Getting My Point Across to the Class Bully
As a boy, I was sickly and skinny. In my early childhood, I was the target of bullies who, themselves, were targets of bigger bullies.
As a boy, I was sickly and skinny. In my early childhood, I was the target of bullies who, themselves, were targets of bigger bullies.
By the time a kid gets to junior high school, bullying takes less obvious forms, though these forms should still be properly called bullying. For a few weeks, one such bully was Glen Hewitt.
During that time, he thought that overdoing the old pat on the back was something funny. He'd walk up to smaller boys, slap them hard enough on the back to cause pain, and say something like, “How's it going, old pal?”
When he'd do that to me, and I'd complain, he'd laugh. Once, I tried to fight him, but he too easily parried by blows and laughed even harder.
Finally, I'd had enough and decided to take drastic measures. That morning, predictably, he walked up to me and slapped my back as hard as he could. A look of shock crossed his face, and he looked at the trickle of blood on his hand.
I had taped a thumbtack to my back, facing outward, of course. At first, I thought he was going to beat me to a pulp. Instead, he walked away with a confused look on his face.
He never did that again—not to me or to anyone else.
Roy and Glenn’s Sound-powered Phones
Our next-door neighbors were the Hopkins family: Roy, his sister Angeline, their mother and father Erline and Lester, and their grandmother, whom we knew only as Grandminnie. I think that Minnie was her name.
Roy and Glenn were always up to something interesting, and sometimes they were up to something that could be called useful. One such time was when they created their own sound-powered phone and strung the line for it between our houses.
Their sound-powered phone consisted of two radio speakers—not the housing—just the speakers—and a length of wire running from Roy’s bedroom to Glenn and my bedroom. The power of the human voice vibrates the speakers enough to generate the electricity needed to make it work.
They’d string up the wire just after dark and take it down again the next morning. Their surreptitious phone calls always took place after bedtime when our parents expected us to be sleeping.
After a few nights of this, the novelty wore off and they quit. I don’t know what they did with the speakers and speaker wire.
Kids nowadays have cell phones for that, but I’m sure that late-night calls aren’t as much fun as the fun Glenn and Roy had with their home-made, sound-powered phones. Come to think of it, home-made fun is almost always more fun than the store-bought kind.
