No More Bullies by Frank Peretti Page B

buying some stuff.”
    â€œWhat do you need?”
    I looked at my list. “I need to get some deodorant.”
    â€œWhich kind?”
    You know deodorants. There are so many different brands, they can fill a whole shelf. “Well, we usually use this one. . . .”
    He grabbed a can off the shelf. “This one?”
    I thought he was going to hand it to me. “Yeah.”
    Suddenly, without provocation, he popped the cap off and sprayed the deodorant directly in my face! I forget what he said as he did it, but it wasn’t kind.
    That stuff stings! My eyes were watering, and tears streamed down my face. I was shocked and incredulous. I just couldn’t believe a guy waiting on me in a grocery store would do that to me! I quickly made my way to the checkout counter, rubbing my eyes and wiping my nose. I could hardly see as I signed our tab and made a hasty exit from the store.
    You may well ask why I didn’t report the incident to Vern, the man who owned the store. Looking back, I can only wonder the same. It must have had something to do with the devious power of that old maxim that has protected bullies for generations: You don’t snitch.
    I stumbled out of the store and around the corner, my grocery bag in my arm, and then . . . it’s hard to describe . . . I was like a hunted animal who has been shot but still runs several yards before collapsing from loss of blood. I made it around the corner, but that’s as far as I could go before something just broke inside me. I dropped to the curb, weeping, devastated, despondent. I’d come to the end.
    â€œOh, dear Lord,” I prayed, still wiping the sting out of my eyes. “Please . . . I just can’t take it anymore.” It felt just a little strange to be praying such a thing because, in my mind, I still linked God with all the other authorities in my life. They were all making me go through this, and so was He. As I prayed, I was actually pleading for mercy. “Please, God; please don’t do this to me anymore. Don’t make me go back there. Have mercy, dear Lord. I haven’t fought back; I haven’t snitched; I’ve turned the other cheek. Haven’t I suffered enough?”
    I’m reminded of God’s response to Moses: “Surely I have heard the cry of My people in Egypt.” They’d been crying to Him for the better part of four hundred years! But, at last, it was God’s time to answer.
    And, after so, so, long, God answered me.
    A few days later, I faithfully and obediently stepped through the big, ominous door for another hour of Boy’s Hell. My despair must have been showing. One of the teachers paused—he actually took just a moment—and spoke quietly to me. “How you doing? You feeling okay?”
    I looked back at him in disbelief. Somebody in authority was actually asking about me, and he seemed genuinely concerned! He wasn’t even my teacher. He had other classes, other coaching duties, but he was there, and he had noticed that I was looking ill. This was so unexpected, so unusual, I didn’t know what to say, or whether I should say anything at all. I was afraid of those gruff P.E. teachers. Not one of them had ever, ever before asked me how I felt.
    I muttered some look-down-at-the-floor answer, just as an insecure boy my age might do, and he went on about his business.
    But the gentle tone of his voice did something to me: It gave me just the tiniest, years-in-coming ray of hope, something I’d never felt before. Somebody really wanted to know how I was doing? Somebody might really listen? I grabbed onto that hope for all I was worth, and then, suddenly, an idea came to me. I didn’t think I could express myself orally to a teacher who still intimidated me, but by now, I knew I could write. I decided to write my gym teacher a letter. I would tell him everything. Maybe things could change.
    The first chance I got—study hall, I think it