Page 21 - Fire Your Personal Trainer and Kick Your Own Damn Ass

Fire Your Personal Trainer 18
And Kick Your Own Damn Ass

to me with respect, and he went out of his way to speak to me and I
walked away feeling kind of heroic. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the end of
my troubles with bullies.

August football practice started at the private school and I decided to
try out. Classes there started before public school classes began and I
was still enrolled in both schools. Crazy, right?

On the first official day of orientation at the all-boy high school it was

just the freshman and the sophomores on the bus. I was sitting near the
front of the bus on the way to school when a sophomore tapped me on
the shoulder and motioned to me to come with him. I had no idea what
was going on.

I followed him down the aisle to the middle of the bus and he held up the
index finger on one of his hands and motioned for me to do the same.
When I did, he came toward me to hang up his jacket on my finger. I

pulled my arm away and told him I wasn’t doing it. He glared at me and I
glared at him. I had taken a beating that summer standing up for myself
and I wasn’t going to back down. I went back to my seat and the bus was
buzzing. I had stood up to an upper classman! This was not done! Well,
that wasn’t quite true.

The kid who had asked me to serve as a coat rack took my refusal in
stride and told me a story: a few years earlier another young man

from my neighborhood who was the son of garbage carting magnate
attended this school. This particular young man was a legendary tough
guy from a family of tough guys and knew how to take care of himself.
I heard that he successfully resisted the stuff the upperclassman pulled
and the outcome wasn’t pretty. (I’ve deliberately phrased this in a certain
way and you can feel free to read between the lines.)