Never make fun of the fat kid in class. I don't mean that in the "it's mean and dehumanizes your fellow man" way or some other bullshit. I mean it out of self-preservation. I don't care how slow, how uncoordinated this kid is. He might be the one picked last in every sport, in every gym class for all of eternity, but make no mistake: you can only make so many jokes about him having his own gravitational field before he cracks into his own 'Nam and starts smashing faces.
In Junior High, I used to walk home with my friends Gabriel and Jason. Gabriel was a pleasant enough Indian kid that I knew from class, and Jason was a kid who thought he was the perfect combination of Mike Meyers and Bruce McCulloch. Yeah, read that again. Sure, Mike Meyers and Bruce McCulloch were funny and all... but people impersonating Mike Meyers and Bruce McCulloch... not as funny. So anyway, every day I would walk home with Jason and Gabriel and we would make fun of stuff and Jason would say "shya, right" like... a million fucking times. That didn't get annoying at all. If you don't know what "shya, right" means (or sounds like), count yourself as lucky.
One day on the way home from school we were behind a fairly portly young lad named John and some of his friends. I don't remember who started the volley of insults, but to say the least, nasty words were exchanged. John wasn't exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer and had scathing replies on the order of "Oh yeah, well... so are you!" and "Your mom!" Jason, while not a very nice person, was rather adept at insulting others. I'm not sure if Gabriel and I were friends with him because we enjoyed his company or we figured it was one way to not get made fun of all the time. Regardless, Jason and I made with the fatty fat fat jokes and John's friends began to laugh at him instead of with him. He was losing in our little war of words.
Once you show any signs of weakness in a contest such as ours, it's basically over. You need an arsenal of fitting insults to lob at the other parties involved. Stuttering for even a moment allows the balance of power to tip in their favor. Eventually he was overwhelmed with insults and just kind of... walked in silence. Looking back on it, I should have showed something like empathy to the poor kid and gave him credit for taking such a verbal pummeling. He wasn't a bad kid or anything. He was just... fat. Really fat. And not very bright. Instead, we continued to heap the insults on. Hell, his friends even got in on it. As he got to the other side of the street, the insults got louder and more boisterous. Figuring he was now a safe distance away, he decided to lob a few more zingers our way. They were so hilariously weak, we began to make fun of the insults. Angered and flustered by our mockery, his brain worked feverishly for this little nugget: "Oh yeah! Well... if you want a blowjob, come and get it!".
Stunned silence. I swear, even the birds stopped fucking chirping and shit. For a few seconds Jason, Gabriel, John's "friends" and I just kind of exchanged shocked looks at each other. The laughter that followed nearly overpowered the sounds of his enormous feet crushing the pavement on the way back to his house. Proud of ourselves for destroying someone else's self-esteem for a change, we made our ways home. So this was what it felt like to build yourself up from someone else's destruction. Sweet!
The next afternoon, the events of the previous day didn't really cross my mind. As we got a little ways from school property, there was John again. Something was... different. Kind of like in zombie movies right after someone turns. They look like the person you once knew. They might even have a mannerism or two from before their brains turned to goo. But once you get within grabbing distance, you quickly realize this is not the woman who used to change my diaper. Unless zombies somehow gained the ability to change diapers, which I'm pretty sure they haven't. Anyway, I need to get off of the topic of zombies or this will end up being my dissertation on how it was totally fucking bullshit that Ben got shot by those stupid rednecks at the end of Night of the Living Dead and how maybe mankind were the monsters and shit. Yeah, smoke on that for a minute, knuckleheads.
So anyway, John's waiting there. I don't think it ever really crossed our minds that maybe John was still a little raw over what we had said the previous day. As we walked towards John, I think we were still engaged in our discussion on neutron stars or whatever when Jason (I think) suddenly moved forward a foot or two really quickly. Gabriel and I shot a somewhat confused look to Jason, as if to say "The source of your forward momentum is most confusing to us." Jason then let out a Tourette-ian torrent of fat-person related insults. Gabriel and I then noticed that John, with all his heavy, sweaty, red-faced girth, had pushed Jason. The chickens had come home to roost.
Perhaps we should have banded together. Perhaps we should have all apologized. Perhaps we should have run like the cowards we were. Instead we opted for a somewhat perplexing fourth option: we tried to ignore him. Maybe we thought if we showed that we weren't (outwardly) afraid of him, he would go away, stunned by our resolve. Or, more likely, we were just too cowardly to think of doing anything else. You would think that between the three of us, we could have come up with a better plan than taking the same fucking route home every day. Sadly, this was not the case. After a few days of getting shoved from behind, I finally got fed up enough to turn around and challenge this young rapscallion to fisticuffs. Or like... told him to die in a fire or something. I can't really remember. Regardless, idle threats do not work against rolling boulders. The shoving continued for a few more days. John's ever-so-loyal friends even joined in, making nasty comments about Jason's mother's ability to ingest massive quantities of wieners. We were now out-numbered and being menacingly stalked by the bastard child of the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man and the kid from Bad Santa. Normally, once we passed a certain road, they would stop following us and just make their way home. This day, however, they had other plans.
As we were getting closer to Jason and Gabriel's street, the insults and jeers grew ever louder. With expectations of an all out Road House-ian brawl, I started mentally preparing myself. I wasn't exactly an accomplished pugilist, but I was bigger and older than most of these little bastards. I was pretty sure I could put a little pepper on it and lay some chump out before Fatty McMeatHooks got his filthy, chocolate-covered paws on me. It's not like it was just me against them, either. I had two friends with me. Sure, one was a pacifist and the other was the embodiment of "all bark and no bite", but that's not the point: They would draw beatings away from me until I could escape.
We reached Jason and Gabriel's street. The knot in the pit of my stomach was a supernova. I exhaled hoarsely. I was ready. They wanted a fight, I'd give 'em a fight. I'd make sure at least one of them would remember my name. And not just from my murder trial, either. Jason and Gabriel, just yards from their own property, could get a few good punches in and hoof it back to their houses (or hope that Jason's dad would see what was happening and run over and kick the unholy crap out of them.) I, on the other hand, was miles from home. I had to fight to the death. Or, I would have, had fate's hand not intervened.
Mere seconds before I unleashed the fury on Fat Albert and the Junkyard Gang, a silver Volkswagen Jetta pulled up quickly next to me. I recognized it instantly: It was my mom. In Junior High, the only thing worse than getting your ass kicked is having your mom rescue you from said ass-kicking. I was conflicted in how I felt. Sure, I was glad that the pummeling had been pushed back a day or so, but it's pretty hard to look tough to others when your mom is your bodyguard. I would have much answering to do to kids at school. To my mom's credit, she handled it pretty well. She got out of the car slowly, but with purpose. She told me to get in the car and basically told the kids to fuck off. One of the dumber, wimpier kids decided this would be a good time to make some sort of snide comment to me and my mom. This is the part of the story where I called someone a fucking asshole and spit in his face. My mom was surprisingly cool about my sudden outburst of adult language. She just made me roll up the window and we drove off. I wish I could say at school the next day all was forgiven and we lived in peace and harmony for the rest of our days, but... well... this was public school. That shit doesn't happen in such a toxic environment. And now I had awoken a sleeping giant.