Nothing helps male teenage angst like punching another guy in the nose.

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…” is the opening line of the Charles Dickens’ classic story of the French Revolution, but he could just have easily have been referring to junior high school, just without the decapitations.

I was never an athlete growing up. That guy who always got picked last? He was me, because I just plain sucked at every sport imaginable. Getting in good shape has made me much better at sports, mostly because I’m faster, stronger, and have a lot more endurance than 98% of other guys my age, so feel free to take some inspiration from that if you had similarly challenging teenage years.

I digress. I’m not ashamed to admit that I was picked on in junior high. I never actually got beat up, but being completely useless in gym class did have a tendency to make me the object of frequent derision by my more physically adept peers. In other words, the jocks made fun of me. I guess I’m one of those jocks now, except I try not to make fun of people and my IQ is substantially higher than room temperature.

Grades seven and eight were unpleasant, and then I caught a break because I moved to a new school for grade nine and was able to get a fresh start. What’s more, my best friend who lived just down the street from me went to this school. Oliver was one of those glandular freaks who was bigger and stronger than everyone else, so he was a good guy to be friends with. I think he was willing to take pity on me and be my friend because I had a motorized go cart.

Things got off to a pretty good start at the new school because I was friends with Oly, but it didn’t take too many gym classes for some guys to start realizing that they could increase their own social status by belittling mine. This is the way things always have been and shall continue to be. I bet that Socrates got picked on because he couldn’t kick a goat’s head through two marble columns.

There was one guy in particular in gym class who made it his mission in life to make my existence intolerable. In the interest of preserving his anonymity, I should probably give my primary tormentor a nom de guerre. I’ll call him Pukeface.

Pukeface was shorter than me, and I hadn’t hit my growth spurt yet so perhaps he was suffering from a Napoleon complex. At any rate, he never missed an opportunity to put me down in front of other people. At one point I got pissed enough that I shoved him, after which he promptly challenged me to a fight.

Fuck.

I’d never been in a fight before. I didn’t know how to fight. I was scared to death of fighting.

So I refused.

It was at that point I learned that it is perfectly acceptable to refuse the challenge of a fight in junior high school, as long as you don’t mind being called a chickenshit for the rest of the school year. Being that this was only late October, I was in for a long year.

After about a week of torment, which others had decided to join in on, Oly said to me, “You know that you have to fight him, right?”

I told him I didn’t know how and was worried about getting the crap beat out of me. “No problem,” he said. “I’ll teach you.”

At this point I should mention that Oly was the youngest of four boys, so it makes perfect sense that he would be highly capable in kicking ass. He had some boxing gloves and after school we went out in his back yard and he gave me a crash course in schoolyard fighting. I suppose I should amend that this was the schoolyard of 1982 where kids just threw punches. Now the little bastards probably pull out chainsaws and flamethrowers.

Anyway, over the course of about three hours Oly taught me to throw and block punches. Being that Pukeface seemed so intent on pounding me into the ground I still didn’t think my chances of beating him were high, but at least I might get in a couple of good shots and not completely humiliate myself.

I awoke the next morning and my right wrist was killing me from the boxing workout the previous day, so I wrapped it up in a tensor bandage. In art class that morning I told Pukeface I would meet him behind the school at the end of the day. I didn’t trash talk him or anything. I just said the time and the place and walked away, my heart rate somewhere in the low 200s.

At the end of the day I realized that challenging him (or finally accepting his challenge) first thing in the morning had been a mistake, because word got around and there were about 30 or so spectators there to see me get my ass kicked. In addition, the roof of the school was being tarred and there were about a half dozen workers on top of it who decided to watch the show.

Oly gave me some last minute advice as Pukeface came outside: “Use the sun to blind him, and don’t forget the fake I showed you.”

It was early November at about 3:30 and the sun was already starting to dip towards the horizon owing to Calgary’s northern latitude. Pukeface and I circled, he in a right-hander stance and me in a left. I felt no anger because I was too busy thinking. Strategies ran through my brain. I was calm. Pukeface threw a punch and I blocked it. There, he’d thrown the first one. In whatever screwed up rules of teenage combat there were I felt I was now off the hook for hitting him back. I used my peripheral vision to check my shadow and positioned the sun at my back, and then I threw a wildly telegraphed roundhouse with my right hand. Accepting the decoy, he blocked it easily and I drove up with my more powerful left straight into his nose. The fake worked, and it drew blood.

I don’t remember a lot of details about the rest of the fight except I got him with about a dozen solid hits, and I used the fake a second time and it worked a second time. I don’t think he even hit me once. I certainly didn’t have any scrapes or a bloody nose to show for it. His nose, however, was a total mess. I’d hit it repeatedly and the front of his white Billy Squire t-shirt was covered in red. Billy Squire? He sucks.

At that point one of the roofers yelled down, “Hey, you in the white shirt. I think you should give up.”

I took this as an opportunity to extricate myself, moving back a few paces and saying, “It’s over. I won.” Pukeface was still on his feet and quite capable of continuing, but he seemed willing to admit defeat. I was relieved because I wasn’t sure if he would tap into some reserves of strength and anger that would see him pound me into the ground.

Pukeface was still bleeding profusely. Then, in an act of chivalry I hadn’t known I possessed, I removed the tensor bandage from my wrist and handed it to him to staunch the crimson flow as a sort of peace offering. He ungraciously snatched it out of my hand and pushed it against his nose. I then left the field of battle, my friend at my side, feeling victorious.

The next day I was somewhat of a celebrity. Guys came up to me at my locker and patted me on the back and told me I had done a good job. It was a great feeling.

It didn’t last.

Pukeface showed up to class and although his nose looked fine he did have a black eye with lots of scrapes around the edges. I didn’t recall hitting him there, but I must have. Either that or his mom wailed on him for getting his prized Billy Squire shirt covered in blood.

He came up to where I sat and through clenched teeth said, “Rematch. Today. After school.”

He was obviously quite pissed at having lost to me. Even with my resounding victory I wasn’t confident that I could repeat the performance, so I said, “I proved my point. I don’t have time for you anymore.”

After that, the school year continued at its regular pace. I still sucked at sports, girls continued to ignore me, and my forehead was still covered in zits. Also, Pukeface and I avoided each other, and then we went to different high schools and I never saw him again.

After the fight it may not have been the best of times, but at least it was no longer the worst of times.