The rest of the eighth grade class; was an abusive and cantankerous lot. At some point, most either bothered or picked on me. That time was limited in class, but things were pretty miserable at lunch and in the halls. I was constantly pushed, had my books popped out of my hand or cussed at.

It was a chore to get from one class to another and the teachers never seemed to mind it or help out very much. What type of people did we have, for student costume day Steve from scouts wore a KKK arm band and Jeff (actually one of the easy going people) wore a Nazi arm band and sported a Hitler mustache.

Mrs. Lazarus, our Spanish teacher, was not happy at all as it was known that she was a Nazi concentration camp survivor and both Steve and Jeff sat together, across the room from me. Needless to say the Spanish teacher said something about it to which Jeff yelled, in Hitler fashion, "I am not ready to deal with you, but when I am older, I will do so!" Though visibly upset, she continued on with her class.

In the halls, it was Steve with his KKK armband getting the black people of the school upset and he was also referring to them as Niggers. A group of black boys walked up to him in the hall and told him that they planned on beating him up after school. He laughed and said, "That's exactly what I want you niggers to do, so you all get expelled and I don't have to deal with you anymore." It was funny to see the effect of those words, suddenly Steve not only became cool to them, but they jokingly considered him their pet racist.

There were occasions when the teachers picked on me as well. It once again became known that I had played doctor with Patty, the girl from street below mine and despite this false claim, there was a whole new class to rib me about it. Never mind it seemed to happen instead of yesterday in stead when the rumor started in sixth grade, nor the fact that it just didn't happen at all. I wasn't paying attention in class and the math teacher got my attention, but couldn't help adding, "Mike, I want you to pay attention in my class, pretend math class is your doctor's office."

While the entire class laughed at this remark, but later, several class members apologized for making fun of me about playing doctor. The math teacher was considered by all to be a complete jerk and many class members didn't want to be looked at in the same vein.

Another example came from Mrs. Lazarus, someone from the other side of the room threw a crumpled picture of Adolf Hitler that hit her face. She unwrinkled it and went ballistic, instead of applying logic; she went down her roll book and gave the first German named student, a week's detention. That was me. After class, I tried to talk with her and get her to remember that the picture hit her other side of the face and came from the opposite side of the classroom, but she threatened me with worse punishment.

I went down the hall cussing and kicking lockers on my way to science class; just before my classroom, was Miss Plappinger's.  She grabbed hold of me and demanded to know why I am so angry. I replied, "Mrs. Lazarus! That fucking, Jew bitch!" She immediately pulled me in the classroom and told me to calm down and explain what's going on.

Hell, since I considered Miss Plappinger, the Dorothy Hammel look-a-like bitch that separated me from Jean, I figured I was in real trouble, hopefully instead of being suspended, they will kick me out of the school.

I calmed down and explained what happened; she started to laugh and said, "It's funny that you ended up talking to me about this, because I am Jewish too. I tell you what, you're a nice kid and I will go and talk to her about this and get things fixed up of you."

I was shocked and asked her about her Judaism and she mentioned, "Well, my father was a Christian and still believes that Jesus was a prophet, but didn't necessarily consider him a Messiah. He grew very uncomfortable with the way that Christians worshiped him, as he felt that it took away from his worship to God. Needless to say, I was dragged along with him."

I found this fascinating and while I didn't share her belief about Jesus, I did understand what she meant about the worship aspect. I asked her how she felt about being Jewish and she said, "I have come to agree with my father and the Rabbi's say that he is a better practicing Jew then the people born into it."

It was the strangest thing to me, to end up liking a teacher that I not only considered a bitch, but declared and executed a war on. I felt compelled after that to stop in a couple times a week and check up on her. It became another relationship that I fell in love with. It wasn't student/teacher, but friend to friend ... Yes, I did apologize for last year and we chit chatted about spiritual matters. In a joking fashion she said she found Jean and I cute, but had to break it up because someone in the class would have discovered it and that it would have caused problems.

There was no relief from the torment though, even at home. I worked as hard as I could to get a straight "A" report card and almost succeeded. I went to hand it to my father and he told me to put it on the dining room table. After diner, he looked at it for a while and told me to come to him, "Mike, I don't understand this. Not one bit, why do you have a, "B" on this report card, in gym of all places. Don't you think that you can step things up a bit and do better?"

I explained that I got almost all A's and felt that he would be happy about this, "Come on Mike, this report card is still unacceptable to me. It isn't perfect and only perfect will be acceptable to me, yet I am not going to reward you for that should be perfect anyway."

Well I recognized that speech for what it was, pure bull shit! Not even almost straight, "A's" will please him or garner a compliment for that matter. My way to say the hell with him was not to study. I went into the same mode for science class the last year brought home a report card filled with, "C's" and "D's", except for the , "A" in Gym. Needless to say, I was punished until I graduated High School, but it was a fair battle in my mind.


Even a holiday presented problems for me. I had the neatest Christmas gift that a person who wanted a little popularity in school would want to have. My Uncle gave me an autographed letter from Joe DiMaggio and I couldn't wait to take it to school to show everyone. The whole class got a big kick out of that, but unfortunately I had it in my binder and stored it out of my sight.

The lockers at the school were easy to pop. To pick the combination, all one had to do was to apply pressure to the handle and feel the bumps of the combination lock. I put my books into the locker for lunch and picked them up after. When I got home from school, the letter wasn't in my binder. It was only a short while later that my Uncle stopped by and checked up on it. To him, I had violated his trust and there was no excuse for losing the letter. Dad also punished me for it and my Uncle declared that I will will never receive a Christmas present from him again, which has held true.

I couldn't even get a break walking home from school, or back and forth to the park; or from most girls for that matter. I mentioned Fritzy from scouts and he had a sister, who had a friend. They were always walking around and when they saw me, gave me a bunch of crap, it was never ending, "Why do you have to walk this way, we have to look at you. Ooh it's Mike, we're sure to get a disease. It's a shame that you parents don't move and take you along."

I passed comments back from time to time. Other girls in the neighborhood started chiming in as well, one time I was threatened, so I went to my room and pumped up my BB gun and sniped them. I timed the shot to hit the ground between her stride, it went where I wanted it to and glanced the sidewalk between her legs and hit the neighbors house. It was a double joy for me, she jumped and the neighbor came out and yelled at her for throwing something at the house.


Many girls were merciless towards me. One time, I decided to go to the school dance and only told a couple of people. Next thing you know about thirty people from the school made sure they gave me reasons that they didn't want to go. "We don't want you there and if you are, then we aren't coming. Who wants to dance with you? Perhaps a teacher!" Many guys appeared to have their comments as well, "You know, if you come, the girls aren't going to show up." Not to mention the outright threat of beating me up if I go.

Cathy from sixth grade was also in my music class as well, and just up and stated during a class conversation, "Well, I know that I am the luckiest woman in the world, because Mike Kohman loves me. I know that if he is the last man in the world ... and believe me, I'm trying everyone else first; he will still be there waiting for me. I hope it will be a very long wait that he has."

This really hurt me, but Mary Ann was there and offered nice consolation and said that to her, I would be the first. Not long after that, it was made known that Cathy was moving. The last day that she was there, she walked up to me and said, "Mike, you know that I am moving and won't be here tomorrow." I was actually happy! "I just want you to know that I am sorry for treating you the way that I did. We should have done something together, I did like you."

She gave me a great big hug, but left me wondering if she liked me so much, why did she treat me so bad and always tried to embarrass me? Never did figure it out.

Cathy wasn't to be out done as another girl took to bullying me. Words at first, and then she started throwing things at me, next I found myself stabbed with a pencil and yelled. The teacher inquired and I mentioned that she did it, but I ended up getting yelled at because she said that I stabbed myself and said I claimed that she did it for attention.

She took to following me home and hitting me. I tried to tell people that there was a problem, but teachers seemed to be on a different wave length and dismissed this. I mentioned it to my father and got the reply of, "Oh, don't tell me you're not man enough, and are getting picked on by a girl! I tell you this, if I find out you hit her, you're in serious trouble! Now figure out a way to fix this." Mom suggested that I simply avoid her.

I changed the way that I walked home from school and started walking the opposite direction and cutting through Double Rock Park. But it was only a short time before she started popping up and hitting me; at least I was alone and no one saw this.

Next thing you know, I was at the park and she had four girls with her. She was Mrs. Cool and explained how much fun it was to hit me, and for them to watch me run away crying. This wasn't going to be good, I knew this couldn't be permitted, and the hell with my father and the other unhearing ears.

Sure enough, she punched me in the face and started laughing. This time I punched her in the face so hard that I knocked her out cold, which sent her friends running! I yelled, "I don't care who it is, if I am touched, I will try to kill you!"

It also produced a hard lesson about justice for me. It doesn't matter the abuse a girl causes, all she has to do is say, "That boy hit me!" And point her finger. Yep, I caught sheer hell and now had the only other boy in class bothering me; Wayne who was a scrawny kid no one liked, and was also picked on worse than I was. I tried to reason with him, but he said he didn't care. I told him if he continued to pick on me, I will declare war.

Mr. McCubben was a cool gym teacher; he liked what I did with gymnastics and had me involved in an exhibition with other students for a PTA night. I loved the rings and did my routine, including about 38 dislocates, one after the other, ending in an iron cross for thirty seconds. Mr. McCubben looked more like a cartoon character as he was a weight lifter, had blondish roman styled hair and sported a cleft chin. One time he tried to break up a fight outside of the gym and both kids punched him in the face. He simply shook his head in disbelief and putting them both in a head lock, dragged them to the office.

He was teaching us weight training and has us doing bench presses, but the bars didn't have collars. Wayne walked by and slid off one of the weight on one side, which made the bar flip out of my hand and almost hit somebody. I was yelled at and lectured in front of entire class about responsibility. A few students asked why I didn't tell the teacher about Wayne and I informed them that I declared war on Wayne.

It started immediately and I was making fun of his development and in the locker room, I hunted him down and popped his binder out of his hand. People did that to me too, but most people would let me pick up my papers; when the binder hits the floor the binder pops open and the papers slide out. When I popped Wayne's binder, a yell would issue forth from somebody, "It's Waynes!" and everyone would kick his papers away from him and down the hall. I did this class after class on his trek down the hall.

By the second day, he was doing everything that he could to avoid me, but I was stalking him and would get him at the worst time. The papers in his binder were so crumpled, the papers were fourteen inches thick.

He finally spotted me about to pop his books and he turned around to face me, I popped them from below and they flew out behind him. He punched me in the face; I stood there amazed at how numb my face was and simply smiled. I could tell his eyes where showing the realization that it was all over, and I punched him so hard, his body formed an L shape as he hit the floor. Now the cry was, "It's Wayne!" and now he was kicked down the hall.

This got me grabbed and taken down to the office by the administrator, who told the both of us that we are suspended. I hit the panic button and alerted my father through the guidance counselor. Since he was coming, Wayne's mom was also summoned. Mr. Mallot was not happy that I sneaked in a call to my father.

Wayne told his story and I told mine. To my astonishment, Wayne's mom ceded with me and told the administrator, I shouldn't be punished and gave Wayne hell, "I know he is telling the truth, because I hear this time and time again. I know that you are picked on, but you have to realize that you bring a lot of it on yourself! First things first, if you don't want to be bullied, then you shouldn't bully yourself and come crying when you can't take it!"

Mr. Mallot still felt that I should be punished but finally my Dad had something to say, "I've worked Juvenile Services for ten years and never have I seen a school be like this. My son has been complaining of being bullied for the entire year and, Jesus Christ he even said the girls are doing it. Now I know my son and he knows how much trouble he'd be in if I find out he starts a fight. If you make a big deal about this, then I will make a big deal about how you operate this school and things will change!"

Dad told me that he wished that Wayne was the one that started picking on me at the beginning of the year. I didn't learn my lesson and in fact for a day, considered myself a bully. Tony was a person that I knew from third grade. He came over from Greece and provide us with pleasure when the teacher took him out in the hall and yelled at him from the top of her lungs in Greek.

He accidentally bumped me and I said, "Watch out you Greek asshole!" and punched him in the stomach. He smile and punched me in the stomach so hard that I couldn't breathe and my balls were hurt. I walked, bent over to class and decided that it is best be me and not a bully.

Gary was sort of Mary Ann's male equivalent in the development department and we looked at him as if he was a grown man. His friends were older than mine and he was the first declared freak in my class. Yes, he occasionally gave me problems, but he said that with hitting Wayne the way I did, he wouldn't want to mess with me and he's telling everyone that I am cool.

No one bothered me after that and somehow, I was no longer a target. What a relief!