Friday, December 21, 2007

Adam-Troy Castro Fights Back, Too


Author Adam-Troy Castro, writing at Harlan Ellison’s website, notes:

Clifford Meth:
Ya done good.

I was bullied terribly throughout my school years. For all the successes I have known, all the adventures I have had, all the great people I have met, the most satisfying, self-affirming moments I have ever experienced have been when I dealt with bullies the way they needed to be dealt with.

True story: when in junior high school I was traveling from class to class holding a cassette recorder by its handle. This was before the age of Walkmen: it was a fairly hefty object. I was holding books under my other arm. I got stopped in the hallway by a guy who thought it was funny to bar my way, and to reach through my shirt to give me painful nipple-twists with both hands. As I reacted with pain, he laughed out loud. I turned that handheld tape recorder into a bludgeon and smashed it across his face, drawing blood from his lips. He stepped back, stunned. Observers went ooooh. He reached up, felt the blood, and managed an appalled, "Wh-what did you do that for?"

I said, "Be grateful I didn't do it twice."

Asshole never bothered me again.

No teachers were watching. But I would have taken a suspension for that privilege.

A-TC

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