Page 20 - Fire Your Personal Trainer and Kick Your Own Damn Ass

Fire Your Personal Trainer 17
And Kick Your Own Damn Ass

between two people one of whom clearly knew what he was doing, and
one of whom clearly did not. The outcome the second time was much
worse than the first.

When I saw that kid the second time, should I have turned my bike
around and rode the other way? Could I have avoided a beating when
the boy grabbed the front of my bicycle by trying to reason with him?
We’ll never know. He obviously had something in mind when he stopped

me, and his accusation that he heard things I had said about him was
complete nonsense. He was setting me up. At least that’s what I think.

What’s interesting to me is that he had a total victory the first time but
that wasn’t enough for him. It wasn’t enough to humiliate me once. He
saw me and he wanted to do it again for kicks even though his buddies
weren’t around. For everyone who writes pablum about bullying for
young people, maybe you really ought to rethink the disservice you’re

doing by not telling the truth.

In two brief encounters I had come away with two chipped front teeth,
and bulging bruises on my face that stuck out like eggs and made me look
a little like actor Charles Laughton in the movie, “THE HUNCHBACK OF
NOTRE DAME.” I also had bruises on my neck from his fingers choking
me. My only consolation was that I had faced up to my fears and shown
some guts. I was a lousy fighter, but I had stood up for myself and I felt

good about that.

Because it was summer vacation no one from school saw what I looked
like. At first, I was embarrassed to go out in public because people stared
and asked me what happened, and I didn’t want to talk about my losing
effort. One night I was in Modell’s and a guy in his twenties came over
and told me he had been in a fight like mine and the other guy broke
his hand punching him. There was something about the way he spoke