h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

This morning, while diligently chewing a bagel at Irvings, I hear a voice.

"Hello, Joe," the voice said.

I looked up to see the face of a teammate of mine in the summer frisbee league I participated in. Being the trusting and sensitive soul that at times like this I wish I wasn't, a look of pleasant suprise washed over my face.

"Hi, Jeremy," I replied expecting a frendly conversation with someone I apparantly annoyed more than once with my actions on the field.

He had gone out of his way to point this fact out to me twice during the season. I toned down my shouts, and I thought it was left on the field.

"So I see you embarrased us one last time with that email to Charlie," Jeremy said with a look of condesention that made me want to hit him with a chair, "You know, everyone who played found out about about that email."

I sent the orginizer of the league an email saying that I thought that the end of the season tournament was unnecessarily grueling. He had obviously taken it personally and tried to hurt me by telling everyone on my team about the email in his own words.

"If you're here to bust on me then leave. I don't need to hear this." I managed to keep my composure somewhat, but I could feel my face form itself into a look of painful seriousness.

He left after another minute, once he figured he was not going to get anything to argue about out of me.

That hurt me. Not because Jeremy had told me he was embarrased and that I was a jerk, but because he inferred that other people on the team agreed with him. I liked my teammates, and respect most of their opinions.

I got this feeling in the pit of my stomach, and it is still there now. It feels like the floor just dropped out from under me. I want to cry.

I had almost forgotten the sadness, the loneliness, and the rage I felt as a child when someone made fun of me. I'm sick of this feeling. I want it to go away.

i know the feeling you are speaking of very well and have found that in most cases the person (or people) causing you to feel this way are really not happy with themselves and try to bring everyone else down so they can make themselves feel better......most likely the other teammates you are worried about do not feel badly towards you....most likely they are looking at him with pity for being such a sad sod that he has to try to hurt others to make himself feel good......i know from experience that it is hard to ignore this type of person but that is the best thing that you can do....
monsy

I know, I know.

I was a very unpopular child, and to top it off, I used to have a hair trigger temper. I had to learn the hard way how to deal with people like this.

The problem is that you can't really ignore the person if he says something that hurts you. You have to fake it, or if you're like me whose face expresses every emotion like a billboard, you have to keep your cool and take the mental high ground.

It just made me really upset and I had to write about it somewhere.

ya, i understand, i was the butt of most jokes in school myself and found myself quite often wishing i could just dissapear.....it is hard to handle and writing it down helps sometimes.....no it is not really possible to ignore them, only to make them think you are ignoring them, of course from the sound of it your facial expressions are a lot like mine which tends to be a bad thing......bad thing is when you get out of school you think that these idiots will suddenly go away but there are still some of them lurking out there waiting to gig you when you least expect it..........
monsy

Oh god do I remember that part of it. I used to live in constant terror of stumbling across one of my enemies outside of school. They usually decided that it would be fun to rough me up a bit.

There seem to be a lot of people who don't understand why a group of outcasts would bring machine guns and pipe bombs to attack a school. I understand, because I used to harbor that much hate and anger. Fortunately, I had a strong conscience (spelling?) and I could not have killed anyone.

But I will say that one of my favorite memories was of a fight I had in eighth grade. This one kid had been making fun of me for days, but by this time I started to learn how to push their buttons. I upset him so much that he confronted me in the hall way after lunch. He pushed me 3 times, I let him. Then he hit me in the chest with his fists 2 or 3 times, only then did I start fighting. As I grabbed this kid's head and started forcing it to the ground (my goal was to kneel on him and humiliate him without doing any damage. I was much bigger than him. He was a fool to fight me), someone else hit me in the back of the head (he hurt his hand. I wasn't up against mental giants). All in all 4 people took shots at me from all angles, but somehow I was still winning.

And then, I got an amazing break. I was able to pin the one who hit me in the back of the head against the wall with my left hand on his chest just below his neck. I cocked my right arm. I paused. On his face was this look of fear. He knew I had him exactly where I wanted him. He knew I could get revenge for every fight, for every embarrassment right here. He felt what I had been feeling for so many years for that split second. There is very little I have ever done that I am more proud of.

I didn't hit him, but I won't act like I was a saint. I probably would have if the fight wasn't broken up right then.

I don't know. I always feel that shouldn't be a happy memory, but it is. I think it helped me deal with that time of my life. I was able to get revenge, and I didn't have to hurt anybody. Well except for the fact that that kid had to go to the nurse's office to have his hand put on ice.

I don't know, I'm just rambling on.

i happen to be very proud of the fact that you stood up to them and gave them at least a small taste of what they had done to you ..it may not be right to be proud of it but so what! i am proud i wish i had had that opportunity while i was in school but unfortunately i did not. i did however get the pleasure of seeing a few of them some years later and not having them recongnize me until after i told them who i was a few hours after we started chatting....not that i did anything cruel to them, it was just that i was able to show them that after all they had done to me i had become more successful in more ways than one than they had become ....they were still working medial jobs trying to get somewhere in life without anything to speak of while i had a good job and something to show for my life ...
maybe that is not a good thing to say but i did feel very proud to be able to rub in their faces the fact that after all they had done to me i WON!
monsy

hmmm - I can identify with both of you and I have a high school reunion in just under a month - it'll be the first time I've seen most of them, including the ones who gave me hell, for five years. unfortunately i don't feel like i have much success to wave in their faces. (I could pretend I invented something cool, but apparently that's already been done.) Good on both of youu though for getting through all this crap.

it does not have to be monetary success that you show them all it has to be is personal success....show them that no matter what they did to you they were unable to take your spirit you were still able to survive and grow......the old "sticks and stones" thing is what i am trying to say , i have never attended any of my high school reunions for the fact that i have moved from there since then and reunions just are not my cup of tea, but i have run into a few of them on occasion and was amazed to find just how the ones who gave me the worst "hell" turned out....these are the ones that i keep finding are bouncing in and out of jobs and marriages barely scraping by.. either that or they are the ones who you can tell just by looking at them are not really happy because outward appearance is so important to them....they never learned that it really IS what is on the inside that counts....yes, what they did still bothers me but knowing that i am happy in my life despite what they did is something that i treasure. i know it may sound crazy but in a way i am grateful for the treatment they gave me because it helped me grow into the person i am today. i feel it also helped me to be more sensitive to others because i know what it feels like to be the odd "man" out, the one who for whatever reason is seen as different from everyone else.
monsy

Thanks monsy - I needed that - besides most of them will probably still be working their lives out too - or working for their parents, which personally I wouldn't find very fulfilling. But hey different strokes for different folks

you are more than welcome ....i hope what i said helped somewhat. i know that for myself i have no desire to remember my high school years which is probably why i don't go to reunions but i hope that you enjoy yourself and you must tell me all about it when you return
monsy