The Life Of A Middle School Geek

	Hi, I’m Richard Nelson. I’m going to be in the 7th grade tomorrow, September 18, 2017. I’m what you would call a geek.  I get teased by a lot of people, but the worst is a boy named John Blaze. He is the school bully. He bullies every kid in that school, he mostly bullies the weak and younger kids like me. I grew up with him, I even went to preschool with him. We used to be best of friends. We hung out at least 5 days out of 7. But then when we went to Dansville Elementary for kindergarten, he started hanging out with two boys that both were bullies. Their names were Jake Austin and Zack Heart.
	Zack Heart’s dad is the mayor of Dansville so he can’t really get in trouble. John and Jake started hanging out with Zack because they thought that if Zack can’t get in trouble then they couldn’t. The worst part about it is that it’s true. If they are with Zack then they are safe from anyone that could get them in trouble. 
	Now all they do is go around looking for trouble. They also “own” the north bathroom of Dansville Middle school. Whenever anyone goes in there they take you by the hair and shove your head in the toilet and flush it the more you struggle the longer your head is in the gross toilet water. That has happened to me 15 times, because pretty much all of my classes are on the north side of the school. Now whenever I have to go to the bathroom I go out in the woods. 
	Today is the first day of school. I bet John and his gang will be very happy to see me. I wonder what they will do first, maybe a wet willie or an atomic wedgie. 
	“Richard!” My mom yelled.
	“What?” I yelled back at her.
	“Breakfast is ready, I made pancakes and sausage!” my mom yelled.
	Yum that is my favorite breakfast. It’s our family tradition to make my favorite breakfast on the first day of school. After breakfast I take a shower, brush my teeth and wash my face.
	As we pulled up to the school I could already see John Blaze picking on Jimmy Owens. Jimmy is my best friend mostly because he is my only friend, but I still like him. My first class of the year is math, my favorite class. We have the coolest teacher, Mr. Smith. A lot of the kids hate him, but I love him. He gives us the easiest homework. The bad part is that I have to do the homework like 7 times because everybody makes me do their homework, but still I have fun doing it. I don’t think John has done a page of homework in 5 years.
	As I walked into math class I could see John, he was staring at me and giving me the evil eye. Then as I was walking by him he stuck his foot out and tripped me, I fell to the floor and my papers went flying everywhere. As I got onto my knees to clean them up, a girl came up to me and she said, “Hi I’m Lisa Walkers.”
	“Hi, my name is Richard Nelson, nice to meet you.”
	“Nice to meet you too,” she responded. “You want some help with that?”
	“Umm yes please,” I said. Then she got on her knees and helped me pick the papers up. 	“Thank you,” I said.
	“You’re welcome,” she said.
	Then we went to our seats. We sat right next to each other. Mr. Smith walked in and said, “Hello class, I hope you all had a terrific summer. My name is Mr. Smith and I will be your math teacher this year.”
	The class responded, “Hello Mr. Smith”
	I sat right in front of John the worst place to be sitting, but Lisa didn’t have it any better she sat right in front of Zach. The whole class John and Zach were hitting us with spitballs and poking us in the back with pens. After class Lisa and I walked to science still picking the spitball out of our hair. We have science with Mr. and Mrs. Duncan. I’ve never had them before but I have heard that they are really good teachers. I didn’t really like our old science teacher Mrs. Jones because she gave us no homework so we didn’t learn as much.
	After science I went to lunch. Lunch is my least favorite part of the day because the cafeteria is too small for the school so my friends and I have to sit on the ground. And John and his friends always throw their banana peels and empty bottles at us. The only good part of lunch is that John and his friends aren’t controlling the bathrooms so we are free to go whenever we like without getting our heads dunked in the toilet. After lunch I have P.E. my least favorite class because all we do is play dodge ball and everyone just hits me. Today we were playing dodge ball again! I got lucky all that happened was that I got tripped and trash thrown at me. Not that bad of a day. At home I have two older sisters and two older brothers so I get bullied even in my house. But I don’t mind it, I say if your smart then that’s an accomplishment. So as long as I’m still learning I don’t care if I get bullied. I’m not saying I like getting bullied I’m just saying that I don’t mind it as much as most people. So the first day of school was over, just 179 more days to go.
	
	It’s been about 3 weeks from the first day of school now and things have just been getting worse and worse. Like last week a bunch of John’s friends were outside for lunch recess and they were playing scatter ball, and they invited me to join and without thinking I said yes. Right when I said yes I noticed that scatter dodge was just a big game of dodge ball. Then before I could walk away John kicked the ball up in the air and yelled SCATTER BALL! And Zach caught it and he and his friends were teaming up on all the kids that were like me hitting them as hard as they could from point blank range. Then Lisa yelled, “Hey Richard!” from across the field. I waved back at her then she yelled “Richard watch out!” Then I turned my head back just to see Jake running at me with the ball. He threw it at my head but I ducked. “Haha you missed me!” I yelled at Jake little did I know that John was on the other side of me and had just picked up the ball. POW! The ball struck the back of my head hard. I fell to the ground crying. I got up and went straight to the office, I told them what had happened but they just said that if I didn’t want to get hit with the ball then I shouldn’t be playing dodge ball. Then they had to call the school nurse to come. By that point I was really scared. 
	The nurse finally showed up. After about 10 minutes of waiting she looked at me and said, “So you have been hit in the head with a dodge ball?” 
	“Ummm…yes,” I replied in a shy voice.
	Then she looked into my eyes and did what she called the concussion test. Then she went into a different room to talk to the other people in the office. I could hear her pick up a phone and start dialing a number. Then she came back in the room and said, “Just lay down your mom will be here shortly to pick you up.”
	I asked, “What happened?”
	“You have a minor concussion. You will have to go to the Dansville hospital,” she replied.
	I got really scared. What if my memory got messed up and I lost all my smartness.
	Now my concussion is gone and my memory is fine. 
	
	After about three months it was winter break. For winter break I went to a math camp in Illinois. It was really fun. On Christmas I got a new graphing calculator and some textbooks. Then one day I wanted to go sledding, so my dad drove me out to Dansville hill, the best sledding hill in town. As I got out of the car I saw Zack, Jake and John. They where having a snowball fight over to the side of the hill. “Oh no,” I said to myself. I just tried to go sledding by myself and just ignore the fact that they were there. I went down the hill on my brand new sled it was fast. 
	Then on my way back up the hill I got hit with a snowball in the side of the head. Oh no they saw me, “Hey Richard,” John yelled, “you wanna come over and have a snowball fight with us. I just kept my head down and pretended not to hear them. Then I told my dad that I wanted to go home 
	“but you have only done one run down the hill,” my dad said.
	“That’s enough for me,” I said.
	“Okay,” said my dad. Then he took me home.
	The next school day John and all his friends were teasing me about not playing with them on Sunday. 
	
	It was May and finally the wintertime was over. Nothing really that bad had happened over the past few months except for the little things like getting hit with dodge balls and getting tripped in the hallway. Then Principal Stewart said over the P.A. system, “We will be having a new student attending to Dansville Middle School. His name is Bobby Wilson,” then a big tall boy walked into the classroom, “This is Bobby Wilson, he will be in this class for the rest of this year,” said my teacher. Rumor has it that he was kicked out of three other public schools, and if he gets kicked out of one more school his parents will send him to a military school.
	The next day I was expecting to get beaten by Bobby but no, apparently he likes to beat up on the other school bullies. Bobby was making it look so easy to just put John and his friends into trash cans.
	After Bobby started attending this school I haven’t gotten bullied as much, because John and his friends aren’t focusing on bullying any more now they are focused on not getting bullied by Bobby. I think they have finally learned their lessons.   
                                         	
                                                                                    The Life of a Middle School Geek, 6-8, p. 1