and from a pretty conservative family, so I wasn't as street-wise or experienced as the other kids in verbal dueling.

As a result, I got picked on a lot.

The two advantages I had were that I was smarter than most kids my age, and I grew up with a bunch of older siblings, so I knew how to scrap and how to compensate for physical disadvantages.

In any case, it always seemed to go down like this:

A kid or group of kids would start picking on me. I'd get pissed, and tell them that they'd better stop. They'd laugh, and I'd go ballistic and decide to put a stop to things right then and there using the surrounding environment.

For instance, if a kid was standing near the monkey bars, I'd figure out that all I needed to do was trip him or something and he'd hit his head on a metal frame, or I'd grab the loose chain hanging from the broken swing and swing it at a kid. My retaliation was always way out of proportion to the initial insult. The crazy thing is that it almost always worked--sort of.

In my head, I would picture this scenario where the other kids realized that I was a force to be reckoned with, and that they should have thought twice before messing with me.

In practice, it ALWAYS ended up with a bunch of scared kids running off to get a parent or teacher, and me nervously trying to help some dazed or bleeding kid up and saying things like "I didn't mean to! It was an accident! Please don't tell! We're friends, right?"

Then I'd spend the rest of the day feeling sick with guilt and praying that I didn't get told on or get in trouble.

It's amazing how quickly and powerfully those feelings and memories can come rushing back from so long ago.

Maybe getting old isn't that bad after all.