By the time Daniel Lehmann made it to high school, he had quite enough of being bullied. He had been laughed at en masse, locked in a stolen truck and left for the police to find, stripped naked, assaulted and thrown out into the snow, pushed into oncoming traffic, had his clothes torn and his boots filled with peanut butter, been held down and had his hair set on fire, had a dart thrown into his back.

The list was a long one. He thought starting high school with a different group of guys would be better. Catholic high schools weren’t known as tough places. He was sure life would be easier there than it had been thus far in Scarberia hanging out at Parkway Plaza. The guys he knew there were what some people called greasers. They were greasers, or wannabe greasers, who were working their way up from reform school to deuce less a day and eventually hard time.

Daniel was going to the first co-ed Catholic high school in Toronto. Surely the presence of girls would soften the high school experience. What he didn’t know was that there were no shared classes. The only time you could talk to one of those girls in their white shirts, grey vests and skirts was after school. You couldn’t even sit with them in the cafeteria. A high school dance was an exercise in forced chastity.

The worst part was that a chick that he met at Parkwoods Plaza was going there. When he met her in the summer a year ago, he was less than kind. She had just moved to Toronto from someplace else in the province. She had some kind of pixie cut hairdo and was wearing pedal pushers. She was not in his league. No way was she competing with the other chicks he knew. And besides, she was a Catholic. Not exactly known for being good-time girls. But something had happened to her over the summer. She somehow changed into a beautiful young woman, the best looking girl in the school. A girl who did not forget the guy that brushed her off at the plaza.

What Daniel had not known was that a large part of the male student body was made up of guys that had been denied entrance to the better Catholic high schools or who had been expelled from the same. A lot of them were repeating grade nine. He also had not counted on what it was going to be like being taught by Christian Brothers and Sisters of Mercy. Brothers he did not know, but two of the nuns had made Daniel miserable in grades one through eight. Now they were going to be able to continue to do so.

Most of the Brothers seemed to been from  Montreal neighbourhoods even tougher than the one he was trying to escape from. They were not only tough, they were mean. That reality was driven home the day Tom Murphy was late for French class. Brother Louis asked him to step outside the classroom with him. A few seconds later, there was a loud bang as if someone were being thrown against the lockers in the hallway. Murphy returned to class with a split lip and tears in his eyes. Brother Louis then told the class that  as they could clearly see, punctuality was very important. The brothers were good at quick and efficient punishment. There was a lot of that.

Daniel’s year in grade nine was miserable. Given how the brothers treated students, going to them and complaining about being bullied was not going to solve anything. High school was his neighbourhood all over again. There wasn’t a day that went by he wasn’t pushed into a locker, had his cafeteria tray knocked out of his hands, knocked down in gym, had his cigarettes stolen,  or was just generally roughed up by Kevin Ruskin’s gang.

Though he wasn’t big or even tough looking, Ruskin was a bully of major proportions. There wasn’t a single kid in the school who wasn’t afraid of him. Even guys who were bigger than him either gave him wide berth or became his henchmen. Daniel couldn’t figure him out, from what he could tell Ruskin came from a neighbourhood like Rosedale or some place like that. Daniel didn’t even know where Rosedale was. He had only heard and read about it. All he knew was that it was supposed to be really high class. Why Ruskin wanted to bully everyone was anybody’s guess. Daniel wasn’t sure Ruskin had ever been in a fight, even though he liked to shoot a boot toward Daniel’s face every time he saw him.

By midway through the school year, Daniel had begun to hate Ruskin as much as he was scared of him and did everything he could not come into Ruskin’s orbit. In a small school which had opened with only one grade, that was not an easy thing to do. In the end, it all got a bit much for him. He could not escape being bullied even on weekends. If he went to the plaza to hang out, the odds were pretty good that he would find himself low in the pecking order. It was as if he had a big kick me sign on his back. Daniel hated being on the receiving end of whatever it was that made some people want to push others around. Something had to change.

There was nothing special about the day Daniel fought Kevin Ruskin. Nothing foreshadowed what was going to happen after school. It was just another day. That changed when Brother Denis had to leave the classroom and Ruskin walked over to Daniel’s desk and kicked his books onto the floor. In a second, Daniel was up out of his seat and going at Ruskin. Ruskin was shocked. No one had ever challenged him before. He was totally unprepared for Daniel to shoot a fist into his face and knock him to the floor. Once that had been achieved, Daniel stopped immediately. Brother Denis was going to come back soon and the Brothers liked to hand out suspensions in the full knowledge that parents would always come down on their side.

Ruskin got up and said the words Daniel never wanted to hear.

“After school, I am going to beat the shit out of you.”

Those words caused an excited stir in the classroom. There was going to be a fight. There was going to be a fight. It was the last class of the day and Daniel watched the minutes tick by as he pondered his fate. In 30 minutes, he was going to be part of a story everyone would want to tell. In 20 minutes, he was going to find out just how tough Ruskin was. In 10 minutes, he was going to find out how badly injured he was going to be. In five minutes, Daniel was considering just running away. But he couldn’t do that. He would rather get beaten up than run away from a fucker like Ruskin.

When the buzzer rang to at the end of the class, there was a rush for the door. It seemed like everyone wanted to get a good place to watch Daniel get his. Ruskin left with a pack of guys around him. Everyone likes to be on the winning side. The only person that stood by Daniel was Kenny Bowen. He too had been on the receiving end of Ruskin’s bullying behaviour. But Kenny also had the pleasure of being called a queer and a fairy. Kenny couldn’t have fought off a cold much less Ruskin. He probably didn’t weigh much more than a 100 pounds and he had limbs like matchsticks. But Daniel appreciated that he stood beside him. He wouldn’t forget that. Ever.

By the time Daniel and Kenny got outside, a semicircle had already formed behind Ruskin. Even the girls had come to watch. When Daniel got close enough, Ruskin started taking off his blue blazer. A mistake that no kid from Parkway Plaza would ever make. Daniel realized immediately that Ruskin could not move his arms. What happened after that. Daniel only knew because Kenny told him.

Daniel had no direct memory of anything that happened before the ambulance came to take Ruskin to the hospital. Apparently, he had immediately hit Ruskin with a left and then a right. When Ruskin got his blazer off and put his hands to his face to check for blood, Daniel kicked him in the balls. When Ruskin fell down, Daniel kicked him in the face. If Daniel hadn’t been pulled away, Ruskin’s face would never have been the same. Kenny told him that he thought he was going to kill him and was glad Daniel was pulled away.

Even before the ambulance came to take the howling in pain Kevin Ruskin away, there were a lot of people standing behind Daniel. Weasels always want to be on the winning side. He would not forget that. Daniel had no desire to accept congratulations from any of them and he and Kenny just walked away.

“What are you going to tell your parents?” Kenny asked. “Nothing,” said Daniel. “They’re going to find out soon enough.”

That night, Daniel spent most of his time in his bedroom trying to imagine what his punishment would be for being in a fight. There was certainly going to be punishment both at school and at home. He just didn’t know what it would be. The next day, he found out. He and Ruskin were to be suspended for three days and his mother and father would be informed of that.

His parents were livid. As they told him several times a day for three days, they were not paying for him to go to Catholic school just so he could get thrown out for fighting. They did everything they could to make sure he did not get a three-day holiday.

When Daniel returned to school after his suspension, he was called to the principal’s office. Brother Denis had him stand at attention in front of his desk.

“So, what is it that you have learned by having this fight Mr. Lehmann?”

Daniel looked at him and said nothing.

“Mr. Lehman, what have you learned?” Brother Denis asked again.

Again, Daniel said nothing.

Brother Denis stood up and posed the question again.

Finally, Daniel said, “I have learned how fucking satisfying it is to beat the shit out of a bully.” Brother Denis slapped Daniel so hard he was almost pushed to the floor.

As Daniel slowly walked home, he wondered how his parents were going to react to his five-day suspension.