Read Online Bullied by Patrick Connolly - Free Book Online Page A

rings, so Sister Honorine tells us to stay in our seats until we hear the bell. She was busy talking to some other students about their assignments so I got up from my seat and walked very quietly toward the door. The bell rang and I raced out the door and quickly went down two short flights of stairs to the first floor. Kids are starting to come out of the first-floor classrooms but I manage to get ahead of most of them. Racing out of the front door I go to the cross walk and there was no traffic coming in either direction. I run across the street and up the block. I have to get at least as far as the Boys Club where I will be safe, I thought.
    Even though I was carrying a few books, I walked and ran as fast as I could up the block. I got to the second block and only had one more block to go to get inside the Boys Club, and safety. I heard something behind me. I look and it is Bob. I run as fast as I can across the street and get to the Boys Club front lawn just as Bob tackles me. I fall on the grass and he sits on me and starts punching me in the stomach, chest and slapping me in the face. I start crying and he begins laughing. After laughing and beating on me for what seemed like forever, he got up and walked away back towards the school with his friends, howling with laughter.
    This kind of experience is typical of each of my days recently. Over the years, the violence has been consistent but increasing every year. This is the worst year of my life. I will find some way of dealing with these people no matter what, even if it means that somebody dies.
    After dinner, in my room, I tell myself repeatedly, that I have to change this feeling of fear into anger, so I will not be scared all the time. At the same time, I am thinking how this strategy could possibly work. Somehow, I know it will, but I do not know how long it will take. Feel that fear, Pat? Now feel anger. Get mad. I felt some anger and quickly hit the back of the door of my bedroom with my fist. My mother yells from the kitchen, “What you doing in there? Stop that!” I get very quiet. I did feel a little anger, just then, but I know I am a long way from turning that feeling of overpowering fear that I feel every day in my entire body, into anything else.
    I know I have to take aggressive action to make these people, like Rick and Bob, stop bullying me and am feeling that I may have to do something very violent to accomplish this. Yes, I can just fix it somehow so I will not wake up some morning and then I will be away from the bullies forever, but that would mean they won. The pain and the fear is so bad now that, if I was in the old west, I could get a sidearm and, as Colonel Colt said, “The Colt pistol makes all men equal.” Unfortunately, I am not in the old west. I could just bring my gun to school one day and shoot the bastards. On the other hand, I could be sick one day, hide in the bushes across from the school and shoot the bullies Bob and Rick when they leave for home. Well, before I go there, let me see how the strength building and jujitsu work for me, if it does. If this exercise and jujitsu does not help me, maybe I will have no choice.
    Thinking of my choices, over the past three years, in the Boy Scouts, I earned a marksmanship merit badge. When mother asked me what I wanted for my birthday last January, I asked for a .22 rifle, and we bought a semi-automatic .22 caliber rifle from Sears Roebuck. It is my favorite possession other than my bicycle and baseball glove and sometimes I find myself staring at it in the corner of the closet wondering how I can use it to get rid of the bullies in my life for good. Yes, I could always shoot myself, too, but, even though I have thought about it, I will not. I will find another way and will consider all options regardless of the consequences.
    I feel the fear and it is worse than ever. My whole body is shaking while I stand in my bedroom wondering what will happen tomorrow and how I am going to live