The bully finally met his match with my mom. One day I told my mother I didn't want to go to school. She asked me why and I told her about the bully. With a few exceptions I always told my mother everything. She was my friend and gave good advice. Mom would often mention my brother. I was problem free compared to Dwight. :) I was very shy and pretty wimpy and that was really my problem. I think Mom was always trying to put a little Dwight in me throughout my childhood but it never took.
The bully thing had finally come to a solution zone. I had told my mother. Once, a long time before, I told my mother about the teacher who had sent me to the school office to get paddled because I didn't have my homework. Mom knew how little actual trouble I caused in school and she also knew how forgetful I was. Some of it was because I did not pay attention but mostly I just had other things filling my head. Homework, Angela Browder, and some particular fact that had provoked thought in a class might be of equal importance to me. In college, I once interupted my sociology professor with a startling statistic. She loved the statistic and asked me my source. I wracked my brain until realizing it came from "Hollywood Squares," a TV game show. She and the class errupted with laughter as I admitted my statistic might not have the best sourcing. Of course my source was about as good as the sources used on major news networks today, but I was a little ahead of my time.
So things might fill my head and mull around a bit and disrupt the process of memory. A learned fact might have many implications and because of that I might forget my homework. Upon learning of the paddling, my mother went to the school the next day to say there would be no more of that. If her child needed corporal punishment my mother would administer it. She would do it right there in the school if they thought I needed it. Needless to say, I think, that paddling for not doing homework would be frowned upon by the courts these days. It was probably more than a little embarassing that a teacher had sent a child to them to be paddled for not doing homework. Mom had a great argument. My mother and father should both have been lawyers because they always thought through things like that before acting. Mother and Father were at their best when problem solving about me. I love them so much for decisions that influenced me greatly.
Mom had a good argument when she confronted the bully. Against my profound pleas and wishes, she stuck me in the back of the Volkswagon and her final words on the subject were "You won't have to fight him. Trust me." I thought then and I still think she seriously wanted me to fight that bully. She took me to the bully's house. I reluctantly showed her the way. "Is that the house?" she asked. I remember that she and I both knew he would probably be alone. He was apparently a latchkey kid but the term hadn't been invented yet. I knew his parents weren't home and that is what bothered me. My mom was dangerous. She was going to ask him to fight me in a fair fight, without his henchboys. I dreaded the outcome of such a fight. But when confronted, he didn't want to fight me. My mother impressed upon him that I was out there in the car waiting if he wanted to fight and that now was the best time to get it over with. Nope, Terry didn't want to fight me. Then, of course, my Mom would expect him not to fight me in the future, but if he changed his mind the fight needed to be fair. My Mom confronted a 12 year old with logic like that. That bully never bothered me again. My mother was once again the hero. Me? Not so much. :)
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