by Lana Stockton

Created on: January 23, 2009   Last Updated: May 17, 2010

It happened so quickly. In a flash I felt a whack on my chest and found myself on the ground in a mud puddle. Randy was standing over me laughing. As I got to my feet, muddy water ran off my dress and down the back of my legs. Randy kept laughing. That's when it happened. I grabbed him by the shirt and threw him into the same puddle. There was no thinking about it, no planning. Just sheer adrenaline.

Randy was the fourth grade bully. Everybody was scared of him, but for some reason, I thought girls were safe. I was wrong.

He looked up from the puddle. "Whad ya do THAT for? Now my Mom's gonna be really mad."

"Well, you should have thought about that before you pushed me!" I tried sounding tough. I think it worked.It was strange hearing him talk about being worried about anything. He just sat there in the mud looking stunned.

I walked away, but he caught up to me. Since we lived near each other, we walked part way home together. I wasn't sure I wanted him walking with me, though. He might try something again.

"I never thought you'd push me back," he admitted.

"You made me mad. What did you expect?" I knew what he expected. He expected me to act like a girl. No one spoke for a moment, then I asked, "Why do you do it?"

"Do what?"

"You know, why are you always mean to everybody?" I saw a tear rimming his eye, so I looked away.

"Because people are mean to ME."

"I never see them being mean to you."

"They are. I hit em first so they don't hit me."

I thought that was kind of stupid reasoning. After all, I don't hit anybody and they don't hit me.

"You should try being nice, see what happens."

"I did that once," he told me.

"For how long?"

"A whole day."

I almost laughed, but held back when I realized I was still in danger of getting hit. "That's not long enough," I told him.

"What do you mean?"

"That's not long enough for anybody to figure out you've changed." He looked as if he was thinking about it.

"The next day at school Randy didn't hit anybody. He walked past a couple of guys, said hi then kept walking. Wow, I was impressed. I went over to Randy and told him I liked him much better this way.

"It's really hard," he confessed.

"But you're doing so good. It'll get easier." The words just flew out of my mouth. I really had no idea if it would get easier or not. I didn't even understand what was so hard about being nice.

Three days later Randy was back to his punching old self. I was confused and asked him what happened. It turned out that when Randy got nice, nobody

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