The Power of Words
There always seemed to be some horror lurking in Junior and Senior Highschool. One horror is stuck in my memory. School started second semester and class routine changed a bit. I got study hall. I reported to the school theater. Lots of tiered seating and a cool stage we used in band. (I played the tuba!) I checked in with the teacher. She told me to follow her to find my seat assignment.
When she pointed to it, I sucked in a deep breath, held it for a second, then blurted out, “No not there.” I shook my head. “I’m not sitting there. It’s a mistake I belong someplace else.”
“Go. Sit!” she said and headed for the next student needing help. I stood for a few heartbeats then squeezed past a couple pairs of knees, to my seat. On either side of it sat the two biggest bullies in the school. They both wore their leather jackets. Their hair was oily and slicked back and their mean looks looked even worse with their hackney.
They both glared at me. The nearest one wouldn’t move his legs so I could get past a bit easier, not that I wanted to sit between them that bad. I sat, kept my elbows in, head down and mouth shut.
“What’s this?” One of them said and grabbed a blue spiral notebook off my lap from under my hands.
I grabbed for it but wasn’t fast enough. “It’s my journal. Give it back.”
“Let me see it,” the guy on my other side said. He reached across me and grabbed it. He flipped through the pages and started laughing. “Geeze, do you write everything down?” He stuck my journal under a couple of books in his backpack. “It’s mine now, but I don’t have a good pencil.”
The other guy grabbed mine from my shirt pocket. “Here. You can have this one. It’s sharp already.”
“Thanks,” his friend said. He stuffed in his backpack along with my journal.
For the rest of study hall they left me alone and talked back and forth. The teacher came by and asked if everything was going alight. The guy on my left folded his arms so he could pinch my side without the teacher seeing him. I glanced at him, the looked at the teacher and shook my head, ‘yes.’
“You learn good, the one who pinched me said. It wasn’t long before the bell rang. I was glad to get out of there but really wanted my journal back. Tuesdays and Thursdays are really going to be bad, I thought. The teacher was at the doorway. I asked her if she could move me next time, but she said no. She said she wanted someone sitting between those two or they would just got into trouble.
I was frustrated and mad and spent the last two hours of school thinking through my options. At home, I sat at my desk, hands under my chin and stared at some tablet paper I figured I’d use for a new journal. I was going to write something about the day, but had writers block. After dinned I sat and sulked, then got an idea. I grabbed a pencil and started writing.
When Thursday came I was actually smiling when I rushed to study hall and got to my seat before the two motorcycle wantabees got there.
“Got a new notebook for me?” the first one asked as he slid past me and sat.
“No,” I said and took out the pages I had written last Tuesday. I held them up. “Here. It’s a new story. Will you stick it in my journal for me?”
The second guy grabbed them. “We’re not a locker boy for you. Let me see them.” H started reading while he still stood. After the first page he plumped into his seat. When he finished reading, he handed the pages to his buddy. “Here. Read it,” is all he said. When his friend finished reading they both looked at each other. “Well? What do you think?”
“Good guys,” he said.
I held out my hand. “I need them back. I didn’t know if you wanted to be the good guys or the bad. I need my pencil too, if you still have it. I’ll put your names in it. Dave and Gerry, right?”
“Dave, the one with the pages handed them to me. Jerry gave me my journal and my pencil (with a broken tip).
I had written a story about some bad guy burglars who had broken into a school. The burglars went through all the kids’ lockers and took everything valuable. The burglars fell asleep and only woke when the bell for the first class rang. The kids and teachers couldn’t catch the burglars as they tried to make their getaway. The two men skidded to a stop at the door. Blocking their way were ______ and ______. The four struggled but not for long. ______ and _____ held them down until the police came. The kids got their valuables back. ______ and _____ were heroes. The school held a parade for them and put their photos in the trophy case by the gym. After that ______ and ____ made sure nobody in that school ever got bullied again as long as they were students there. ______ and ______ the two burglars, spent the rest of their lives in jail.
I filled the good guy blanks with Dave and Jerry’s names. I made up names for the burglar. Jerry pulled my journal from his bag. “Here,” was all he said.
The rest of the period, the three of us talked about how you think up a story. Both guys told me about how they played ‘Robin Hood’ after school. They had plastic action figures and made little dirt forts and castles, down in a ravine by the playground. We became friends of a sort. They still looked and dressed a bit fearsome but started being nice to other students and would shove you against a locker if they caught you being a bully. I learned how powerful writing can be.
