Les

His name was Les.  I can't think of a more awkward name to lug around middle school than "Less".  But it gets worse.  He wore those black plastic framed glasses made popular by Superman's Clark Kent. That may have been okay for a nuclear physicist or an engineer but not for a tweenager in the early eighties.  And he was scrawny.  If you ever found yourself chasing him on the playground and you inevitably would, all you'd see was elbows and knees flailing as he darted away.  If you did somehow manage to catch Les he'd beg forgiveness for whatever snarky remark he made that caused you to chase him in the first place.  But as soon as you let him go he'd give you the finger or make another smart ass comment that'd make you want to chase him all over again.  It was a little game we used to play:  chase Les, grab Les, hurt Les, release Les.  Get taunted or insulted.  Repeat.

One day some genius in my class decided to play a trick on Les.  He'd already been locked in a locker - that's Bully the Nerdy Kid 101.  We had something better in mind.  The back of our school playground was separated from the house beyond it by a four foot high cyclone fence.  The family living there had two large dogs.  The dogs were harmless and most of us knew that because we'd often had to climb over the fence to retrieve our football after stray punts.  Les was terrified of dogs.  We decided it would be a good idea to help him get over his fear of dogs by introducing him to a pair of dogs that would not eat him.  

We waited for a time when both dogs were in the yard.  Then using stealth, speed and overwhelming numbers a bunch of us managed to capture Les and drag him to the back of the playground where we grabbed him by the arms and legs, counted to three and tossed him over the fence as he cried and screamed bloody murder.  

That's one of my most vivid memories of middle school.  I wasn't really a bully.  At least that's what I told myself.  I was just following along.  I could have refused to help but Les was going over the fence either way.  I could have spoken out against the joke but that may have meant me going over the fence instead so I just went along.  

Many years after the infamous Les incident I wanted to contact him to apologize for the things he'd gone through.  In the intervening years I'd become a public school teacher and had devoted myself to protecting kids like he was from kids like I was.  I wasn't exactly looking for forgiveness.  I just wanted him to know that I hadn't forgotten about what he went through.  

Eventually I found him on Facebook.  He was a living out west in California.  He appeared to be happily married with kids.  I sent him a message both apologizing for playing a part in his torment and assuring him that I'd grown up and was using my own experience in the classroom to stop bullying.  He responded immediately by writing that he barely remembered me but how he hoped I'd find forgiveness from God because I was obviously feeling tormented.  

I went from thinking I was doing a good thing to wanting to track him down all over again.  How do you forget being jammed in a locker or thrown over a fence into a yard with dogs?  How do you ignore years of torment?  You do that by running as far away as you can then reinventing yourself.  Like Forrest Gump he ran west until he hit water.  A new life.  A new self.  He gave me and his old life the finger and was gone.  Good for him.