I still remember my 7th grade year. At the beginning of the year, I was very excited to start middle school in Los Angeles mainly because I had barely moved there. My first day of middle school I was very excited; this school was nothing like I had ever seen before. The front of the school had a bright, emerald sign saying, “Welcome back students!” I was mainly excited because I would get to meet many new people. My day started off in English class where the teacher, Ms. Garcia, a 32 year old bright looking woman, introduced herself and what we will be learning in her class. First period ended and it was great, until second period.

Second period I had Physical Education. At first this day was going pretty good, until this 8th grader named John started pushing me inside the locker room. John looked like a 6 foot tall, pretty heavy dude. He had really short black hair and was a little dark skinned. While he was pushing and shoving me he was shouting “What’s up sevie, you faggot.” He referred to me as a “sevie” because that’s what they called the seventh graders. I felt that he was just teasing me because I was a seventh grader so I just moved out of his way and went to get ready for PE.

But later that day during lunch, he saw me paying for my lunch and he approached me again with three of his friends. His friends all looked like a bunch of gangsters with their navy blue bandanas. I was just leaving the cafeteria when he confronted me. He pushed me down to the ground and his friends were laughing and pointing at me. John yelled “If you don’t give me your lunch money tomorrow I’m going to beat you up.” At that point I just blanked out while I was on the floor. I was frightened and embarrassed on the first day of school. I felt like everyone was laughing at me. I couldn’t believe it.

I blurred out the rest of the day. What I believed was going to be a brilliant day to remember was all of the sudden a day I wanted to forget about. When I got home my mom asked me “How was your first day of school?” with a bright smile on her face. I mumbled to her in a bitter voice, “It was alright.” I was too embarrassed to explain to her what happened. For the rest of the week, I just kept giving him my lunch money so he wouldn’t beat me up. My mom had figured out I had not been eating lunch anymore because every time I would get home I’d start a lot more than what I would normally eat. So my mom decided to stop giving me money for lunch.

Two weeks had gone by on my 7th grade year and I had already made an enemy, for no reason. The third week John approached me with a disgusting smile on his face with three of his friends and demanded, “Where’s my money faggot?”
I mumbled, “I don’t have any money John.” While grabbing me by the front of my shirt he screamed, “I’m going to beat you up afterschool just watch you liar.” After he said that he walked away with his friends with a mean look on his face. I went to the nurse’s office after that altercation and told the nurse that I wasn’t feeling well. She believed me and called my mom to pick me up. The next morning, my mom asked me if I was feeling better and I said no. I kept telling her that I did not feel better the day after that too. I was lucky because it was finally the weekend again which meant that I didn’t have to worry about my mom asking me if I want to go to school.

Then on Monday morning, she asked me, “Son, are you feeling better now? If you’re not I am going to have to make a Doctor’s appointment now I don’t want you missing this much school.” I responded, “Yea Mom I’m feeling better now.” At this point I had no choice but to go to school now because if I would have gone along with me lying about being sick and the Doctor saying there’s nothing wrong with me I didn’t want her to question me why I didn’t want to go to school.
As I was slowly getting ready for school, I was just hoping that John wouldn’t approach me. As I was walking to school that cloudy morning, I was nervous. All I could think about was what John was going to do to me when he sees me again. It turns out I didn’t see him that day, or ever again. As I was walking down the hallway I asked my best friend Luke, “what had happened to John?” Luke was the only person that knew what was going on at the time. He told me that he heard that one of his friends was talking about how John had to move schools because he did graffiti in the bathrooms. When I heard that, there was a sense of big relief. I wouldn’t have to deal with John anymore. What was going to be probably the worst day of my life ended up being one of the best days of my life.
This affects my life now in so many ways. This mainly affects me because of all the people that saw me get pushed around and didn’t stand up for me. They just watched, and some even laughed. Another reason this affects my life now is because there are so many people out there getting bullied and are afraid to speak up and get help because something bad will happen to them like get beat up, that’s not true. Asking one person for help can make a difference.