There was this one jerk in seventh grade that made my life rather miserable that year and as result I developed a sort of superstition about the number 7 - when staying at hotels I requested that any room is fine, just as long as it wasn’t on the 7th floor, tried to avoid selecting a seat in the seventh row on airplane flights (usually not a problem because the 7th row is usually in first class anyway), avoided walking on any “7th” street if it was in a city that had one, etc. Silly I suppose but it’s how I dealt with the problem. I no longer have that superstition I’m happy to say.

Anyway, this guy harassed and picked on me in music and gym class probably because I had no friends in those classes and was an easy target, calling me a “faggot”, pushing me so I bumped into a girl and then alleged I wanted to have sex with her, made fun of my shoes and clothes, called me every nasty name he could come up with and a lot more I’ve just chosen to forget. Fighting back was pretty hopeless given his size and friends, reporting him to the teachers or principal stopped him only temporarily given his lack of respect for any authority and already being on a first-name basis with the detention room monitors. He was one of those “tough” kids who frequently skipped class and was always in the lower level academic classes, so I didn’t see too much of him after 7th grade.

Many years later and a few years after graduating college, I’m in my hometown visiting my parents and reading the local paper, seeing the crime blotter and read about him being arrested in a domestic incident with some woman he apparently had a child with but was not married to. Curious, I do a few Google searches and find out he’s served stints in prison for armed robbery in both New York and Pennsylvania, has fathered five children from three different women and has frequently been on the county’s child support delinquency list. I know this sounds all too stereotypical of a story but I’m not making it up. I take no pleasure in any of this and feel bad for the children he’s fathered but it all comes as no real surprise to me. The strange thing is, from what I could tell he didn’t come from a “broken” home - I later learned both his parents were college graduates (he of course never went at all) and his father had a good job as a city planner.

I also found him on Facebook where he’s posted a few pictures of himself smoking weed as well as cigarettes and stating that he used to work at McDonald’s and is now a stay-at-home parent (can only hope he has the sense not to smoke in front of his kids but given his track record I doubt it).