Beef Jerky Bribes

All this talk of hot Cheeto blackmail reminds of the great "Beef Jerky and Skittle Bribe" of 2004.  Anna Marie was one of the fastest talking girls I have ever met.  She had a way of making you despise her and absolutely fall in love with her simultaneously.

She was smart and funny and sneaky as a snake.  There was a new boy in class who was just straight up wierd.  He ate his boogers, talked in a squeaky voice, tattled constantly, and looked like a cross between a Fraggle and a shrunken head doll.  Poor Mitchell crossed paths with the wrong girl, because one day Anna Marie decided that she was out to get him.

Not one to get her hands dirty and sensing my innate preference for the girls in the class, she bribed four of five of the sweetest little angels to drag Mitchell behind the playground slide and beat him up for stick of beef jerky and a bag of Skittles.  Two of the little darlings stood as a human shield while the other two slugged him in the stomach.

My co-teacher and I were clueless.  Another student ratted them out and brought the remnants of the evidence (a jerky wrapper and empty Skittles bag), as well as a bleary-eyed Mitchell to sketch out the story.  Anna Marie copped to the story almost immediately.  She smiled this huge smile and put her hands in air and said, "He's been driving me crazy, Ms. Milky!" It was like seeing that wrapper and empty bag was the equivalent of catching her with her hand in the cookie jar.


Kids never seem to think... hey... you littered!  They just know that they are in trouble and confess.  It amazed me that it seemed reasonable to beat the hell out of someone and conspire to have others do it for you, just because someone was bugging you. I think about Anna Marie from time to time and I wonder how she is doing.  I can imagine how Mitchell is doing and that is too dreary for me.  I hope that nobody has beaten the shit out of her.  I hope that nobody has beaten the fire out of her, either.

I spent a good part of the year protecting Mitchell from bullying, but I know that the kids that were doing it were being bullied by someone else.  And that is why my thoughts linger with them.