My ass hurts. I'm serious. Whatever is going on down there is making my life miserable. I can feel a dull pain in my right glute when i'm sitting, when i stand it hurts, and i can't do lunges anymore leaving me to do squats, which for some reason I can still do painfree. A couple of other exercises aggravate it too, 3-point barbell lift, leg and knee lifts, steps. So how long did it take me to hurt myself? Well, I've been doing this new routine for 4 weeks now and this started last week so......

I was worried about pulling a muscle in my back, or my shoulder, not my ass. I'm taking ibuprofen but it hasn't done anything. I'm not in horrible pain, just a sharp pain when i try and do anything that aggravates it. Pain in the ass....literally.

I don't know why, but something the other day reminded me of a certain bully I had in the ninth grade. What's funny, is that I didn't just have one bully in ninth grade, I had two! I think many fatties have bullies at some point in their lives, some all their lives. I hadn't experienced bullying unti the fifth grade when I transferred from a public school to a catholic school for reasons I still don't understand. I think mom has said it had to do with our parish priest badgering her about it but I don't remember us ever spending any time talking to priests. We went to service on Sunday morning and that was it. But I digress....

I went to catholic school until the beginning of high school, grade nine, when we moved into a new house which happened to be in the neighbourhood right behind a public high school. And not just any public high school, QECVI, which bordered on the north end of town where the riff raff lived. The north end of Kingston, the city where I grew up, is the welfare end of town where crime runs rampant. It's an endless cycle of people growing up in the social assistance system and then repeating the pattern. It is truly a foolish soul who wanders through that neighbourhood after dark as random violence runs amuck. The north end is bordered by an overpass, on the south side of the overpass, is a nice neighbourhood where we lived.

Anyway, QECVI was the only high school serving that area so all the riff raff went there. There's another high school on the other side of town that while not as bad, certainly rivalled it for scum, and the two schools frequently traded expelled students since none of the other schools would have them. This is where I ended up going. I thought I'd be going to Regi, the catholic high school in town, where all my friends were going. It was just several blocks away and accessible by bus. But my mom reasoned that why should I go to Regi when there's a high school right across the street? Besides, she wouldn't spring for the uniform. Sometimes I think had I gone to Regi, I might have gotten a better education, some focus in life and ended up better off altogether instead of attending a barely functioning school where the teachers just didn't care and many students wandered around wasted.

Being the fat kid, I was used to taunts and did, in fact, have a bully in grades 5 and 6, but he was nothing like what I endured in grade 9. I met bully #1, Brad C, in art class. It was the last class of the day and he apparently had nothing better to do than bother me, ruin whatever it was I was working on, and demand money, which i had none of making my situation a bit more precarious. Bully #2, Brad S, was from shop class. This guy had a nasty habit of punching me in the arm regularly leaving my upper arm bruised and swollen. He never seemed to want anything from me, he just delighted in terrorizing me. I guess since I was the fat kid, and a quiet, innocent looking kid at that, both figured I was an easy target. And I was.

Brad C just harrassed me daily, wanted money but never physically punished me for it. I remember one day him following me down the street after school trying to antagonize me and when I just kept on walking, he eventually pushed me down into some brush and ordered me to stay there until he left. Kind of dumb but that was about the extent of it. He did manage to turn an old friend of mine against me, causing a bit of a fist fight between us one day, but his annoyance never amounted to much more than threats and taunts.

Brad S, on the other hand, regularly punched me in the arm, and when he got tired of bruising one, he worked on the other. I don't know why I didn't stop him or call for help, maybe I was trying to show I could take it. When my mother eventually seen the bruises, she lost her shit. But my mother is all bark and no bite so nothing ever came of it. My first year in grade 9 was long and painful and it couldn't have ended soon enough. For whatever reason, in grade 10, both Brads must have found better things to do, or another victim. I don't think either of them knew what the other was up to, I can't recall ever seeing them together. If I had of been smart, I might have found a way to manipulate them into fighting each other over domination rights. But I'm not that smart.

Anyway, it was a good 10 or so years after high school and i was coming back from a house party on Wolfe Island on the ferry when who do i see sitting in the cabin, but Brad S! We recognized each other right away since neither of us appeared to have changed much and I wasn't too concerned about him anymore. I was bigger than him, mostly because I was still fat, and I figured we had grown up and left that kid stuff behind. He was reasonably pleasant and we talked about what we were doing these days and I didn't really feel any animosity towards him. But then he noticed the plastic bag i was carrying, it was full of beer bottles. Unopened beer bottles I was bringing home.

With a sly grin, he motioned towards them asking what they were for. I told him and he asked if he could have one. Sure, I said, I'm a nice guy and so what? Right? Well, after I said yes, he suggested I give him 2. Right away I could see he was not much different than he had been at 14. But I still didn't have the testicular fortitude at that time to say no, funny how a bully's power over you can trancend time, so I gave him another. Of course he asked for a third which I gave him and that seemed to make him content.

When the ferry arrived at the dock, we parted ways never to see each other again. I remember feeling angry that I let him get away with that, but I didn't stop him. Inside I was still the quiet, insecure fat kid afraid of being beaten up by some bully. It wasn't that I couldn't have picked him up and deposited him over the side of the boat, I was big and had learned how to use my weight to move stuff, and people if necessary, but I wasn't assertive. So he won, again.

I didn't become more assertive and short of patience for idiots until i was in my early 30's and finally grew a spine. I'm still a nice guy and I always have a nice word for people, but don't piss me off. And especially don't try and bully me. I have no qualms about throwing people over the sides of boats now. Sometimes I wish Brad S would cross my path again.....SPLASH!!