by Jeff Barnhart

Created on: August 01, 2008

WARNING: Some wording is very graphic.

Story is based on a nightmare of the author.

My short life as a high school student was horrible at best. I guess when you're name is Stanley Shively people tend to think you're a nerd. In my case it didn't help to look the part. Fortunately, for me I didn't have to bear the brunt of jokes and torture as long as most of my friends who happen to have the same garb or act the same way as I did back then.

I didn't mean to garner the attention of the "bully's" and the "Jock's" of Oliver Winston High School, it just happened. It happened too often and too harshly for me to want to continue at this school, but I had no choice. I'd been kicked out of high school after high school for fighting. I'd given and received my share of black eyes.

In the second year of my "so-called" learning experience at Oliver Winston High School something occurred that would change everything. My friendship with my English teacher seemed to agitate some members of the class. I really don't know what their problem was, they certainly didn't like reading the works of Shakespeare, Hemingway, Poe, King, and other great writers. But, whenever I started reading passages from stories in class, as the instructor asked everyone to do, they were very annoyed.

Of course, I could just attribute their actions to lack of respect for great literature, or maybe more realistically, their lack of education in anything other that the uneducated art of "bullying the crap out of their classmates 101," in which they excelled.

One of them, a rather robust and angry young man by the name of Roland Parsons, always liked to taunt me showing me how strong he was and would easily lift me up over his head and twirl me like a baton. I was sure that one day he would throw me off into the street and I'd be run over by a car, ending the life of Stanley Shively.

Roland was the leader of the group of students that were opposed to reading in class, my reading especially. I think the only reason they were in this class is because it was required for graduation and they had to take it and pass it with a "C" or better to graduate. His buddies, although less aggressive, could still present a very formidable presence if you were to meet them in a dark alley.

Somehow they could always find me walking home and torment me so that by the time I reached home my clothes would be torn to shreds from the games they'd play with me. One of their favorite games was "Pig Stickers Unite." The four of

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