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When I was in the 5th grade we moved to Baltimore City - early 70’s. A few days after I started in the new school, two girls (white girls BTW, FWIW) decided they didn’t like me, for what reason I don’t know except I was a good girl, smart and perhaps to them, a bit nerdy, and they confronted me on the play ground during recess and told me, “We don’t like you and are going to beat you up after school”. “Tell a teacher and we will beat you up even worse”. And “We know where you live and we will come after you”.

I was terrified. I never experienced anything like this before. And I had not yet made any friends at school and felt completely alone and I didn’t know what to do. So I decided to ignore them and their threats.

But as soon as I left school to walk home, these two girls confronted me, along with just about all the other kids in the school who got wind of the fight. One of the girls pushed me into the other girl who then punched me in the arm and threw me to the ground.

I’m a little hazy about what happened next but I recall being very angry and getting up and swinging my book bag into one gal’s mid section, knocking her to the ground, and then swinging hard and landing a hard punch to the face of the other girl and giving her a bloody nose and fat lip. I do recall the gasps and then the cheers of the other kids, a lot whom had been bullied by these two. I’d never in my young life had ever been in a fight before and didn’t know I had it in me.

A teacher came along and broke up the fight, that I was winning and we all went to the principal’s office and our parents were called.

That night I explained to my parents, especially my dad about what had happened. My dad had experienced something similar when he started school as a newly arrived immigrant to America when he was bullied for “talking funny”.

My parents told me that regardless of what these girls said, that I should have gone to a teacher, but my father also told me that I was right to stand up and to defend myself and he was proud of me for doing so under the circumstances and when he met with the principal the next day, he said the same to her and I didn’t get suspended.

The next day one of the two girls, the one who punched me, came to me and said something to effect of “I respect you, you’re tough and I want to be your friend”. I told her “I don’t what to fight you, and I don’t what to be your enemy, but sorry, I don’t want to be your friend”.

But I made lots of other friends and neither of these two girls nor anyone else ever messed with me again. I actually ended up feeling sorry for the girl who punched me up and eventually became friends with her some years later during high school – she had a very bad home life, lot’s of horrible abuse and neglect; but she rose above all that and eventually pulled herself up and became a totally different person as she got older. Last I heard from her she had gotten a college degree and became a pharmacist¸ had gotten married and had a few kids. Last I heard the other girl was serving time in prison for various charges including assault and battery.