For Ed, the story of my fist-fight.

When I was eleven, I was a small, quiet girl with a pigtail. I think I was about 4’9” and maybe 70 lbs. I didn’t talk much in class, because I had an English accent and kids often mimicked me. Something I still hate to this day. When I was eleven, I moved to a new school, in a small town in Southern Alberta, and in my new and strange classroom, I sat in front of a larger boy named Kevin. He called me flat-chested and skinny (both of which I was) and he would pull my braid, hard, and poke me with pencils, when the teacher was out of the room. Which was a lot. (As a side note, the boy’s name was indeed Kevin, but I’m not putting his last name, because I don’t want him reading this.) He would sometimes try to bug me on the playground, but mostly I could run away. It was while I was stuck in the classroom that his teasing and torturing was a problem.

I told my dad that this boy was bugging me, and dad said I should just hit him a few times and put a stop to it. To facilitate this, dad taught me how not to punch like a girl. Don’t tuck your thumb into your palm, he said, and keep your wrist flat. Dad let me punch him a fair bit, until I was good at it. I liked how it felt, but I didn’t think it was a good idea to start punching Kevin, so I didn’t.

However, while I was internally debating the ethics of defending myself, Kevin escalated his tactics. One particularly scary day, he put his hands around my neck while the teacher was out of the room, and strangled me. I could feel myself starting to pass out, and it hurt. When he stopped, I was angry. I said to him, from the bottom of my anger, “I’m gonna get you.” I don’t remember what he said exactly, but it was something sneering to the effect of, do you want to fight me after school, little girl, and I said yes.

Word got around. I don’t know how. But after school there was a crowd on the little kids’ playground, waiting for me and Kevin.

I remember the exhilaration. The feeling of acting out my anger, as I hit him, my self-righteous tower of anger at my own helplessness and Kevin’s cruelty. I think I hurt him. He went running inside, and later I heard he went to tell the principal that Katie was beating him up. It was said that the principal, a retired farmer, said, “What do you want me to do about it? You’re getting beaten up by a girl?”

I have to say, though. I have told this story a few times over the years, and the consensus among those I tell it to is that nowadays, if one of my daughters beat up a boy, something would be done about it, at school, because of the panic over violence among girls. There were no consequences, for me. Nobody was scared of me....