Kevin was one of the meaner kids in class. He had a wicked smile, and a passion for disrupting class with simulated fart sounds. Usually, Kevin picked on the smaller kids, but one time he embarrassed me terribly by holding an anatomy book in front of my face and pointing to a diagram of the breasts. I was mortified, but I do remember looking at the strange way the tissues seemed to be folded around inside the breast, and thinking how odd that was, and how I wasn't sure I wanted any of that stuff anyway.

One day, Kevin brought a bike chain to school with him. It was fairly long, with large metal links. He wound it around his knuckles, waving a menacing fist at the group of boys gathered around him. Before long, he began to show off even more. He waved the chain around, and had the other boys tug on it to prove how strong it was. And then, in a Houdinic fervor, Kevin chained himself to his desk.

Kevin looked at the class and grinned widely—for about ten seconds. That is, until he found himself unable to undo the hefty combination lock on the chain. At first, there was a little laugh of disbelief, as he tried the numbers on the lock over and over again. Nothing. He tried the numbers in a different sequence. Still nothing. Finally, he tried to shimmy out of the chain—making these horrible grunting sounds as he did so—but only succeeded in jerking the desk all around. Kevin and the desk were fused together, like some sort of hybrid creature from Norse mythology.

We were all alarmed at this turn of events, but not so alarmed that we couldn't laugh. Just a little.

That was when Mr. G, the principal, came in.

A hush fell over the class, and I had the distinct impression that all the air had been sucked out of the room. Contrary to the spelling mnemonic taught to children everywhere, Mr. G was most certainly not our pal. He was a strict, ex-military man who didn't tolerate much in the way of misbehavior, and operated under the Machiavellian assumption that it was better—far better—to be feared than loved. The only time I'd ever seen him smile was in his yearbook picture, and even that, I suspected, may have been touched up after the fact.

Kevin's eyes were wide with terror.

Mr. G didn't hesitate. He assessed the situation, then picked Kevin up, desk and all, and carried him out into the hallway. No one said a word. Kevin found his voice then, and began to shriek. "Noooooooo! Noooooooo!" We were all listening as Kevin's panicked voice traveled down the infinitely long hallway, his screams finally growing fainter until at last we could not hear him at all. As Mrs. H chastised us and re-initiated our reading lessons, we were left wondering if the one-time bully would ever return to us.

An hour later, we were doing purple math problems on mimeographed pieces of paper. Kevin walked quietly back into the classroom, pale and silent, eyes rimmed with red as if he had seen things of such horror that he would never be able to describe them. Most unthinkably, it was obvious that Kevin had been crying. His desk was gone, and so was his chain. He was holding his hands over his butt as if the skin there was very, very tender.

Kevin didn't speak the rest of the day, and at recess he was like a small monk huddled up by the monkey bars.

I felt a little sorry for him.

But just a little.