Too often, feeling like an asshole is about the same as being on the losing end of popular opinion.
Seven years old. My second grade class doesn’t love me. Behind the school we have these great lime flats, a by-product of the lead mines near the school, which we use as a giant sandbox. On this day my classmates mark out the edges of a boxing ring with a stick, shove me in it, and line the perimeter with their bodies to preclude escape. They’re all screaming, eager to witness once more the ancient ritual of trial by combat.
It’s to be a fair fight, standing head-to-head swapping blows, my opponent a much larger and stronger boy who particularly despises me. My classmates cheer when he flexes his muscles and assumes a boxing stance.
At home with my family, I watch Westerns, action-adventures. The hero always wins. He is always smaller, but he is quicker, smarter, tougher than anybody he comes against. I know my opponent well. I read better, but I am hardly quicker or tougher or stronger.
A quick handful of lime to his eyes, an anguished scream, and I own him. I easily evade his lumbering fists and attempts to clutch at me. I get in close and work his head hard with my tiny fists.
Stunned, my classmates do nothing for too long until I hear from over my shoulder. “This ain’t right.”
They break ranks and close for me, but when they do, they leave a gap, and I get out.
I wasn’t the fastest runner. They could have caught me before I reached sight of the corner of the sidewalk at the edge of the playground where the two teachers on duty chatted, oblivious. I wasn’t the fastest runner, but that would mean somebody had to lay hands on me first, and they were still too disturbed with what I had done for any one of them to want to be the first.
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Darwin’s laws are tough. Survivors use their brains to even the odds when those odds would see them killed.