When I Realized Life Wasn't Fair

Honestly, when I look back on my life there are a lot of times when I realized that life was not fair. Like when your little brother gets to lick the spoon when Mom was making brownies. When you get stuck with the kid with that can calculate the square root of pi in his head but cannot throw a dodgeball further than the tips of his toes. Being picked on because of an impediment that someone cannot control. All those situations, it is not fair, but it happens. This is a story in my life where on several occasions I realized that life was truly unfair.

When I was a young lad in the 8th grade, I was awkward, quiet, desperate to fit in and always looking for a girlfriend. If you batted your eyes in my direction, I was looking at you with hearts in my eyes. The world turned pink, and you were my everything for about 50 seconds. But I was like that nerdy kid in sitcoms that was never quite brave enough to ask a girl out, while the brother, or cousin in my case, gets all the ladies. At the time, for middle school me, there were an abundance of beautiful girls around every corner, and I daydreamed about them a lot. So much so, that one day I had an epic dream about a few of them. And so, I would not forget I wrote the dream down in my Speech notebook.

For those that do not know what Speech is, it was a class where you, and only you, would sit in a room as big as a closet with a person who would try to fix your stutter. My Speech teacher told me to write down the dreams that I remember and put it in a notebook and then I would read them to her to practice speaking without stammering. And that was a dream that I did not want to forget.

I came to school the next day, notebook in hand, and spent the day reading and rereading my notes about my dream, excitedly reliving it repeatedly. There was this annoying kid who sat next to me in homeroom and for the life of me I cannot remember his name, but I remember hating him for an exceptionally long time after this incident. He saw me reading in my notebook and asked me, what was I smiling at so hard and as an idiot, I responded, "I wrote a story about a sex dream I had last night, and it was amazing. Here, take a look." In hindsight, this was a stupid move, but I was excited. We sat in class and discussed this dream in detail for about 30 minutes, and then lunch bell rang...

I headed off to the lunchroom and for about 5 minutes, everything was as per the usual. I was sitting with my friends hanging out, eating a free cookie, courtesy of the nice lunch ladies, when I saw a crowd starting to form. I saw the kid, paper in hand, angry girls, and even angrier boyfriends. And like any other person with any type of survival instinct, when you see things starting to go south, you run. And that is what I did. I hid for an hour, was found by a teacher, and was sent to the office for skipping class.

Obviously, by that time, my little dream story had circulated around our fair little school and made its way to the VP by the time I was found. And, oh, was I in trouble. I pled my case, but I was still suspended for 6 days. He read the school rules to me about pornographic material and sentenced me to death by belt, which I knew was waiting on me when I got home. However, I was determined to ensure that not only I was punished for this, so I flipped through the student handbook and pointed to the section about theft. I then stated that the student who passed around said pornographic material at school not only passed it around the school, but he also stole it from my bookbag. So, where is his punishment? The VP was not amused but could not refute my logic. Technically, he should be in even more trouble than me. However, nothing happened to that kid. He got off scot free. How unfair is that, right? Someone can steal your stuff and technically do the same crime as you, but still end up not in trouble.

I was then sent back to class for the duration of the day. Where I proceeded with all my heart to start a fight and beat up this kid. I was thinking, "Well I'm in trouble already, might as well go for gusto." I chased this kid around the school and was DETERMINED to get him suspended as well. But the angry boyfriend squad protected him. I was angry. I headed home and awaited the beating I knew was coming.

However, to my surprise, my mother was super cool about it. She sat me down and listened to my story and was outraged on my behalf. I was excited. She called the school and cursed out the teachers, office staff and ripped into the VP. It was glorious. I spent the next five days watching satellite tv and eating cereal for every meal. It was truly a beautiful week.

Day six rolled around and I was lazing on the couch with my brothers, ready to head back to school the next day. I was going to beat the $&%! out of that kid, with justice on my side. My mother came around the corner and asked my brothers to leave the living room and laid a belt on the couch and told me to bend over. I looked at her like she was crazy because I was perplexed. What did I do that day? I made my bed, washed my bowls, and bathed, so why am I in trouble? She looked at me and said, "Even though, I agree with you, you still did something wrong and got suspended. Since you got suspended, I have to punish you for it." Uh... what? So, you agree I was unjustly suspended but I still must take a beating because I was suspended? Yeah, I was not going to take that beating. So, I grabbed the belt and told my mother it was not happening. Faster than I have ever seen my mother move, she tried to push me and slam me down, but I was not having that either. I am 13 now, I am a man now, this belt is for the birds.

I do not remember who called the police, but someone did. So, she kicks me out of the house and makes me sit on the porch, in the dark, and wait for the police to show up. When they do, we proceed to explain the situation. The police looked me straight in the face and said this, "You have two options. Either take the beating now with us watching or we can leave, and you can take the beating then. When you make a mistake, you are punished. So... what are you going to choose?" I was shocked and hurt, and it was the second time I saw how unfair life is, within this situation. I received a bad beating that night and was sent to bed without dinner.

The next day, I go to school. I am ready to get into class and unleash rage upon this kid. I was suspended, I was beaten, and I was embarrassed. Someone was going to catch all this pent-up aggression. But I was derailed. As soon as I stepped off the bus, the VP was standing right there and sent me to the library. I spent the day there under the supervision of the librarian and I was upset. My day went nothing like I had planned it.

Around lunch time, one of the girls from my dream walked into the library and saw me. My rage instantly dissipated, and I was nervous on how to react. She walked over to me and sat down. We looked at each other in silence for a good five minutes. I figured maybe I should apologize, but before I could she said,

"Listen, I was angry at first. But it has been a few days and I am not anymore. What you did, even though it was an accident, resulted in a load of rumors about me and I took last week off as well. You know, it is annoying with people picking on my name, calling me A-Man-Duh all the time. However, I can ignore that because boys are stupid. But it is another thing, when boys are spreading rumors about me doing sexual things to them based off a dream that you had. Though you did not start the rumors or spread the dream around, you started it all. Sad part is you will never know the pain of such rumors. Boys will pat you on the back for "scoring", even though we all know it is anything but because of the possibility that there is some truth about me being sexually active. But I'll be known as Amanda the slut."

With that she stood up and walked away. And for the first time, I realized that I did do something wrong, and I deserved my punishment. And I also realized for the third time, just how unfair the world can be. I unintentionally started rumors that these girls were sluts and were willing to give it up to anyone in a group. Even though, most people knew the truth, they still spread unfounded rumors about these girls who did nothing wrong in the first place. I helped damage these girls’ reputation and I was so concerned about myself; I did not even think about the effect it would have on them. Afterwards, I apologized and everything returned to how it was and before long it was a distant memory.

Life is not always fair. There will times where you will face an injustice that will uncover the veil for you. But there will also be times where you can inflict that injustice upon another unknowingly. However, there is one thing that I do regret. I never got a chance to punch that kid in the face.