So, you can imagine the look on my face when I'm sitting in the cafeteria eating lunch when I look up and see his face at the door, looking for his newest 'friend'...and can you guess who he fixes his gaze on in a room that had at least 300 people in it?...I'll give you three guesses, but you'll only need one...nope, it wasn't the derriere-enhanced Power Booty nor my Unicorn, although if he did pick, I would have had to defended her honor from the scourge that was him...Nope, the lucky victim was yours truly...I had hit the jackpot in the "Let's screw your life" sweepstakes and boy was I about to collect...in retrospect, perhaps I could have been a little nicer, or more understanding or shown more compassion to him...I mean, he was as much of a social out cast as I was back when I started in school, except the main difference between us was that I had worked very hear to earn the respect and trust of my meager band of acquaintances and friends...so, when he came up to, slammed his hand on my back and proceeded to speak in a louder then needed voice that I was his best friend from Elementary school, and that my friends were now his friends, I was a little upset and stunned by that...for the next month and a half, I avoided him like the plague...I would literally walk around the school, outside in the freezing cold if necessary, just to avoid any unnecessary eye contact...this was starting to get a little ridiculous, but I didn't know what else to do...however, things began to get worse for him when he started to pull the same old tired tricks he did back in Elementary school with a new group of people...remember how I said that there was a group of individuals that weren't necessarily the nicest of people?...well, they certainly didn't help the situation by being themselves, for very quickly, everyone began to know and hate this guy...it wasn't like he deseved to be hated, but he was very annoying...so annoying in fact, that only his ability to be emotionally exhausting and totally frustrating, eclipsed his annoying super-power...but was hating him truly necessary?...in any case, as random people began treating him badly and without any kind of respect, his actions and statements began to get louder and more embellished....
It was a Tuesday afternoon, and I was sitting in the cafeteria eating a homemade burger that was lovingly made the night before...dude, it was an awesome burger, its too bad my mom doesn't make them anymore...they were an inch think, filled with onion and mushrooms and both juicy yet firm...mmmmm....sorry, where was I?...oh yes, the burger...so yeah, I was eating lunch with my friends when in HE came...he sat down next to my friend and then began to start talking about random things that had absolutely no bearing on us or the topics we were talking about...all of a sudden, he decides to stand up from the table and give someone on the other side of the table something from his bag...now, why he didn't do this seated, I'll never know, but he stands up and somehow, someway, he is able to not only push the table away, but he knocks over his own chair, which in turn trips the person walking behind us and causes food to be flung all over us...I swear, it was straight out of a comedy, and I probably would have laughed it off were it not for the fact that I was covered in beef barley soup and sadly, my burger was ruined...we all turned towards this guy, and instead of getting some kind of apology, he starts laughing and even asks us to huddle together for a picture for the yearbook...this angers my friend, and he answers the request by pushing him into the table pretty hard...as he's falling into the table, he boucnes into, to which I grab his shoulder and deflect him to my right, causing him to spin around a couple of times and fall to the ground...now, I was pissed and had it not been for the teachers coming over to see what all the commotion was all about, I probably would have gone Jihad on him...but I didn't and I remember him being helped up by a teacher, yelling at us that we had hurt his neck and that he was going to sue us and have us all put into jail for assault...like I said, I was pissed and so I pushed the teacher who was holding me aside and grabbed the chair he was sitting on from behind...I spun it around and placed my palm on his head and said "your head hurts?...are you sure it hurts?...because you are a liar and you are lying now like you always did back in elementary school...you want pain, I'll make sure you neck really hurts"...apparently, that constitutes a 'threat' (go figure) and I was dragged away by two teachers and sent directly to the Principals office...I remember sitting outside his office, with my friend who started the whole mess, waiting to be seen...my friend went first to see the Principal and after about 5 minutes, he came out looking a little disheveled, but nonetheless alright...I was told that while my friend was being suspended for three days, I was being suspended for one week because I attacked a fellow student, uttered a threat and was the cause of the whole fight...hold on, wait a sec...was I just being blamed for the whole thing?...I said, "excuse me, although I admit to uttering the threat and I did push him off me when he was falling, it was the other guy who started the whole thing!...the guy didn't believe me and I was summarily sent home with no explanation whatsoever....
Let me tell you, I was pissed...I called my friend, but he never picked up the phone...I wanted to speak to him and say "dude, what happened?...you sold me out!...how could you blame me for starting this whole thing?"...I had felt that my honor was being attacked and I take that very seriously...I found out a few years later, that he told the Principal he was trying to break up the fight and was inadvertently brought into it...he aid taht I had started the whole thing and that because I was an old 'friend' of his and we had history, that I had a grudge against him... thankfully, I found this out after I was done school, otherwise I probably would have been suspended again...When I went back to school a week later, I assumed that things would return back to normal but, instead, I was greeted with the sweet sound of silence...no one would speak with me...no one would stand next to me in line for the bus or sit with me at lunch...if I tried to initiate a conversaton or walk towards people, the talks would stop relatively quickly and people would start to move away from me...apparently, the consensus was that I was the cause of the SAC's newest member to be suspended and that hanging out with me was a sure fire way of getting into trouble...I felt like it was my first day of High School again, being attacked by my own personal welcoming committe and being hung out to dry...it took pretty much the rest of the school year before people started to 'forgive me', but by this time, I had decided that I didn't need them and that I would rather watch every single person (minus my Unicorn and brother) burn in a lake of fire before I would raise my finger to help...
On a quick side note, there are only two people that I still talk with from High School...they were the only peole who genuinely cared about me and even during all of the highs and lows, they stood by me and offered whatever assistance they could...if I have any positive memories of Bethune, their friendship to me is near the top, just below those of my Unicorn, of course...they know who they are, and I make sure that every change I get, I tell them how important they are to me...
I was falling into a pit of dispair and darkness...this darkness was partially of my own doing, but I truly felt that I was getting the short end of the stick...I faced a critical decision: do I quit now and go to a different High School where I can start again or, do I show these so-called 'friends' what a pissed-off Wu can do when he has nothing to lose?
Funny how eight years later, I would be faced with a similar decisioin...
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