i was a nerdy kid, and by nerd i mean nerd, not a geek, and not an upper class kid sent to public school (i was actually very poor), but a full blown science/math nerd. but i wasn't physically helpless. i've pointed out more than a few times that i'm 80% viking according to the dna report, with the rest roman (franco-italian), and with trace indigenous and jewish. i didn't realize until i was in my early 20s that i spent my teens with low testosterone and didn't actually go through puberty, but i'm decently proportioned. i'm short for a genetic male, but tall for a genetic female (in the overlap of natural variability). i have broader shoulders than most people. i can take up some space. i have been an avid bicyclist since i was a young child. there was a short time frame when i would bicycle across the city of ottawa (from south keys, south of hunt club and bank, to frank ryan on chesterton, near merivale) as a young teen in order to go to junior high school, until the school demanded my parents stop me from doing it.
so, it's worth pointing out that, despite being a full on nerd, i actually made the football team in grade 10 (you weren't allowed to try out in grade 9). i was more surprised by this than anybody. my father basically forced me to go to try outs and the only reason i didn't resist was because i didn't think i'd make the team anyways, and i wasn't quite sure how to react once i did. i didn't want to be a member of the football team. how did i get out of this mess? i very honestly didn't realize that being on the football team meant being pulled out of class. i thought the games were after school. that was my out - i quit the football team because i didn't want to miss math class.
but the school jock at my high school in canada was a hockey player, not a football player, because it's canada. most canadians are broadly disinterested in football and aren't sure what nationality of football they should be following. it's considered most canadian by most jocks to ignore "football" and support rugby, instead. a rugby league would probably be more successful in canada than the cfl.
so, the school jock - i won't tell you his full name but call him only by what people called him at school, which was the nickname zion, and, yes, he was probably jewish - was expected by all to become a professional hockey player. the information is googleable. he was in fact drafted by an nhl team, but he ended up playing in europe. he is, like me, today in his 40s and his hockey career is over. i have no idea what he does now.
zion knew who i was. i was forced to go to gym class in grades 7, 8 and 9. i didn't waste my academic time on phys ed after grade 9 because i didn't have to anymore but i was there in junior high and for whatever reason i constantly got stuck playing defence against zion - in ball hockey, in basketball, in soccer. and, in fact, he told me more than once that he dreaded it. he tried to avoid me - he tried to move to the other side of the field or floor, but the school gym teacher is the one that figured it out (i never tried out for a single school team in junior high school) and he kept parking me in front of him.
why me?
because i was the only kid that had the guts to stand up to this guy. everybody else was afraid of him. he was the school jock. i just didn't care, because i was the school nerd. i had no concept of or interest in male social hierarchy. i didn't care if i got shunned, because i wasn't interested anyways. i didn't want to eat lunch with this guy or his jock friends. i didn't want to hang out with this guy on the weekend. i didn't want to go to his birthday party, and i wouldn't have shown up if he invited me. so i had no social inhibitions in preventing him from getting to the basket, or knocking the stick out of his hand. he wasn't that much taller or wider than me. he probably could have beat me up if it came down to it, but he would have walked away with a broken nose if he did.
i got out of gym class duty constantly defending against this guy in grade 9 but he still showed up in a number of my classes, including in grade 10 programming class, where he may have had an inappropriate relationship with the teacher, and in grade 11 math class.
by the time we got to grade 11, everybody knew that zion didn't actually do any school work. he wasn't always in class. rather, he had some kind of deal with the school admins that they would just push him through because it didn't matter. i expect he regrets that, today.
when he did show up to class, he was often just there to clown around or misbehave.
this one day in grade 11 math, we were assigned some work to do out of the textbook for the day. the teacher was at his desk and available to answer questions, which i didn't need to make use of. i was sitting quietly at my desk doing the math out of the book like a good student. zion, on the other hand, who was present in class on this day, wasn't interested in that, and had no need to do the work. instead, he spent the day sneaking up on the females in the class and spraying the front of their shirts with a water bottle, to create a wet tshirt effect. nobody said anything. nobody asked him to stop. he thought he was funny; i suspect nobody else did.
i can't exactly tell you why, but zion decided to squirt me. i was male identifying at the time, if not particularly convincingly. the implication was clear enough - it was some kind of decision to categorize me as female, which was in hindsight not incorrect. it was probably an insult, even if i wouldn't take it that way. but he might have been letting out some frustration from years ago. and it might have been hiding something i realized about the young men that tended to pick on me, of which zion was not the only one - the truth is that zion was gay, like the guy who used to bodycheck me between classes in grade 9, and who i ended up sending to the hospital with multiple broken bones when i pushed him down a steep flight of stairs, in response.
nobody responded to zion's clownery; nobody, except me. i did.
i got up, i pulled the bottle of water out of his hand, i went to the bathroom, i filled it up, and i went back to class. i did not spray him. i dumped the full bottle of water on his head.
he did not respond. he sat there and took it, water falling down his head and onto the floor, and he just laughed. in fact, everybody laughed - not with him but at him. it took a while for the bottle to empty, so it was something where people had time to stop what they were doing and observe. by the end, people were applauding. i got a standing ovation from the class for doing what everybody wanted to do but nobody would.
....and then i got sent to the office, to ultimately finish my math homework in detention, and to bicycle home a little late, that day.
what's the point here? i told you i wasn't going to draw analogies, but i'll tell you that if we live in a high school hierarchy, i remain the kid that doesn't give a fuck. i don't care about your hierarchy. i want out of the system, i don't want into it. i'll criticize you in ways and tell you things few people will, because i'm not looking for a ladder to climb, i'm looking for a bridge to burn.