Truthfully, I've Always Been Evil.

Growing up, I hated school. I hated high school, as many kids do, but I also hated grade school with a passion. I enjoyed learning. I liked to read and study. But my mother had been very concerned with me growing up in a 'nurturing' learning environment where I would receive a good education. And, because my family was Roman Catholic, I was put through Catholic school from day one of kindergarten.

Now, the stereotype is that kids who go to private school are rich. I was not. My family was rather poor, and financial aid was the only reason I 'got' to go to Catholic school. Some of my classmates were obscenely rich, and there were only a handful of students who came from middle-income families.

Now, this coupled with the fact that I wore my older sister's hand-me-downs (which were in good enough shape, but clearly dated) and god-awful ugly sweatsuits my mother bought me from K-Mart...
(Except that mine were always like... royal purple and had teddy bears and shit on em) ...meant that everyone knew I was poor. I didn't even have a pair of jeans. Jeans were clothing that only the unspeakably rich and cool wore. Jeans were a status symbol. Now, my school instated uniforms within a couple years of my attending, but it was too late. The damage had been done.

I was poor and gangly and awkward and everyone knew it. I was by far the tallest kid in the class, easily a full head and shoulders taller than even the boys. I was also terrible at sports, and I wasn't involved in any kinds of clubs or Girl Scouts or anything else. And I was, essentially, a very young nerd. My mom had told me to always try my best and put forth 100% effort. I did that. I read books constantly. I sang louder than anyone else in music class. I swear I even PRAYED harder when we went to mass.

So in that respect, I shot myself in the foot. I was poor, awkward, and I was a geek on top of everything else. I was ridiculed constantly.

Constantly.

I was the first one in my class to have to have glasses-- I wore out my eyes playing Final Fantasy VII the year my family pooled together and bought me a Playstation for Christmas. So yeah. I was a video game and computer nerd, too.

But I've digressed. I was the first one in my class to get glasses, and that only gave the popular kids more ammunition to use in their daily rituals of tormenting me. I began to realize that even if I suddenly became rich and gorgeous, they would never like me. Nothing I could do would ever win them over and make them want to befriend me. So all the sadness turned into loathing. I despised my classmates. I had two-- maybe three friends. The rest of them, I probably would have thought about knifing in a back alley if I'd had a knife.

What? I was emotionally and mentally mature for a child. I was watching the Alien series by the time I was like seven. Blood and gore didn't disturb me, and I also took to listening to grunge music on my sister's radio anytime she wasn't around. I feel that I understood much more complex feelings than other children my age did. And at that time, I understood that I was very nearly alone in the world that I knew. It was a pretty miserable time for me. I was made fun of on a daily basis for being poor and wearing glasses and being different from the other kids. In hindsight, I should have told a teacher or someone that my childhood was a living hell, but I didn't. That would have been tattling. So I kept it all in.

When I was eight, I broke my leg. It's a fun story, but it's another story for another day. The accident, however, left me in a cast up to my hip for about six weeks. I was on crutches, of course. My parents had to move my bed down to the living room that winter because I couldn't make it up and down the stairs to my room. I had to have help getting to the bathroom. My mom took me to a local salon to have them wash my hair every couple of days because wrapping my cast in saran wrap and helping me stand up in the bathtub to take a shower was pretty much impossible. Long story short, it was just another chapter of Suck in the book that was my young life.

When I went back to school, the ridicule began afresh. And it was worse because I didn't even get to go out at recess. I had to stay inside and look out at them all while they played.

And it was there, in the classroom, that I began to concoct a plan for revenge. It had to be subtle and it had to look like an accident, because if I did anything overt, it would be obvious that I was responsible. And as I looked around the empty classroom, seeking some vessel for vengeance, I laid eyes on Male Classmate One's desk. I hated Male Classmate One. He was like the ringleader of the boys in ridiculing me, and all the little popular girls had stupid childish crushes on him. Male Classmate One was an asshole.

So I decided that I was going to make Male Classmate One look like a bitch.

Silently thanking my good fortune that all my teachers liked me and thought I was just some poor, kind, awkward nerd-child and thus didn't need supervision during recess, I grabbed my crutches and hopped my way over to Male Classmate One's desk. I took a moment to plan. And then it struck me.


I loosened all the bolts on Male Classmate One's chair. Every single one of them. It took a bit of work, but I got it-- luckily for me, all of the bolts on his chair were already loose enough that I could unscrew them. You see, Male Classmate One was one of those kids who would lean back in his chair all the time even though we were constantly told not to do that, because doing that damaged the structural integrity of the chair. Specifically, it put strain on the bolts, and over time, worked them loose.

I cautiously put a hand on the seat of the chair and tested it. It wobbled just slightly. Perfect. Satisfied, I hobbled on over to my desk and picked up my book and started to read.

Recess ended and my classmates came back inside. They all sat back down and class started again. I glanced subtly up from my textbooks every now and then. Yep, Male Classmate One was leaning back in his chair and trying to look cool. Time passed and I began to worry that I hadn't gotten the bolts loose enough.

And then, about a half-hour before lunch, with a loud crash, the legs detached from the seat of the chair and Male Classmate One, still sitting on the chair, hit the ground with a thud. It was too perfect. He literally went from sitting on the chair to sitting on the floor. He hadn't struck anything on his way down. And then, Male Classmate One began crying like a bitch.

Truthfully, I might have felt guilty if my actions had hurt him. But he was completely unharmed, saved for a bruised ego. And you know what? I never told Male Classmate One that I was responsible for it. I never plan on doing so. Score one for Laura. Revenge was sweet.