I Often Assume People Think The Worst Of Me

I used to run away from the school bully. Then my school made a rule against it. I was caught trying to run and given some punishment.

My teacher, a smart guy I admired and respected, stood me up in front of the class (21 students) and ordered the class to, one student at a time, tell me something they didn't like about me. Only two students refused to participate, one simply stated he was not participating, while the other even went so far as to say he liked me and didn't want to say anything critical. I thought about him now and then, and one day, a long time later, I read his name in the newspaper where it shouldn't have been, in the death rolls from the Pentagon attack on 9/11. My defender was gone.

I got beat up more often after that as I struggled to oppose the bully every morning. I hated school. But my spiritual food was the memory of two people who displayed moral courage, the hardest courage for many people. They said what they had to say, not what they were supposed to say. It stuck with me, as much as my extreme social anxiety.