Well, I’m not the type who craves revenge, but I’ll admit when I was younger the idea appealed to me. To sit there, watching your enemy burn in flames, having them regret every single moment they hurt you. I could write this high gung-ho response about how my best revenge was rising above my bullies/enemies, and ending up in a far better and more peaceful state of mind than them, because that would be the technically correct answer. But, I’m assuming that a more interesting experience would be a situation where I actually got some revenge, which would be 7th grade…

There was a boy in middle school who was horrendously rude when he found out I had a crush on him. He made me feel ugly, unwanted, and pathetic. Within my spineless and shy head, I would continuously craft fantasies where I made a fool of him. But I never imagined it could one day happen. Until a beautiful spring day in 7th grade English class…

We were having a debate on whether or not the dropout age should be raised to 18 throughout America, and be required for everyone to stay in high school until they get their diploma. Before anyone comes after me in the comments, I know more about the topic now and obviously have learned the different sides to it, but at the time, I was hellbent on it not being required. Mainly because of the reason that children in poorer families might need to dropout to get a job, and can get their GED when they’re in a better situation (a reason given in an article the teacher gave us).

The teacher told us that if we agreed, we need to go to one side of the room, and if we disagreed then we go to the other side, then we’ll take turns bringing up reasons for our topic. I was on the disagree side, and he was on the other side with most of the kids. (for some background, he was the type of smug kid who loved to act like he knew everything. He loved to repeatedly tell everyone how knowledgeable he was about politics, history, the government, things like that). Eventually, he brought up his reasons for it, and I rolled my eyes and took the microphone right after . Then, once it was in my hands, I was unstoppable.

The words just poured out of me. I crushed his reasoning, reinstated the logic for mine, and burnt his ridiculous argument to a crisp, to the point where even the teacher was laughing. His face started getting red and he looked embarrassed, but at the time I couldn’t care less, because the ignorance in his attitude and his inflated ego had made me want to do something like this for months. He didn’t speak throughout the rest of the debate. After I was done, some kid behind me whispered “she just demolished him”. I felt like a queen.

Of course, I normally don’t like making people feel bad and embarrassed, and am not the same person since then. But still, I’d be lying if I said that ruining the person that made me feel terrible for months, didn’t make me feel better. It was a good day. (thanks to Annie for requesting my answer!)