It's a practice from Army days.  I had a First Sergeant at the Defense Language Institute who would have us all together at formation to make his announcements, frequently glancing at the palm of his right hand.  I figure he would have lost track of paper notes.  Makes sense to me, and I've been scribbling on my palm ever since.
    Right now my palm reads:
         Bambi 101.5
         F&S
         SAS
         Mono
         White Mana

    New Jersey 101.5 is a talk radio station that has coverage of the entire state, and originates within the state, which is unusual because so many broadcast media come out of New York and Philadelphia.  They do a really great job of bringing up issues pertinent to New Jerseyans.  Their only flaw is that they play nothing but oldies on the weekend.  Doo-wop boo.  Are they an oldies station or a talk station?  They need to decide.
    Anyway, the other day the topic was bullying.  A famous author whose name I've already forgotten had addressed a school assembly about bullies and the importance of exposing them.  The radio people wanted to hear callers who had either been bullied or bullies in the past, and what was done, if anything, to resolve the situation.
    I remembered Bambi Cole.  That's one of the few names from the past I can remember.  You'd think a Bambi would be a spindly thin cheerleader type, wouldn't you?  BZAP!  Wrong answer.  She was beefy and mean.  She threatened me daily.  I don't recall just why, but one day she decided to get off the bus at my stop and kick the shit out of me.
    I had nowhere to run.  I was a skinny kid with stringy hair and never fought anyone before.  It still surprises me that I gave as good as I got that day, until the sitter broke us up on the front lawn.  I don't recall the punches I got, but I do remember the ones I gave, and that the shakes didn't catch up to me until it was all over.
    How Bambi and I would up being friends after that is still a mystery to me, but we did.
    Then there's Amanda Cook, another linebacker of a girl who pushed me and poked me and extorted me continuously.  God I hated her, and in my memory, true or not, I see her as twice as big as Bambi.  That's saying a lot.  One day she stepped on my feet the whole way down the breezeway from art class, trodding my heels.  Then she shoved me down and turned off toward the parking lot.  This big funnel of rage came up out of nowhere and I took the book I'd been reading - Robots of Dawn by Isaac Asimov, an enormous hardcover - and whacked her four times as hard as I could on the back of the head.  She turned around and beat me to a bloody pulp then.  I can still see the rock studded asphalt as I lay there bleeding.  I can smell the soap in the puke-green bathroom where I cleaned up my nose and lip and surveyed the torn knee in my jeans.
    The next day she threatened to beat me up again, and that was it for me.  I went to the principal and confessed to the fight the day before, and explained that there would be another if something weren't done to help me.  The principal sent for Amanda and then went to take care of something in the meantime.  Amanda showed up looking meek and scared, and begged me not to tell.  Well it was too late, and I said so.  The telling had been done.  We both got suspended, but it was well worth it.  Three days later, when I got back, a lot of people were angry at me for getting her suspended, until they learned that my absence was suspension too.  That took the rattiness out of the thing, I guess.  Finally she left me alone, and I had no more bully trouble from then on.
    She was the last bully of my junior high years.  The ones before her, besides Bambi, have become a nameless, faceless blur.

To be Continued...
 

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