My primary employment is as a high school teacher. Today, as I was leaving the building, I noted one of my students there unusually late and looking distressed. Turns out he was afraid to go home because some of his asshole classmates were waiting to jump him at the property line. I walked out there, located said assholes, and gave them to know that their classmate had better make it home all safe and sound or their immediate future was going to be complex and turbulent. I’ll see tomorrow did they take my friendy advice to heart or not.
Driving home, my mind was catapulted to my own days in high school. My dad was sergeant of the local police force and had arrested all the local assholes and their parents repeatedly. This, as you might imagine, did not make my days at school with those same assholes entirely delightful.
Have I ever mentioned my older brother? I have one. We aren’t close, despite being each other’s sole playmate during the rusticated phase of our childhood. He was more likely to join others in mocking me than to ever take my side of it during our high school years. He was an athlete and all that cool shit, you see, whereas I was more the disaffected loner type.
So anyway, on this one morning, I came to conflict with one of the assholes. Why? Fucked if I know. Maybe his mother didn’t breast feed him enough. Maybe my dad corrected his attitude the night before with a night stick. Maybe he just didn’t like my face. We exchanged a quick flurry of punches. I got the better of him. He wiped the blood and snot from his face and told me that things would be settled right and proper after school.
Now the rest of the day became a perfect storm of pustulent, inbred, assholes. Every asshole with whom I had ever had a fight…every asshole my dad had ever busted…every asshole with whom my freaking cousins had ever had a disagreement stopped me in the hall to assure me that there was an apocalyptic asswhooping awaiting me at 3:30 and that it would be their exquisite pleasure to take part. My morale started to flag.
Close to the end of the day, I took the hallpass and went to my brother’s class. I told him the situation and explained that, as a result, I’d no doubt miss track and field practice. Might require a bit of medical attention before we went home.
“Meet me here and we’ll go out together.” was his terse reply. I was taken aback. I’d expected something sneering.
Time passes whether we wish it so or not, and I met him at the appointed time.
We walked out to the parking lot like fucking gunslingers. Eddie Dean never felt one bit more proud to stand with Roland of Gilead than I felt to stand beside my brother that day and…
none of the assholes showed. We went to track practice. We went home. We’e never spoken of this since and we seldom speak of anything.
But I remember the day he stood beside me.
Now that was a pretty cool story. Maybe, somewhere down the line, the kid you stood up for today will do something similar, and tell the tale about the teacher(you)who stood for him.
Great story.
What hajario said. Bravo!
You need to share this with him. Or find an opportunity to tell him. You never know when someone might need to hear something like this, that they made a difference in someone’s life.
Hell, I’ll bet Hallmark has a card for this. 
I appreciate stories like that. They give me insight into something I feel like, as a woman, I can’t really ever get, fundamentally.
I love my little brother, and my cousins and I stuck up for each other, but there seems to be something unique about a (healthy) relationship between brothers fairly close in age. It’s like a glimpse into another world.
We watched A Christmas Story tonight, and in the scene where Ralphie’s fighting the bully, his little brother picks up his glasses. My husband turned to his (2 years younger) brother and gave him a smile and a punch in the shoulder. (He’d gotten into a fight in middle school and his brother had done the same thing for him. Gave me warm fuzzies, it did, but I didn’t want to ruin the manliness of the moment by saying so.)
I have three brothers, one of which stood beside in a similar manner, one of which stood beside me in a somewhat similar manner. Do I have to turn in my Man Card if I admit that the OP got me misty-eyed?
I saw my student in the hall this morning. He seems okay. I saw his playmates, too, and reminded them of our little talk yesterday. The looks of sullen resentment on their faces were sweeter than wine.
What an awesome story.
Great writing.
Great story!
You have remembered the face of your father.
I don’t think you have to turn in your Man Card. I mean, if you do, I do. This OP got me thinking how nice it would have been to have a brother (or any sibling close in age, actually). Great story…
Brendon Small
“My morale began to flag.” 
Of course, in order to keep his Man Card, his brother will be required to reply, “Oh yeah, I remember that. You were such a wuss in high school.”
And then he punches him, right? Or does the OP punch first? I’m sure there’s wrestling involved somewhere, but I’m just a Chick, so don’t quote me on that. My job is to roll my eyes and shout at them to cool it and watch out for the coffee table.
Seriously, great story. I think you should print it out and stick in in an envelope and send it to your brother.
I’ve found that it’s age dependent. If they’re both still in their 20’s, then yes, violence is essentially required. In their 30’s it’s optional, anything after that, a reasonable exchange of insults and retelling of wuss-behavior stories from each other’s past is perfectly acceptable. Even guys know that two 50 year old brothers wrestling is just kind of sad.
This sounds so much like something my brother would say. He’s a real stand-up guy too. ::sniff::
Great story, Scumpup.
Cheers to your brother, mate. drinks in his honour
Well, only having a sister, I can’t relate that well. But my sister swears that one day on the playground, I beat up a classmate of mine who was tormenting her.
I, of course, don’t remember that, and frankly, I think I would have cheered him on. Oh well, I suppose it’s the thought that counts.
(My sister, I add, has a Masters in Creative Writing, so I tend to think she…overdramatizes…sometimes because it would make a good story.)
That was a cool story. Agree that you ought to share it with him now.
And I may share it with a certain kid I once raised. His story is that he came running into the house screaming that a bunch of kids were beating up his big brother and I (the Mom) should come quick.
I said, “You didn’t think it was a good idea to stay and help him?”
The kid: “What, and me get beat up too?”
(In fairness the kid was 6 and his big brother 8 at the time, and the hooligans were a bunch of 7- and 8-year-olds. Two of them, I think.)
One day, my sister (three years older) beat the hell out of a kid who’d been constantly bullying me. That was sorta cool.