This is a little long, and a little petty, but it’s my story. (Edit) Now with a bonus story, much shorter, which you can skip to.(/edit)

Many years ago, I attended a small all-boys private school.

This wasn’t a prep school, no, though I did go to one of those later. No, this school was for problem children. Yes, I was a problem child.

This school had a mix of shy introverts and geeks (I was in that camp) along with rebellious teens, a few bullies and at least a couple of sociopaths, possibly psychopaths. Some days I’m still not sure how I made it out of there with a smile.

My second year, the school had an optional trip to India during spring break. The head of school and assistant head went with a motley collection of teens. A fifth of the student body went, meaning seven students. Yes, a very small school.

We all got our painful intramuscular inoculation shots, we had our quinine ready, and we flew on Air India both ways—an airline that did not have anything close to the best safety record in the world in the mid-1980s.

I liked the country and it was a very educational trip, though maybe not quite the way the head of school would have liked. We saw shocking poverty alongside determined people forging a path toward the India of this century alongside the history of a very old country. Quite the mix.

Some year I’d like to go back. Absolutely everybody from the school either got sick or injured, but that didn’t dim my enjoyment of the trip.

For the trip home I was supposed to have an aisle seat, with T sitting between me and M. M was quite the bully, and he really liked hurting people. Unfortunately for me, T got there first and took my seat. When I asked him to let me have my seat, he looked away. M looked at me with a smile, wearing a nice new cotton shirt he’d gotten in India. He was restless. He’d been sick more days than anybody else, trusting unboiled water despite all sorts of warnings not to.

Shortly after we were seated, M started punching my right shoulder. Hard. No warning, no explanation; he just wanted to hurt me. He did this several times.

He’d done this before on other trips. I didn’t do anything those other times other than move seats if possible, because at least I knew those wouldn’t be incredibly long trips. This? Was slated to be 16 hours seated next to a bully who kept grinning every time he punched my arm.

When we were served our first in-flight beverage—orange juice, which I remembered from the inbound flight was some of the most mediocre orange juice I have ever had the misfortune to drink—The Plan came to me. It was a very simple plan.

I held my orange juice in my right hand and waited for a pretty stewardess to walk down the aisle. When one did, I threw back both my hands as if in amazement at how lovely she was. Sploosh! I splashed orange juice all over M’s nice new cotton Indian shirt. The stewardess smiled at me.

Right after she left I got up from my seat, went to talk to a steward type and begged for a seat change. I would have been much cooler if I hadn’t broken down and cried for a few seconds, but I was that scared of going back to my seat.

I still have no idea how my in-flight luggage survived, but it did.

For the bonus story:

Many years ago I dated a woman, lived with her for about two years. She is the only ex-girlfriend I call any sort of a nasty name because she was very, very mean.

She was unfair in our finances, borrowing often from me without paying it back but insisting that any time I borrowed money from her i pay it back ASAP.

She was mean to her young son, a boy she’d ignore far too much of the time and spank far too often.

She was rude to me in person, and she talked trash about me behind my back, distorting events and lying to people I knew from a couple of communities. She wrecked my reputation and damaged my parents reputation as well, despite them using a little pull to get her a work-study job she would enjoy.

I realized I could not take living with her any more and told her I’d be moving out in a couple of months. When moving week came, she protested that if I took the king-size bed I’d bought for our apartment together that she’d have nothing to sleep on. This was a lie. She’d recently gotten a comfy little daybed.

I was about to call her on it when inspiration struck me: she’d have to flip and turn the mattress all by herself. During our entire time together she either helped me flip and turn it or watched as I did it all by myself. It is not easy to wrestle a king-size mattress!

So I left her the king-size bed.

I saw her a few more times after that, trying to be friends—that didn’t work, but that’s another story. Every time I visited, she’d wheedle and ask me to help her flip and turn the mattress.

Every time, I told her No.

And every time, I smiled a little inside because she’d have to beg some other sucker to help her, because she wasn’t getting my help.