The Kill Sean Club - Part I

I had intended to make this a fictional story changing all the names but fuck it, I only know one person who I went to grade school with and I only fudged a couple of the details.

I didn’t miss a day of school until I was in 7th grade. My parents never called me out sick. There was never a vacation that I took with my family that required me to take a day off. The reason this is important because somehow I missed the meeting in which it was decided that my classmates were going to pick on me for the remainder of 5th grade.

From 1st grade until 5th grade, the class victim was a kid named John (our names rhymed…maybe that was it?). He was a pale blonde kid who lived in walking distance from Saint Brigid’s, which was convenient because he had the option of running home whenever things got really bad. I was never one of the kids who were responsible for his daily torment, but I was quite amused and never came to his defense. He was kind of a dick to me. For some reason, he used to get tough with me. He would try to push me around and bully me which was laughable to say the least. Somehow, he thought I was lower on the totem pole than him. I don’t care if I did have bifocals that covered half of my too-big-for-my-body head. I was pretty sure I could kick his ass.

John never got hurt really bad. A couple of bruises and scratches but nothing broken except for spirit and pride. They would not let this kid live. If he liked a girl, they made sure he got clowned in front of her. They would step on his lunch or if we were wrestling during lunch, he also got ganged up on. Once someone did Jake the Snake’s DDT on John in the bathroom and his head hit the tiles.

His breaking point was during 4th grade Music class. It was the first class after recess where John took a majority of his beatings. He got there late (probably cleaning himself off in the bathroom) so he had to sit in the front row. It was music class so we didn’t have desks, only fold up chairs. So as he went to sit down, Nelson pulled away his chair as he had done many times. John’s ass hit the floor and the back of his head hit the chair a little. We all laughed despite the fact that John had begun to cry…loudly. He got up, screamed something at Nelson (we were laughing too hard really hear him) and ran out of the classroom with the Music teacher in pursuit.

Next period, we were all sent to our homeroom class. We all at silently as Sister Carol Ann, our principal, stared us down with disgust. She was a very stoic woman who never raised her voice. Any time someone got in trouble, she would punish you but would give you a little side smirk like “boys will be boys.” Not today.

“That boy is in my office crying because one of your animals pulled his chairs away,” she said while pacing back and forth in front of the blackboard.

Nelson made the mistake of chuckling to himself. Sister Carol Ann grabbed the edges of his desk and got in his face.

“Do you think that’s funny, Nelson?!”, she yelled in his face probably spitting a little bit. “Would you be laughing if I kicked you out of this school right now?!? I had to send that boy home because he doesn’t want to come back!? Maybe I should kick you out right now.”

At that point, Nelson started crying and all the boys looked away from him. Nelson was the closest we had to a bully and if the sight of him crying looked as bad as it sounded, nothing would have stopped us from laughing and incurring the wrath of Carol Ann.

That was the last time anyone really picked on John. He went through the rest of 4th grade uneventfully and didn’t come back the following school year. Neither did Nelson although his departure was due to the fact that beating up on John distracted him from schoolwork and left him with F’s in all his classes, except Gym and Music.