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Andrew had always been a quiet, studious sort of kid. All the way through primary school, he had loved reading and writing.
Andrew was never interested in playing rough sports in the playground during recess. The friends he had at school were mainly kids like himself. They played simple ball games among themselves.
Andrew was never part of the ‘in crowd’, at school. In physical education classes, he was always among the last people to be chosen for teams. This hurt at first, yet this did not bother him anymore. He had learned to value what he was good at instead of envying those kids who had more friends because they possessed the sporting ability that he lacked.
But, Andrew did get bullied. He hated this because he could see no reason why some kids singled him out, to put him down and make him feel like he did not matter.
He knew that he was not the only one at school who was picked on, because kids always do that to each other. Yet, he felt like all he wanted, was to be accepted. He was tired of people who seemed to think that he was an easy target, just because of his introverted manner.
When he got high school, this did not change. There were kids who, for no reason at all, would treat him badly. Could it have been because he was so dedicated with his school work? Maybe this made some kids think that he thought he was better than them, Andrew wondered.
He didn’t know for sure, but Andrew decided that he was sick of being picked on, and he was going to do something about it.
One day, during the end of lunch, Andrew was with his friends as they stood outside their classroom waiting for the next class to begin. Another, older boy walked up, and pushed Andrew against the wall.
”How are you going, you nerd?” he said, laughing.
‘Get lost!” Andrew retorted, and then yelled,
“You think you’re pretty tough, don’t you?”, with a sarcastic tone in his voice. Some of his friends laughed. The boy who had pushed him just walked away.
The next day, Andrew was sitting with his friends as they ate lunch together. Without warning, an apple came flying through the air, hitting Andrew on the chest . He looked over to see where it had come from. It had been thrown by the same boy he had stood up to the day before.
He stood there, looking over in Andrew’s direction, laughing.
At the end of the day, Andrew went to catch the bus home. He managed to get a seat.
The bus was always crowded. Those who hadn’t been able to get on early had to stand. Every day, some of the bigger kids would push the smaller ones. Andrew had been used to this being done to him. Standing right over Andrew, was the same boy who had thrown the apple at him earlier.
He told himself ‘Just ignore him. I’ll be off this bus in five minutes.”
As the bus went along its route, and neared where Andrew got off, he grabbed his bag and got ready to stand up. Others made room for him, but the boy who had been bullying Andrew was blocking his exit.
‘Do you want to get off?” he asked, sarcastically.
Andrew thought, “I’m sick of this.”
Without thinking, he said, ‘excuse... me”, then gave the other boy a shove, so hard that he fell, landing on someone’s lap.
“Now you know how it feels!” Andrew yelled, as he got off the bus. He could hear some people laughing. He didn’t know whether they were laughing at him, or at the boy he had humiliated.
He had understood that he did not have to let people put him down, or push him around, just because he happened to be a Christian. Yet, Andrew asked himself, did this boy really deserve what he had done to him? Was there a better way he could have handled the situation?
Andrew could not shake the guilt that he felt. No matter how he tried to look at how he had stood up to this boy, he now felt like he had stooped to his level, and this feeling would not go away.
http://www.bartleby.com/59 Ed Hirsch, Jr., Joseph F. Kett, and James Trefil (eds). The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition. Houghton Mifflin Company 2002 (accessed Tuesday 19 February 2008)
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