School Yard Bully

I bumped into someone I knew at Caprice on Sunday evening, someone that I've known from way back when I was still living in East London. I thought it would be a fantastic opportunity to strike up a conversation and reminisce about the good old days. What I didn't realize was, what seemed good to me was not so great for her.

You see, apparently I was a bully...can you believe it? Me? A bully? It seems utterly absurd that I could ever be such a thing. Firstly, I argued I was way too small to ever bully anyone and secondly I remember being a really sensitive, caring kid who was too compassionate to hurt another living soul. After all, I myself, was the victim of countless acts of bullying and would never want to subject anyone else to its terror.

But alas she began to recount and revealed my horrid deed. Apparently in the 5th Grade or Standard 3 as we called it back then (South Africa only converted to the Grade system half way through my schooling career) I used to sit next to her in class and one day as she got up to stand; I, the devilish perpetrator allegedly pulled the seat out from underneath her; so that when she sat down again, she would find nothing to break her fall except the unforgiving floor!

I defended that it couldn't have been me, that it must have been someone else. But as I tried to deny the accusations, she sternly states "No, it was you." She says she has since forgiven me, but gosh, after fifteen years she still remembers... I must have been the source of much resentment.

The once perfectly innocent image of myself is now crushed; never in a million years would I conceive to having done such a cruel thing. I've caught up with many other people from that era and they've all recalled the same thing, that they could not have met a sweeter kid. How? Why then, did I find the need to be malicious to her? Perhaps it was the act of some stupid school boy crush? Whatever the reason - I'm truly sorry. Please take this as my formal apology, I am an ass and if it serves as any consolation I live with the guilt that I was a bully for the rest of my life...Oh the shame!