Life's Most Important Lesson

Greetings.


Well, you know how you do silly things with your friends that you probably wouldn't do with people you don't know as well? Well, Pete Sanders is the supreme king of such things. He is weird; his favorite silly, yet creepy, thing to do is to place his hand under the table and squeeze Lucky, Joss, and Joseph's knees. Just those three because those are the three that always sit near him. On one side of the table is usually Pete, Emma, Joss, and Bennie or Freddy. On the other side is Lucky, Joseph, me, and Bennie when Freddy joins us. We share a booth that really should only accommodate six people but no one listens to the squished big girl. Well anyways, Pete was squeezing their knees again and it was particularly annoying Joseph, who sits next to me on my left. He told Pete that he was going to leave and that I would not be happy and kill him (Pete), and I so would. Joseph even let me grab onto his shoulders as my way of saying "Make him leave and die, Pete" and "Please don't go, Joseph". But of course, Pete being the butthead he is, he won't stop. So Joseph turns to me and says, "Please make him stop." I kid you not; I'm like his bodyguard. Well, in this case, more like his poke shield. So I told Pete to stop, but he didn't, so Joseph turned to me and whispered, "Give him incentive to stop." I smiled; the guy I love was giving me permission to beat the hell out of a guy I don't care whether or not I beat up. I was happy. So I looked Pete directly in the eyes and said, "Touch him one more time and I swear, I'll make you eat your math book." (And our books are over 1100 pages!) His eyes got wide, because he knew I meant it. And he stopped. I'm proud of myself. Pete doesn't usually listen to people.

But pretty much my whole school knows not to tick me off; once sophomore year, (it was after school) The Three Stooges, Dillon Xavier, Tim Schraeder, and Ian Randall, came up to me, Bennie, Joss, and Joseph, and started being obscenely rude to Bennie and Joss. They were making jokes about both Bennie and Joss's physicality, Joss's nationality (like I said before, she's from South Korea), and they even were abusing Joseph and me. I saw the look of terror in Joseph's eyes (he was almost sexually molested freshman year by these two guys whom he had known since sixth grade and who have always had him on the chopping block; luckily I intervened in time and I got them both suspended) and Bennie looked like she was about to cry and Joss looked angry but, given that she's as big around as my pinky, she couldn't stand up to them. So I got up from where I was sitting and said to the Stooges, "Hey, guys, I wanna show you something." So I took all of them to the gym; my P.E. teacher had left the kickboxing bags out. I told them to imagine that the bags (heavily padded and anchored to the ground by over fifty pounds of sand in a hollow stand) were them. They sneered and said okay. I took off my shoes, walked up to a row of three of the bags, and proceeded to demonstrate. I roundhouse kicked the first one; it fell over. The second one I punched twice, once where Tim's nose would be and the other where his ... would be; that one fell over as well. The third one I pretended was Dillon, who had been the most aggressive toward my friends, I performed a spinning kick where his face would be; the bag fell over and rolled away, hitting the wall. I turned back to my assailants and my friends; Ian, Dillon, and Tim stood there open-mouthed. Joss, Bennie, and Joseph were smiling at me. I walked up to the Stooges, got right up in their faces, and said, really quiet and scary-like, "Now, are you going to bother my friends again?"

I have never seen three athletic and self-proclaimedly macho guys shuffle out of a gym so fast. It just goes to show one thing, Life's Most Important Lesson: No matter who you are, be you Steve Urkel or Chuck Norris, you NEVER mess with Harmony Margaret Walker's friends.


Hugz
HM