Like I said, my parents don't think violence is the answer to any problem. Though I'm not entirely sure if they also meant self-defense was wrong. Maybe that's just because they never would think that I would have the strength or courage to fight back when being bullied. Needless to say, my dad wasn't too happy when he got a call from the principal saying that I had "gotten into a fight at school."
Actually, my dad probably would've reacted a little better at first if my principal wasn't such a clueless moron. I protected myself from a group of thugs ganging up on me and to him that meant I was fighting at school. Hell, the way he talked to me made it sound like he thought I was the one who had started the fight and the three other guys had just been innocent victims caught in a bad situation. My dad had an extremely blank look on his face when he first walked into the office. I don't know if it's just me, but a blank look on a parent's face always seems to be the most unnerving.
Thankfully, I was able to give my side of the story when my dad asked me questions about what happened. The principal didn't know that I had been bullied by these guys for years and my dad ended up having to give a twenty minute explanation while I just sat in the chair feeling like a criminal. Even then, the principal continued to treat me like a criminal even after he knew that I had been the victim of bullying for years. One ear and out the other. Pretty shameful, right?
Thankfully, my dad bit my principal's head off right then and there (not the first time he had done that, my elementary and middle school principals would get it much worse), and caused him to turn even whiter than a sheet. I wouldn't be surprised if his ugly looking khakis were completely soaked after that. I was never sent to the office again after that day. I don't think the principal ever even looked me in the eye again after that day. Not even at my graduation. Whatever.
Before my dad left the office, he patted me on the back and said: "Nice job." Yes, I was being complemented for putting three kids in the hospital. How can something sound so wrong yet so right at the same time?
When my mom came home from work later that night, the very first thing my dad said to her was: "Alex took out his bullies." This caused my mom to nearly drop all her bags in shock. I guess it just wasn't at all what she was expecting to hear after a long day at the nurse's office. After hearing the full story, my mom was still pretty shocked, but a smile eventually came to her face. Probably because of how excited she was that my bullying problem that had plagued my life for several years would now finally come to an end.
So, would you say that violence did end up solving my problem in the end? I guess technically yes. Like I said, it just depends on what you consider "violence." If violence is wrong in general, why would Karate and Kung-Fu even exist? Why would football and boxing exist? Aren't those sports violent? I've heard people say that words such as "love" and "good" are hard to describe since they can have several meanings. I think "violence" needs to be added to that list.
Did I stop with my strength building after that day? Hell no. Now that I was in high school, I now finally had access to a weight room and an actual gym (the middle school I went to didn't have one for some reason). Move over, boxes in the basement. It was time for some real working out.
In seventh grade, I was so weak that I couldn't even carry a large pile of comic books without straining myself. By the end of my senior year of high school, I could bench press almost three hundred pounds. Oddly enough though, it didn't really look like I could. I was still one of the smallest people in school (I'm pretty sure I stopped growing when I was like eleven) and I still appeared to be really scrawny. I had a lot of strength, but it just didn't show. I guess not everyone can have big muscles like Arnold Schwarzenegger.
How did I continue practice my fighting? Simple, I signed up for boxing during my freshman year. Yeah, my very first sport ever was boxing. Not too common. Not to brag, but by the end of my junior year, I was one of the greatest boxers in my district (I still have all my medals, ribbons, and certificates to prove this). Since I was living in San Antonio at the time, this was quite an accomplishment. As good as I was, I couldn't really use boxing to improve on my kicking skills. I had to do that on my own time (perhaps I should have also signed up for soccer). To this day, I think I'm much better with my hands then my feet. Still, most guys that get the full force of my shoe to their face don't usually stand back up too quickly.
With nobody bullying me, the rest of my high school days were pretty quiet in terms of social interactions. I still had my same old friends from elementary and middle school, but we began growing farther apart the more and more that I started focusing more on my physical strength than my love of comics and video games. While there will still occasional times where I would go back to my old fun activities, I became less and less of a comic and video game geek as the years went by. With my old friends still being fanatics about these things, it became hard to relate to them. Needless to say, I didn't really hang around with people that much in high school. Oh sure, there were some other people I would meet at the gym or at boxing matches that I would talk to occasionally, but we never really hung out or spent any real time getting to know each other. It really is odd that the only time that I had good friends in school was when I was getting bullied on a regular basis. Talk about ironic.
So there you go. I went from being a dorky weakling to one of the most toughest people in the whole school in just a span of a few years. Was I intimidating? Well, there were plenty of people in school who were so afraid of getting on my bad side that they wouldn't even try to interact with me. Several others would become terrified just seeing me walk down the halls. So yeah, I guess that qualifies as intimidating. But like I said, I've never been a violent person. Just don't try to attack me or steal from me and we will be fine.
And don't talk to me about sports teams.
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