I suppose I should have expected that there would be a few bigger kids that just*had* to show off what tough guys they were in Gym class by giving me and a couple of the other new students a hard time. I didn't try to take them on, but I didn't try to run away from them, either; before they got too far into bullying me, the teacher got everybody started on what he wanted us to do that day.

After school ended, Janet and I were walking home when the three guys that had been picking on me came out of a convenience store as we went by. One of them recognized me, and that was enough for them to try and pick up where they'd left off at school.

That proved to be a bad idea on their part, for a couple of reasons. First, there wasn't any teacher around to break things up if it got out of hand. Second, they didn't know that Janet and I had started taking martial arts classes a couple of years before; while I was learning Aikido, Janet gave in to her more violent side and started taking Tae Kwon Do. So when they got tired of berating me, and started getting physical, I simply began defending myself. Not being overly bright, they considered their inability to push me around or hit me to be justification for getting even more physical -" which left me no choice but to start hurting them. One of them finally took a swing at me, and kind of got redirected into a wall of the store – face-first, breaking his nose. While I was trying to tell him that I just wanted to be left alone, I heard a commotion behind me, followed by Janet demanding "You want some, too?"

When I turned to look, I could see that another one of them had apparently thought to do something while I wasn't looking; Janet had taken care of him with a strike of some kind to the solar plexus, leaving him laying on the ground as he gasped for air. Her question had been directed to the last one, who was standing there looking as though he couldn't believe what had just happened -" while Janet stood there in what was obviously a martial arts defensive position, clearly ready to clobber him if he tried anything.