When I began first grade, he was in second grade. His repertoire of dirty limericks would make an Irishman blush. He acquired rock hard muscle when the rest of us were still losing our baby teeth. He was as intimidating as Patton and as strong as beer breath. His name was Harold Eugene McNamara—a boy feared by many and loved by few—but he was better known as “the bully.”

I recall my first encounter with this menace. It was the first day of the first grade. I proudly boarded the school bus with my brand new Flipper lunch box. I cautiously proceeded down the center aisle. All was fine until I passed Harold in his bib overalls, dingy T-shirt and worn loafers. His foot had darted out into the aisle and caught me on the ankle just above my brand new Converse All-Star tennis shoe. Suddenly the floor of the bus rushed up and met me with the velocity of a C&O locomotive.

I was stunned for a moment. I turned over on my back, looked up and saw his vicious face staring down at me with a snide, victorious glare.

“Hey, Flipper Boy,” he said with gritted teeth. “Watch your step or y’ gonna get hurt.”

He sat down. The kids in front of the bus never turned around. I heard footsteps and from my lying down position I saw the face of the only other person on the bus that was feared even more than Harold Eugene McNamara.

“You better keep your butt in that seat, Eugene, or I’m gonna make it so you can’t sit down at all,” Esther Marie Turnbuckle, Bus One’s most decorated safety patrol officer, exclaimed.

“You ain’t my mama,” Harold protested.

Esther Marie grabbed him by the throat and squeezed it.

“Don’t talk back, you stupid pig,” she grunted. “Get in your seat Langden and stay out of Eugene’s way.”

That was good advice, but how did she know my name? I later learned she did her homework long before a kid started riding her bus and she had a file on each rider. Esther Marie was a big-boned gal even at the age of 10 and would end up having an illustrious career as school bus safety patrol officer until she graduated from high school.

I got up and sat down two or three seats behind Harold. As the bus started moving, I examined my lunch box and discovered my Twinkie was crushed. I shook my thermos and heard that distinct metallic slush that comes only from a broken thermos. I knew two things at that very moment. One, my Hi-C was fit for drinking only by the man at the county fair that eats light bulbs, and two, Harold Eugene McNamara and I weren’t going to be best friends.

I had an instant hatred and fear for this kid who would terrorize my friends and me throughout our elementary careers. He could have bought a baseball team with all the lunch money he forced us to hand over. Five days a week, he wreaked havoc in the halls, mayhem at recess, and after each act of aggression, the corners of his mouth would curl up like the Grinch’s mouth when he decides to keep Christmas from coming for the Hoos down in Hooville.

By sixth grade, Harold had descended into my grade. This was the same year I grew over four and a half inches in a 10-month period and acquired the agility of a two-legged foot stool. Walking about through the halls, I resembled a gangly water bug which made me easy prey to the dirty, underhanded trickery of Mister McNamara.

I began the seventh grade with Harold one grade behind me. That year he was suspended for two weeks for bringing a Playboy to school and later a whole month for bringing a hunting knife. Homework was the only thing he never got caught bringing to school.

With the help of some weight-lifting and many hours in a hayfield, I acquired enough athletic ability to walk across a tiled floor without tripping. More important, this was the year I tried out and received an honorable second string position on the Fluvanna Junior Varsity football team. Needless to say, Harold would have plenty to say about that. We were changing classes when he and his clan of thugs and misfits blocked the hallway.

“Hey, Flipper Boy,” he said. “Heard you went out for the football team.”

“That’s right,” I muttered in my meek Beaver Cleaver voice.

“What string did you make?  Fourth?”

“No, second.”

“What do you expect from a sissy mama’s boy?”

The group laughed. Perhaps there was a full moon the night before. Perhaps I had eaten an extra bowl of Wheaties. Maybe I was suffering from temporary insanity. Who knows? But suddenly I recalled the knuckle sandwiches, the tripping incidents, the name calling and all the other demeaning acts this bully had forced upon me. So with all these memories brewing inside and the adrenaline pumping, I sucked in my breath and asked:

“So what string are you playing?”

For the first time in his life, Harold Eugene McNamara was speechless. He was dumbfounded. Knowing he had not tried out for the football team, I hit the villain’s heart where it hurt and discovered he was nothing more than a big puff of hot air that couldn’t blow over the tent at a flea circus. His henchmen waited for a response. Harold sputtered for a moment and then stalled like a Ford Pinto on a cold morning. Tears actually welled up in his eyes. His Merry Men dispersed to their classes and I turned and left a part of my past standing in the hall like a deflated punching bag.

I saw very little of Harold Eugene McNamara after that day. After I had reached the pinnacle of my athletic career with a first string position on the varsity squad, he never got in my way. His reign of terror faded into oblivion except for the infrequent attempt to prey upon younger, weaker grade schoolers which truly made him a laughable spectacle.

In a world that seems to be filled with injustice, whether it is the murderer or the rapist who is set free or the innocent bystander that is persecuted, or the meek “Flipper Boy” picked on by the bully on the bus, I still believe in the old adage that what goes around comes around. My optimism stems from what I saw years later in the parking lot outside a video store.

As I exited the store with the latest Disney classic, an argument was going on between a man and a woman. She was in the passenger seat and he was in the driver seat. There were three runny nosed brats eating corn chips and drinking Mountain Dews and yelling at each other in the back seat.

“I told you to get ‘Bridges of Madison County’ you idiot,” The woman screamed.

The voice seemed familiar.

“I ain’t gonna watch no chick flick,” the guy shouted. “I rented “Mortal Combat.”

“Don’t talk back, you stupid pig!” She exclaimed. “Now you go back and get me ‘Bridges of Madison County.’ Right now!”

A meek, 30-something Harold Eugene McNamara mumbled a few unintelligible words under his breath and went back toward the video store to rent “The Bridges of Madison County” for his not so lovely, overbearing wife, Ester Marie Turnbuckle-McNamara.