Biscuits and Gravy: Picking

Brian Mason

We all have moments where we play an idle prank, tell a joke or otherwise pester the living daylights out of a friend. Granted we can all have fun doing it but that shouldn’t come at the expense of another.

Sure, I pester people half to death sometimes, but only if the other person knows that it’s just in good humor and if they have the chance to turn the tables  and do the same to me.

I’ve seen some good pranks, heard some funny jokes and laughed and carried on during many instances. However, there comes a time when picking turns more than just idle pranks and you’re kidding yourself if you say you can’t tell the difference.

I remember years ago when I was going through the years of middle school and starting high school the days seemed to blur together. It wasn’t due to a fast paced environment or difficult courses, but rather from what was going on day in and day out.

You see, once I reached a certain age, I turned from a undisciplined belligerent into into a timid nerd. I loved learning and showed great interest in all my classes. Unfortunately for me there were some in school that saw these openings and other flaws in my life.

I’ve always had the habit of seeing the good in people; often, sadly, this has been my downfall, my fatal flaw if you will, as I can be easily manipulated. The popular kids in school latched onto this and created a new world for me to reside in.

Day to day, I would face the ridicule of the school population, called names, have private jokes passed around about me and on occasion slammed into lockers or doors for the fun of things.

You see, I wasn’t popular, I wasn’t with the ‘in’ crowd, and this became my downfall. The in crowd thought this was just all in good fun, just idle ‘picking’ but day after day the ‘picking’ got worse. So what they felt was all in good fun ended up to me all in extreme torture.

As time passed by, I slipped further and further into despair. It got to where I saw no joy in my day and dreaded each sunrise as just another dawn to a day of Hell. My childhood destroyed in only a matter of months, I began to escape into the recesses of my mind.

I suppose the one good thing that ultimately came of this was that the more they picked, the more they forced my life into ashes, the more I began to write. Yet even with my escape, I couldn’t find hope in life.

Finally, my freshman year in High School, I began taking martial arts classes. Over the summer, I trained extensively and got quite good.

When school started back up, the bullies at the school, that great ‘in’ crowd that everyone loved so much, moved right in for the kill, having found out about the classes I had taken.

In gym class they cornered me while I was seated on the gym floor stretching before the workout. They stood over me trying to goad me into showing them what I had learned in marital arts class. When I refused, the bully scoffed at me and leaned back to drive a fist into my head while standing over me.

When he swung, I instinctively grabbed his arm and twisted him into an arm-bar, all the while still being seated squarely on the floor. He squealed as I refused to let him up until he kissed the gym floor, keeping in mind his buddies were watching inventively. He did, and the bullies never once bothered me again.

Granted, I had been trained in the art of self defense, something I went on to learn more intensively every year since. Yet, despite this, I had reached a point to where I would no longer take the abuse of others thrown upon me.

You see, although they called it, and so many of them still do, ‘picking’ or just for fun, to me and to all those who face it, the real term is ‘bullying.’

No matter the case, no matter the reason, bullying is nothing more than the purest evil one can bring upon another. Before you go to joke or prank think about how the other person is going to feel about it, and whether what you’re doing is just a joke in the spirit of fun, or if it’s organized Hell brought at the expense of another.