"Wilbur"

“This is just a taste of what's waiting for you after school”, she said with a menacing voice, before slapping me across the face harder than I’d ever been struck in my life. Then she simply turned and walked away.

It happened so fast that the whole incident was nearly over before I realized what was going on. I'd staggered and dropped a few papers and books, but had managed to stay on my feet. Barely.

Class had just gotten out, and we were in the crowded hallway of our portable classroom trailer, which had been set up to relieve over crowding at our junior high school. Even though it was a wide-body, there crush of people during passing period made it difficult to move freely. The incident brought out the typical cat calls and excitement you’d expect from teenage kids.

I fled the scene, embarrassed, dazed and hurt. Who was she? Why did she slap me? Is she really going to beat me up later?

Stopping in the girls bathroom on the way to my next class, I glanced in the mirror to discover a red hand print across my left cheek. There were actual finger imprints on my face! I knew two things at that moment: First, I was terrified of after school, and second, I really didn’t want to cry. Having a slap mark was bad enough. The blotchy red eyes that are the hallmark of my face whenever I cry would be too much.

Thankfully my next class was off campus, giving me time to calm down before facing anyone. The elementary school next door provided an opportunity for junior high students to be a “teacher’s aid” during an elective period. I had been assigned to the kindergarten class, and adored all the sweet little kids. My youngest sibling happened to be in the class too, which was kind of special.

If the kindergarten teacher noticed anything amiss she didn't say anything, and of course the kids didn’t. I welcomed the distraction they provided, and tried to focus on them while correcting papers and helping them work on their art projects that day. My time as a teacher’s aid was a daily reprieve from the stresses of junior high, but all too soon it was time to return to my hellish reality next door.

Walking slowly back to the middle school, I thought about the situation. I had seen the girl before, but we'd never spoken. With just over a thousand students at the school, most people's faces were at least familiar. She was considerably bigger than me. Quite tall, with fair skin and lots of bright red hair. She was also a little on the heavy side, and I’d heard other kids call her Wilbur...obviously referencing the pig in Charlotte's Web. But that was my grandpa’s name, and not a term I thought of as derogatory. Besides, I wasn’t the kind of kid to call others names or pick on them. Especially tough kids…and this girl definitely had a tough demeanor.

My afternoon classes passed without incident. I didn’t even hear chatter about it from anyone, which kind of surprised me. Perhaps it was over. Maybe she’d dropped it. Whatever “it” was.

My last class was math with Mr. Battey. John Battey had been my math teacher for three years, despite the fact that he and I didn’t exactly mesh well. I’d begged my parents to make the school give me a different teacher after 6th grade, but nothing changed. After 7th grade things were no better, and here I was in 8th grade, stuck with him yet again. With each successive year, my comprehension of and facility with math decreased. To this day it has never quite recovered.

That day though, I lingered after class was over. I don’t know why, after 3 years with this teacher, I wasn’t able to ask for some help. Some protection. Some adult company. He just wasn’t the kind of teacher you could go to in times of need. So I lingered, feigning work on a problem as he wrapped up his day, and then dragging my heels as I put my papers and books together and packed up to go home. She’s probably already gone, I told myself eyeing the clock. Maybe she’ll think I went home early and she missed me.

Hope springs eternal.

Trying not to seem obvious about it, I shadowed my teacher as he locked up the room, hoping he’d head in the direction of my locker, which was on the way to the office. Alas, he didn’t, but the school was looking pretty deserted.

Optimism peaked.

I rounded the corner hesitantly. There was my locker, and no “Wilbur” in sight! In fact, my locker was a straight shot to the Vice Principal’s office with it's dark, tinted windows facing me. It was a mere 50 feet away. Surly I was safe.

With the coast clear, I quickly headed over to unload books and grab my homework assignments for the night.

It surprised me then, and still does, that she managed to catch me off guard. I never heard a thing. Where was my sixth sense? To say nothing of my street smarts!

As my face slammed into my combination lock, the pain erased my ability to think rationally. She grabbed me, wheeled me around to face her and started throwing punches right and left, at my face, stomach, chest.

I was not a fighter. Even if I’d known anything about fighting or self-defense (I didn’t), and even if I could have hurt her, I was not a fighter. In my mind, if I hit her, that would mean I was fighting. And if I was fighting, then I could get in trouble. I was a kid who avoided trouble at all costs.

So since I couldn’t hit her or get away from her, I did the only thing I could think of in that moment: I grabbed two fistfuls of her bright red hair, and lifted my feet off the ground. Hanging from her hair with my entire body weight actually got her attention. It also put me close enough to her body that it was harder to hit the front of me…which was hurting pretty bad at that point.

“Let go of my hair or I’ll kill you!”, she shrieked. And again, because I was completely ill-versed in how these things work, I obeyed her. Also because by then I felt like I was about to throw up, and I was terrified of what she would do to me if I barfed on her.

Thankfully I didn’t find out, because finally an adult noticed the commotion and came to my rescue. A good sized crowd had gathered around and were all in a frenzy over the “cat fight” (though a more accurate description would be a cat and mouse fight).

When the dust settled, my eye was swollen shut with a bright, puffy purple shiner and there were some cuts from getting my face slammed into the locker, but I didn’t have any serious injuries. I also never saw “Wilbur” again. Because of this and prior offenses, she was expelled and sent to a different school. A part of me has always felt bad for her. What kind of life must she have been having that she could do something like that?

I never found out why me? There just wasn’t any explanation for the incident. Why a perfect stranger would beat me up didn’t make sense, even though this was the second time it had happened to me (sometime I’ll have to write about the 7th grade beating).

It was experiences like this that were behind my daily petition to God throughout Junior High, “Please let me die in my sleep tonight.” This seemed like a perfectly reasonable request for someone like me to have. At least till the day I read a statement by Camilla Kimball, which said something to the effect of “Our lives are the greatest blessing we’ve received from our Heavenly Father, and we should cherish every day that we are blessed with.”

It’s an obvious thing, of course. But to my 13 year old mind, it was life-changing, and clearly I was meant to hear it. No one knew of my nightly petition, but I immediately stopped praying to die (peacefully, please!) in my sleep, and started praying for an improvement in the conditions in my life. And though the situation with my peers never really improved, my ability to cope with it did.

Sometimes the Lord calms the storm, and sometimes He calms His child. In my life it has almost always been the latter, but that has made all the difference.