My Bully's Hat

Larry stole my hat – just straight up plucked it off my head during morning recess on a snowy, early December day and simply would not give it back – not at the end of recess, or the end of the day, or even after we got off the school bus that afternoon. 

Now, it should be noted that Larry had a good six inches in height and probably fifty pounds on the next biggest kid in third grade, which is no small thing at that age – he’d eventually walk on as a linebacker at the fairly big-name college in our town, but for now he was just a small time bully who reveled in using his size to push others around as it amused him. You know Larry – yours might have been Joey, or Rusty, or Kevin, but you know Larry and his budding sociopathic tendencies toward the smaller, weaker kids.

I should also mention that this was not just any hat Larry had taken – it was my favorite hat -- just a plain black and grey knit hat, but it was something of a security blanket to me in grade school, one of the odd, inexplicable talismans of childhood that you imbue with far more meaning than a two dollar knit cap should have, but I just liked its warmth on cold mornings at the bus stop or even in class when I was feeling like it was a day to just hunker down and keep a bit of armor on against rest of the world. And now Larry would not give it back – not for a day, or a week, or even when school let out for Christmas break.

I can’t say for sure what finally made him have a change of heart, but if I had to guess I’d say maybe it was when someone took his favorite Christmas gift, a brand-new San Francisco 49ers hat, off the peg in the coat room outside our classroom, dropped it in the toilet and urinated on it – something that made Larry nearly apoplectic, yet deliciously impotent to prove who had wronged him; he never wore that hat again…and mine, miraculously, reappeared --  in a mud puddle at our bus stop -- a couple of days later.

Larry went on to do – nothing. Became a minor drug dealer. Works at the Chevron station.