Embedded Files
Since you might think me a terrible person after reading what I did to poor, little Debbie Love in episode 6, I’m hoping this story will redeem me. I really was not a bully, but rather was more of an avenger—at least, that’s how I saw myself. I can remember many times when I stood up to bullies on behalf of friends, but I think this story might have been the first time I donned my make-believe cape and stood up to a villain to avenge a wrong done to someone else.
My sister, Debra, is older than me by 18 months and was always bigger than me, but I was born with this outsized sense of justice and I raged at anything I deemed unfair. Around 1959, there was a boy named Billy in our Lynnwood neighborhood who was your classic bully. He picked on those smaller than him and took particular delight in making girls cry.
One day, some neighborhood kids were out playing in the street. 5-year-old Debra was proudly riding her new trike (which you can see a friend riding in this birthday party photo) and I was running alongside. She pulled into Billy’s driveway and got off her trike for a while to play with friends. No one noticed what Billy was doing, but he had apparently gotten some tools from the garage and was loosening the bolts all over Debra’s trike. When she got back on the trike to ride home, it literally collapsed beneath her, dumping her onto the driveway, and leaving her bruised and bleeding. She ran home crying while Billy stood there laughing, very pleased with himself.
Enraged, I stomped over to him and punched him as hard as I could in the stomach (which was at my shoulder level), doubling him over. While he was incapacitated, I took off for home to tell Mom what he had done to Debra. When telling her the story, I strategically left that last bit off. I still felt heroic, but who wants to get into trouble?
Shortly thereafter, our doorbell rang and there stood a tearful Billy and his mother on our doorstep. She was livid, yelling at my mom about her “big kid” who hurt her “little boy”. That was my cue to come out from behind Mom, who--trying hard not to laugh--pointed to me and asked, “Oh…you mean THIS kid?” Billy’s mom took one look at me—obviously younger, much shorter, and a girl—and looked back at her son. Without another word, she grabbed him by the arm and dragged him away, yelling at him all the way home.
He never picked on Debra again.
Google Sites
Report abuse