Sheesh, I'm having some horrible flashbacks about childhood bullying. [View all]

[LuckyCharms]

I had largely forgotten about all of this, until last night when I had a few nightmares. I think I repressed it until now. I didn't repress it completely, I've thought about it briefly over the years, but today I'm actually feeling the terror for whatever reason.

This happened AFTER my father died when I was 11 years old.

I was good friends with this guy when I was a kid. For some reason, this small gang of local young future criminals had an unwarranted beef with my friend. The guy I was friends with was a gentle guy, and the wayward gang members were the worst of the worst (street fighting, knife carrying punks).

I was in a grocery store with my friend one day. The gang had followed us in there, and they started beating the holy shit out of my friend. There was blood everywhere. I tried to help him, swinging my fists like I was possessed. They didn't hit me back, they just pulled me off and held my arms behind my back while I watched my friend get beat up badly.

The leader of this gang then said to me: "We're not touching you because we know your father will kill us". My dad was well known in town for not taking any shit, and these guys were unaware that my father had recently died. They went to a different school, and they had no idea.

We walked back to my friends house after his beating, and his older sister was there with her boyfriend. His sister's boyfriend is now dead, and he was a scary dude who had subsequently spent time in prison for murdering an acquaintance of his with a shotgun. This all happened before the murder took place, but even then, I was afraid of the boyfriend. He was just one of those guys that you knew was dangerous. I had a healthy, cautious respect for this guy. I liked him, he had his good moments, but he scared the hell out of me.

The boyfriend asked us what happened, and we told him. The boyfriend put both my friend and me up against the wall in anger.

"WHAT THE FUCK IS THE MATTER WITH YOU?? DON'T LET ANYONE HURT YOU LIKE THAT!! BEAT THE SHIT OUT OF THEM, YOU HEAR ME??? NEXT TIME, BREAK THEIR FUCKING FACES! IF I HEAR THAT THEY HAVE DONE THIS TO YOU AND YOU LET THEM GET THE BEST OF YOU, YOU'RE GOING TO HAVE TO DEAL WITH ME, GOT IT"?

We both started arguing with the boyfriend...But...but, they're tough! They have knives and they know how to fight"!

His response? FUCK 'EM!! THEY ARE NO TOUGHER THAN YOU ARE! YOU'RE GOING TO DEAL WITH ME IF THIS HAPPENS AGAIN!!

Well, my friend never ran into these kids again, but I did, and they had found out my dad had died and they started fucking with me. Out of sheer terror of having to deal with my friends sister's boyfriend, I fought them and beat 2 of them up, and ran home.

I think that I'm recalling all of this because fairly recently, I ran across some old newspaper articles about the sister's boyfriend online about the murder he committed. It was real bone chilling stuff. Really bad. The FBI was involved, and so were members of local organized crime.

I'm actually a little shook today recalling all of this that happened when I was 11 or 12 years old.

Anyway, those kids never bothered me again, thank God. I'm sure they ended up in prison themselves.

My dad was gone, it was just me and my mom, and I never told her about this.

So much bad shit happened to me when I was an early teen, I wonder why I'm still here. The garbage that used to happen back then was unreal, and I didn't even grow up in a particularly rough neighborhood. It wasn't just me of course. This kind of shit happened to a lot of kids, and it seems like I witnessed some shit that you don't really hear about these days, unless you live in a violent inner city. Our neighborhoods were riddled with young punks from broken homes, who seemed to have something to prove.

Someday, if I haven't written about this already, I'll tell the story about how a 19 year old kid stuffed me into a car trunk. My dad was alive when that happened, and he took care of the issue.

It cracks me up when I hear Trump go on about killers and rapists from other countries "poisoning the blood of our country". We've had plenty of young white thugs in this country ever since I can remember. These kids weren't dirt poor either, they were lower middle class kids from sketchy homes.

I am coming to the realization that I grew up in fear having to protect myself often, physically. Guns were not as prevalent as they are today, but I've had a loaded shotgun pointed at me through a car window, and then fired into the air. I've been 20 yard away, ducking behind a car, from two guys having a gunfight.

I haven't had to face these issues in a long time, and I'm trying to figure out what impact all of this had on the person I've become in my later years.

That's today's story.

The End.