I would like this to be my twenty-five hundred word story competition entry. But i do not know how to get it there, so it is here.

I was Twelve,  and in my mind,  the toughest kid going,  [ my age ].  Hey what the hell,  my beatings  were with sticks, belts, what ever came off the floor,  by adults, lots of knuckles and hands to the head shots,  so who is going to hurt me outside that is not an adult.  No one.  I can tell you after the first hit,  the second hit feels the same and the rest turn to a dull burn by the tenth time you’re hit.    So . . .What really is pain?  [ LOVE ]  Love hurts the most of all pain when you are growing up. The Love you want from your parents.

I kept my guard up outside at all times, nothing got by me as i taught myself to scan a head as i walked, plus i learn to step quite. Was i scared outside? Yes. I never learned to  fight back, but it was not kids i was afraid of, i lived with six sisters and two brothers at the time and stayed clear of the one older sister.

Okay, yeah sure big men . . .Who isn’t when you’re a young girl. But outside, the only threat would be if he could out run me, l like i told you, i’m a runner. I remember running to and from school, morning lunch and supper, so outside away from my usual beatings?  I acted as a hero. [ And yes,  i stepped in and hero'ed all time, i had this thresh hold with the pain thing going on.  NOT ANY MORE   EVERYTHING HURTS.

Anyway i remember i was in some sort of Love, with this boy in my class,  two of them actually.  Funny.  Turned out  they both had sisters who hung with two of my little sisters.  But when i was young i had to always watch my younger siblings when we were out, this enabled me to go to the homes of these two boys after school, twice.  I had to stay with my little sisters and make sure they got home safe. It was about the only time i did not mind following them after school, other than that,  i had special T. V. shows i watched and they were a bother to follow around until they wanted to go home.

Anyway the one girl liked to play in the big park we walked by every other day, sometimes everyday, it all depend which way we took and why we took it. Most of the time we were chased by a big German Shepard [dog ], if we took the park way,but  i took this way most of the time it was faster and i was faster than the dog.  [ well it never caught me ]  But this day they wanted to play for a bit before going home and i thought why not if it gets me to see her brother.  I remember he was older than me by near two years, and he was cute plus i could out run him too.  So the park for a while with his little sister and my little sister it was. Anything for his little sister . . .

I remember the park was quite large, but this is in Montreal PQ, so big it was, and where she wanted to play was down at the end of the park grounds,  on the swings.  As it turned out we were the only ones there, so we each took a swing and swung away.

It wasn’t long afer the little girl asked me to hold her swing while the two of them went to the bathroom. Wow i thought maybe she might tell her brother i held her swing while she went pee. Silly i know,  but i was only twelve.  So here i am sitting on my swing holding another,  looking like who knows what, when seven teenage girls show up ranging from the age of seventeen to nineteen,  wanting the very swing i was holding.

WHY?   Why that swing?  There were twenty-three other swings to choose from but they wanted the one i was holding for the kid, who is still not back, i started to wonder what they were doing or if they had found something else to fill in their time. And in the mean time the teenage girls formed a circle around me,  all seven of them and started to protest in a fashion i knew not of.  They were French and i am English so that was a bummer right there. I did my best to tell them i was holding the swing for someone,  there is plenty of others, take one of them.  [ WELL ]

With a very heavy accent the big girl to my right just behind me said. “I want dis swing.” Sure,  when they arrived i was swinging and holding the saved swing but they circle me anyway and i was forced to stop.  The bathrooms as i remember were about seventy feet or so off to the other side of the park and plenty of people were there with their children as it was just after school which ment the time was around three or four o’clock in the afternoon.

I remember this day was special for me. It is the first time that i wore nylons. It was different then, our dresses stopped at our knees not just under our bums like now a days, where the girls wear them very short. But that is beside the point, the point is these French girls wanted to bully me into giving them the swing and i was not going to give in.  Besides . . .How good would it sound if she went home and told her bother that i let some girls take her swing?  Me.  Of all twelve-year old girls he knew me better than that,  and what i was somewhat capable of,  mainly because he knew i was one of those blacklisted girls  nobody seems to like by other girls.  Just the boys, because i was just like any of them or better,  and the whole school knew.  [ Hard not to tell with seven siblings  go to the same school. ] They knew who to bully and who not to, i didn’t get bullied, lets put it that way. All the school kids and him knew if i was called upon for save stopping a fight, the fight never took place.  And YES I TOOK AND STILL TAKE PRIDE IN THIS THING THAT I DO, did, to scared to now though.  People and some children are crazy.  What i remember i did then i would never do now, there is a hell of a lot more people and violent children today than there was back then, plus i am older now.

Needless to say this older gang of French teenaged girls wanted something from me i was not willing to give up, that swing,  for that kid, that i said i would indeed  hold  until you get back from the bathroom and i was not giving it up to them or anyone.

You can always change your mind

I think, due to the lack of communication misunderstandings with this  language barrier happening when i said  [ lots of swings over there,  holding it for a friend, ] it was not understood.  The big girl behind me took hold of my hand and did her best to rip the linked chain out of my grasp. Turned out she could not break my hold with all her shaking and pulling like a retard banging on the table,  because they wanted to eat now! [ not in two seconds, now ]

Well she could not take the swing from my hand and spoke in French to the girl on her right who joined in and now both of them are pulling and prying at my fingers without success. This made it bad but not what i was expecting,  i knew they were going to get mad,  what i didn’t know, i was about to fight seven French teenage girls belonging to a gang.  I HATE HURTING PEOPLE

Are you ready for this, i’m twelve and these girls were not my family and they crossed the line when the girl in front of me,  started pulling me off the swing and away from the one in my hand, by the hair of my head, not gaining at her chore, the two still working at my hand gave up and joined into the hair pulling game. This made me angry. This is my hair. This hair grew wavy down my back close to my waste. This hair had to look always neet. Or  i was  beat. I wasn’t angry anymore i was afraid of my mother.  Then the girl in front of me kicked up a pile of  sand and slowly poured it on top my head.

Please show me the light

What i remember back then is i didn’t see black i became the black. Right then and there i asked the lord for more strength as i surely would need it now, cause now i was going to get a lick’en when i got home cause of these girls.  I remember thinking i still can’t let go because i said i would hold it until she got back [ your word is who you are and i am ] At least i stood my ground and continued to tell them i can not let go i said i would hold?  And LOW A BEHOLD no sooner than she finished with her hand full of dirt,  my little sister and the little girl stepped out through the crowd of people and kids,  that had form in the name of  interest,  not,  stopping the Ballymena.  No bother, my word held true, i can let go, so i announced, she is here  i can let go.  And whew i did. But not without actually giving the swing to them, and of course,  all said in English. Even the teenage girls did their best to speak English to me now. [ this is where you may want to hit the exit button as it is going to get nasty and quit violent ] Plus this is the part you may want to believe or not,  but i can assure you it is all true and just maybe one of you reading this will remember because you were there.  Who forgets when a hero is in the mist. Nobody.  So read on if you will but be warned it is not pretty or nice and REMEMBER i had a dress on and nylons, and back then they were held up with a stink’en garter belt with four hanging elastic things with clasps. I can just imagine what all the watchers thought

And lest we forget my six sisters and two brothers, plus the one big sister who Loved to drag me all over the place to please a parental teaching  learned thing or something there like that, sitting on top of me punching until she was tired, but i refused to fight back, i simply would not hurt anyone unless i was forced into a situation where,  there was absolutely no choice,  even then it was not a thing i found easy to do.

Actually this is pretty funny as i can not say just what it looked like as i was too busy to see most of it.   Actually i guess i was the cause of it.  My actions after standing up off my seat when my little sister arrived, were somewhat,  not of my own. And i am thankful for that as i was only twelve and they were seven-teen to the age nine-teen and never-ending.

HERE IS WHAT I DID

I swung the swing as hard as i could to the girl who still stood off to the right behind me “You want the swing so bad have it.” I whipped it, it hit in her face and she cried. Then i turned and kicked up a small mound of sand, taking a hand full, i said to the girl who gave me some. “So you like dirt! have it.” That sand blast to the face made her cry too.   Before i could do anything let alone think, two new girls had me by the hair of my head  pulling in their different directions telling me i hurt their cousin now i die.  This was said slowly as they were French. And there goes my hair again and i thought so and i asked so, i didn’t want a lick’en because of them. I remember thinking how was i going to get out of this until the answer in my head became clear. Do what they are doing but harder, so i said.”So you like pulling hair.” Well it wasn’t me, but my fingers crawled and searched for hand full of hairs on each of their skulls and in doing so i bound and twisted until i could not twist anymore and locked my hands closed and pulled, and listened to their screams and cry to get go.

“No . . .You let go of me first.”  They did and i pulled with everything in me and knocked their heads together before i let them go and they still cried. Wouldn’t you know it, before i could bat an eye i was jumped on from the left side and taken to the ground. Yeah this took a few seconds to understand what just happened. But before i could even think she was sitting on me pulling my hair and slapping me in the face, then latched onto both of my child nipples,  [i was twelve i had nothing then ].  As she was trying to rip my nipples off, i remember thinking how heavy and big she was and shocked as to what she was grabbing.  I couldn’t help but to think, awe, she is not allowed to touch me there. Why is she touching me there? Then like a dummy i realized i was on the ground and getting my cloths dirty.  And all the while  my little sister is crying and won’t stop screaming my name.  Is she being hurt?  I had to see her and in doing so i became shocked as to how many more people and children had formed a fat large half-moon circle around me and still none to stop this madness.   When my eyes fell upon my sister i asked.  ”Are you okay?   Then why are you crying.”  “Cause you are getting beat up.”  She was very annoying to me i could not do what i needed to do and listen to her screaming out my name. So i said her name and told her. “If you are not going  to get the police or mom shut up, you are making me mad.”  Needless to say she stopped crying and watched, she was only eight or nine anyway what really could she do besides get hurt.

I had to get off the ground i was dirty enough and my hair looked like a very bad perm, and my mother was going to kill me.  [Laugh if you will. But my mom had a very hard life as it was and she did not need me or any of us to make it harder. My dress was getting wrecked! I looked to the girl with the answer in my head and asked her to let me up before i hurt her to. She laughed telling me i hurt her cousin and i was going to die.  Her answer was good enough for me and the answer in my head,  do what they do unto me was fair game. Poor laughing girl, what she didn't know about me, she was about to find out.

I felt no pain remember? I looked into her happy face and closed both my clawed hands of pure strength around her tits that she indeed had. I can't remember how many times she beg me to let her go and i said no. She cried and pleaded for me to stop, until girl number six stepped in giving me the same speech, my mind actually became confused as to whether they were all cousins? They didn't look like they were, but what did i know, here is what i knew. I went through five girls and two more were waiting. Was i tired?   No! i played basketball,  this was nothing to tire me this was something i didn't count on though,  holding a swing for the likes of a boy.  And i really have no recollection of girl number six other than the fact she was crying and then finally, the last girl, nineteen years of age and huge,  compared to little old me. Man i was in for it now . . . She came at me from out of nowhere, all i remember was flying through the air at a good distance,  i might say, and landing on my back.  And right now i don't care what you say or he say or anyone say for that matter but the only thing going on in my head when i hit the ground, was the very fact that indeed it does not hurt just like on T.V. movies, and i stood up cleaning myself off.  And here she was coming at me again talking about her cousins and i was going to die. What am i going to do now,   i asked the good Lord . . .She is going to kill me.

The thunder roared the lightning flashed the gates of heaven were shaken, a little pig curled it's tail and ran to save its bacon

I noticed my one sneaker had come untied as i stood wondering how i was to get out of this one.  And lo and behold the answer.  If there is one thing in life we are all taught, each and every nation of us, we are taught there are rules in battles . . .Get a load of that!  RULES!   And i had one swimming around in my head, so i squatted myself down looking big girl number seven in the eye. And i said unto her . . .[ If you touch me while i tie my sneaker i will kill you ]

Needless to say after all i just went through and it is they doing the crying she had really no other choice but to believe me. She called me  YOU SICK GIRL.  YOU GO HOME NOW. She never touched or threatened me again.

P.S. . . .Should you think that this was the end,  you are far from wrong.  This was the beginning of what was to come.   And it came,  but not after me,  though it was indeed again to be my fault.  And people did suffer.

THE END