I don’t think that’s what happened next, though. He probably just pulled a protractor out of his backpack and started working on a proof. Well, he definitely didn’t do that: I just made that up. Or maybe he did. I don’t really know what he did next because I was probably checking to see if Alicia was paying attention. Or, maybe she was absent that day. Who knows? This all happened more than 30 years ago. The point of the story is that Gene taught me to stand up for myself—which throws the whole story into doubt because I want to be a person who always stands up for themself and for others—but I’m haunted by the cacophony of memories of all of the times that I didn’t. So isn’t it a little too convenient that I so clearly remember the moment in my life when I crossed the threshold from the person I used to be to become the brave upstander that I like to believe I am now? Isn’t it just a little too comforting to have such allegorical and unambiguous proof that when you take a stand, justice—rather than force—prevails? You see, I have no memories of Alicia or Gene outside of that class. Did they move away or go to boarding school? Was geometry class the only time I mixed with 8th graders? Wouldn’t I have seen them in the halls, the cafeteria, or the curb by the bus lane where the skaters rapped songs from “License to Ill” from start to finish? I’m not saying they didn’t exist at all: Gene was friends with someone I knew later and I remember that he had a lot of stories about Gene. But other than the fact that Gene’s brother was in a band that actually made records and went on tour, I don’t remember a thing about him. So who’s to say, even though you can easily look up his brother’s records on Spotify, that he was even in my math class? It’s also possible that Wallace and I were in eighth grade and Gene and Alicia were in ninth. I was an “accelerated” math kid, but geometry in 7th grade? That just doesn’t sound realistic.
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At some other point in junior high, this kid Kenny Saunders from shop class used to bully me. I told my parents, they told the principal, and the principal told them that Kenny had a steel plate in his head. He also, I assume, gave Kenny some sort of talking to. That was the end of it.
HVWP COMMONPLACE 36
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