Free Bullied by Patrick Connolly

very loud rant about rock and roll music and why it should be banned and how it was going to “pave the way to hell” for all the boys in this room. The room was very quiet while Father continued to speak for almost thirty minutes on this subject. Fred looked very worried at the end of the talk. I knew how he felt, because I felt the same way.
    When Father ended the talk, he said,
    “Now we are going to ask the girls to come back into the classroom and Sister can continue with the scheduled instruction.” The girls started coming back in the room. Many had their heads down, some seemed to be blushing and a few of them seemed to search the faces of some of the boys for a hint of what went on in our private session. Evidently, they had just received a female version of what we just went through with the shouting and ranting Priest.
    I know that many other boys my age are also very confused over why we have the overwhelming feelings in our chest, crotch, erections, and share a never-ending interest in the body parts of the females. It is a huge mystery and no one seems to want to tell us about what all this means. The only thing that they would occasionally say was that “making love” was only for marriage and that no one should “make love” unless they are married to each other. The main problem is that I do not even know what “making love” really means. If I had a Daddy, I would ask him. I do not have a Daddy, and I do not dare ask Grandpa.
    One day, I heard one of the other kids say," Getting a boner and having all these feelings are just part of becoming a man”. I think he said that his Daddy told him that. Whatever the reason is for all these feelings, they seem somehow related to this noticeable change in behavior in boys my age.
    One of the biggest examples of this sudden change in behavior is the son of one of my customers for the paper that I have to collect from twice a month. They have a kid who is a little older than I am and very tall. During the past two years, when I came to the door, he would just simply go get his mother to come and pay me. Now, when I go to his home he grabs me by the shirt and slaps me in the face two or three times. On the other hand, he may punch me in the chest or stomach if his Mom is not nearby. Like many kids I know, he has changed and this is bad for me.
    It makes me very scared just going to his door to collect for the newspaper that I leave at his house six days a week. What makes it worse now, is that his mother is not home much of the time and I have to come back to his door two or three times, until she is at home. This is scary, because most of the time my paper route is an escape from the daily bullying that I experience at school. This is just another terrifying situation I have to worry about every two weeks and I do not know what I am going to do, but I have to do something.
    One day in class, we are studying Geometry and Sister was talking about something called an “isosceles triangle”. If you take a regular, evenly shaped triangle and draw a line from the top point of the triangle down to the base where it splits the base evenly, and then take away one half of the triangle you now have an Isosceles triangle. What this means, according to the teacher, is if the distance from the lower sharp corner of the triangle to the bottom of the perpendicular line is the same in inches or feet or yards, the length of the line at an angle reaching the top will always be the same length. Looking at the angled line alone, it means that if the angled line is the same length, the line going from the bottom corner to the perpendicular line will always be the same dimension as well. Interesting, I thought, maybe this can help me punch that tall boy, Jerry that hurts me whenever I come to his house to collect for the paper.
    After Dinner that night, I am in my bedroom with the door closed. On a blank piece of paper taped to the back of the door, from memory, with a ruler, I