Blog 17 "My Turn"

Harrison Cade
“My Turn”

There I was, staring down at the blood on my shirt and hands. I guess I shouldn’t have tried to fight back. Everybody knows that Tom is bigger and stronger than I am. Something inside of me snapped and for some reason I felt like I could take him. Honestly, I don’t understand what it is about me that made him want to exercise his ego and reputation of being the biggest asshole in the Milky Way. It doesn’t matter what it is, but all I know is that this will not go on forever. Eventually, I will have my shot, and I will be so successful that the sight of people like him will be funny to me.
This whole thing started when I consistently received A’s on every test and quiz in ninth grade. Tom was older than everyone in my class for one of two reasons. Tom told everyone that he spent some time in a juvenile detention center for beating people up who pissed him off. In actuality, Tom had the worst grades known to man. He wasn’t eligible for graduation until he passed eighth grade, which took him three years. Anyway, As soon as Tom noticed that I was one of the smartest kids in class, he decided to make deals. Instead of using a normal approach, Tom punched me in the face and told me to give him the answers to the quizzes and test. Tom wasn’t as dumb as I thought because he hit me when the crowd in the hallway was the largest. The teachers never saw what Tom used to do. At first, I still wasn’t going to do what I was told because it was wrong. I was horrified of this “school veteran”, but he would have to find a way to make me. This is exactly what he did.
Here I am, hiding in the janitor’s closet until the bell rings. My heart was beating like the sound of a drumline. I knew that he couldn’t hurt me if the halls were clear after the bell. I began to show up late to classes everyday, and my excuses made me look like I had the most dramatic life in the world. Either didn’t catch on to things or they didn’t care. All I know is, Tom kept failing and I kept shining. I began to look at myself like a time bomb. I never dealt with things right when it happened, I thought that it would all go away if I try not to think about it. This strategy was a horrible one.
Tom saw me getting my jacket out of my locker and sparked the climax of my life story. Tom grabbed my shoulder and I turned around along with a right hook. Tom fell on his back and for about twenty seconds I felt like I was twelve feet tall. Of course I then received the worst beating of my life. All I could offer was that one punch, but that one punch was all I needed to change my life. I don’t think Tom was ever hit before because he didn’t bother me anymore, he only when to the next weak kid that he could find.
There is no reason to feel bad about what happened to me because you can learn a valuable lesson even when you’re getting your ass kicked. The older I got, I looked at Tom as being any challenge that I may come across in my life. There will be times when things seem too difficult to deal with and it makes you want to quit. I didn’t plan on using my old approach on lettings things get so bad and then exploding, but I did have an approach. I decided to deal with things immediately and make sure that I didn’t bury myself with things that I couldn’t control. This idea helped lower the amount of stress in my life. I can see now that one of the worst points in my life molded me into being a man.
Now I am successful and can actually say that I am happy. It feels good to fight back against negativity. I wish Tom was hear to see where I ended up, but I’m sure he is too busy fighting off the general population in whatever jail he was thrown in. This is the point in my life where I said I’d be laughing. Fortunately, the only direction I can go is up. I haven’t gone as far as I can go yet. This is the point in my life that I would call “my turn”.