i was always the short, fat kid throughout most of my public schooling and when i say fat, i don't mean a little chunky. i got pretty round right about 2nd grade. i was always being picked on from there on until about the middle of 8th grade. i ended up having PE with the 2 biggest (both height and weight) kids in the entire school. i was friends with one of the two 250lb+ 6'3"+ kids and the other had been picking on me all year. by the way, i was about 4'8" at the time and probably about 160-180lbs also at the time, so i was quite plump.
halfway through the year, i was having a fairly bad day, but was happily playing a game called wall ball with a couple of my nerdy friends. this bully ended up coming up behind me and knocked me to the ground. i shrugged it off and pretended like it didn't even happen. i didn't even look at him to acknowledge that i noticed it. then, he took the ball and kicked it out into the field and started talking shit. once again, i completely ignored him and calmly walked to the field and got the ball. after about 2 more minutes of playing wall ball, he came up to us again with a couple of his friends and took the ball, but this time, kicked it onto the roof of the school. it was the only good "wall ball" that was not already on the roof.
that was when i had had enough. i went over to the ball bin and grabbed one of the basketballs that was waaay overinflated and as he was walking away, laughing, i kicked it as hard as i could (which was pretty damn hard due to my 5 years of playing soccer) and i intended it to fly past him, scaring him. instead, it hit him square in the back of his head. i even cringed when it hit him. i just stood there with a dumb smile on my face and waited as he stormed up to me and expected him to knock me out and i knew he was twice my size, so i just kept the smile and waited. he then proceeded to open-hand slap me in the face. i'll admit he hit me pretty hard, but i was just laughing my ass off and not only my friends, but his friends as well joined in. by then, his head must have been hurting pretty bad and the added insult of both mine and his friends laughing at him made him finally break down into tears as he slowly retreated.
after that, the PE teacher had calmly walked up to me and saw the nice red hand print on my face and told me he saw the whole thing. he then said that he was going to turn a blind eye to the whole thing.
nobody even tried to mess with me the rest of the year and i made some new friends in the process:
well,
there is one incident though that i not so proud of in 8th grade.
i was in the locker room changing when the gay kid in the class decided he wanted to grab my ass after i pulled down my shorts. out of pure reaction, i turned around and swung my fist. i didn't even know who did it and didn't give myself time to think about it. i luckily ended up hitting him in the arm instead of the face, but he was on the ground crying. this happened right in front of the PE teacher's office and once again, he saw the whole thing. he took my side again, but he told me if i got into any more fights during the year, he would suspend me and have a chat with my parents. the kid came to school with a really nasty looking bruise on him arm where i hit him and i ended up apologizing to him, but also told him at the same time not to make any more moves on me.
out of the whole ordeal(s) i became a lot less shy and ended up getting my popularity that i always wanted in high school. i'll admit i wasn't one of the most popular, but i would say about a 7 on a scale of 10.
i have not ever been picked on much since then and i now solve my problems with words and if that does not work, a good lift off the ground by the shirt collar into a wall or a nice face-pinned-to-the-ground worked well throughout the rest of school. i only had 2 big conflicts during high school.
btw, i ended up hitting a growth spurt to 5'8" and lost 30lbs on top of that during summer break between 11th and 12th grade. i am only a little fat now
