I'm not the type who usually gets into fights. But I remember when I was twelve. I was a sensitive kid, and some kids gave me a hard time. Grownups expected me to ignore it all and call that a solution, but I got angrier and angrier.
One spring day, in science class we had a complicated experiment to do involving Bunsen burners. We normally did these experiments in teams of two, but for this one the teams were paired into groups of four. Now this science teacher bore a grudge against my family because my university professor father had given her husband a failing grade, as a result of which he couldn't graduate. Now she paired me and my lab partner with the two people she knew good and well I didn't get along with. I begged her to pair us with someone else, but she wouldn't listen.
I ended up hitting one of these guys, and got sent to the principal's office. (No consequences for the other guy.) Later, when I told my mother about it, she got really angry. Getting mad at the teacher and the school was her second reaction; her first was to get mad at me. My parents were so angry that they actually took me out of school for a whole week, until they lost their nerve. I was a bit resentful: they shouldn't have suggested this course of action if they didn't mean it. But Mother simply couldn't think of anything else to do about it.
I also got in a fight that fall. I'd made a promise to myself, "If this guy bothers me one more time, I will let my fists fly." (It was the only way I could get through the day.) Then one day, before long, I had to deliver on my promise. This time I didn't tell my parents, and they only found out when the school phoned them.
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