The Breaking Point

FOR THE WRITER'S CRAMP, write a story or poem featuring a geek who refuses to be bullied for it.



It wasn’t so much the way they laughed; it was the way they didn’t try to hide it. Which is to say, none of them tried very hard. I would see them all giggling, a cluster of high school girls in the corner whispering and smirking at me. Making it a point to look away only after I spotted them.

There’s nothing like being laughed at by high school girls. And I don’t mean the good way they all laugh with Vince Edwards, slapping his shoulder. Saying, “Oh, you’re so bad!” I’m talking about something very, very different. Trust me. You can’t unhear it, their laughter. Their mockery. It stays with you, gets in your head, the same way bosoms do.

The boys were both worse and better than the girls. The boys let me know what they were about. They laughed out loud. They laughed in my face, at my face, and they laughed behind my back too, but loud enough to be heard. There was no mistaking their scorn. Their shoulder punches. They called me, “Young Sheldon.”

Yesterday, at my normal Tuesday afternoon session with Dr. Jeffries, he wanted to know if there were any firearms in my parent’s home. That’s what he asked me. “Do you have any firearms in your home.” The question came out of nowhere. I was telling him how I wished I had never jumped ahead those two grades. How I was now the youngest and smallest student in the whole high school. I was trying to explain this to the good doctor, make him realize the stress I was under, and how I was getting pretty goddamn sick of being laughed at and pushed around, and that’s when the question came up. It shocked me. His face all serious and shit. Huge unblinking eyes looking at me through little round, tortoiseshell glasses. “Do you have any firearms in your home?

“No,” I said.

“Look at me, Scott,” he said. I looked at him. “You have absolutely no firearms at home?”

“No!” I said. I lifted my hands in the air, like, what the fuck, man?

He kept looking at me with those big serious eyes that got bigger and more serious the longer I stared at them. They were waiting, waiting, waiting eyes. They were like bosoms or something, you couldn’t not look at them.

Did this guy think I was going to fall onto his fluffy shag carpet and confess? I have recently begun to think I may be one of the very few stupid nerds left in the world, but I wasn’t so dense as to confess my plans to this joker.

I never told him how I fantasized about walking into class or maybe into the gymnasium, or onto the football field during a game, and I'd be dressed all in black, ammo-belts crisscrossing my chest like Pancho Villa. I’d be holding a machine gun two handed, waist-high, and without a word, start shredding my classmates into bits and pieces of soft red flesh. Carnage everywhere! It would have been terrible to watch, but wonderful to behold, like this lady’s vagina I saw in one of my father’s nudie mags, both glorious and horrifying.

I know there are other ways to handle things like this. Being bullied. I tried to put up with it. But what do you do about it, seriously? What can you do to solve it?

I hated them all. And when I use the word hate, I mean it. That is the only word to describe my feelings toward the entire student body of Lancaster High School. This was not a place to be when you’re eleven years old. It was a nightmare from day one, and it was never going to end on its own.

It was time for me to end it.

All I wanted was to be left alone for a few days. I needed a break. I saw myself happily hiding out in this little fort I’d built across the creek. I had it all planned out. They’d never find me. I’d be safe inside with a jar of peanut butter, a loaf of bread and six of my father’s nudie magazines. But…yes, I had things to do, first.

So, first my father’s closet. He was in the shower; my mother was in the kitchen. I got what I needed. In and out. Not an eyebrow raised. From there I walked to school. Just to let you know I had no cartridge belts crossed over my chest. I wasn’t wearing black. My plans had changed.

I walked up the steps to the school doors and followed a crowd of students inside. “Where’s the tie, Young Sheldon?” a kid asked. Normal stuff. All expected.

Then I saw my target, Vince Edwards, captain of the football team. He saw me and came at me like he always does with that big toothy fake smile of his taking up his stupid face, but this time, as he reached out to get me in a headlock, I ducked under it, and kicked him in the nads, hard. Real hard.

He went to his knees. His football buddies stared at me with their mouths open. I knew they wouldn’t hit me or anything. The top of my head came up to just below their armpits. They would have looked ridiculous beating me up.

And so, I walked out the door of Lancaster High with my head held high. I handled the situation the right way, and I figured with any luck I would get expelled from school. Once on the sidewalk, I started to run, not out of fear, but because I had a fort to get to, and pages and pages of bosoms to look at, and I was in a hurry.

WC: 999