Sherif, a bully.

Oof, this story is a rough one. The other day, my family was having a debate about evil and malicious people. While referencing the Stanley Milgram prison experiment, I said that it's scary what human beings will do in certain circumstances.

After some arguments about how there truly are evil and malicious people and that some people could never do bad things, I told them a story I'm very ashamed of.

I used to be a mean-spirited individual. I moved from Massachusetts to New Jersey, and the transition was tough in a variety of ways. First of all, I moved from a nice, quaint town that had a public pond where everyone would gather and swim. It was a nice, caring community. Unfortunately, we moved to a very affluent, terrible neighborhood to the point that it was featured on Real Housewives of New Jersey. Anyway, this was socially a rough transition for me. However, it was also a few days before September eleventh when I moved in, and I was about to be the new Arab kid at a mostly white, very racist school.

This led to me having a tough battle to fight; I was always hearing racist remarks at a time where fitting in was crucial. 7th grade is really rough, and I was new and didn't know anybody. I soon started making self-deprecating jokes with my race being the butt of the joke. I would joke about running late because I had flight school before class and things of that nature. A lot of airplane humor. Anyway, this dynamic kind of carried on and it made me a rough person.

Prior to attending boarding school, I was really tough and mean-spirited. This did not evaporate when I was in boarding school; I had to unlearn a lot of behavior.

In the 9th grade, I went to public high school for a brief period of time. I remember it being a social jungle. By then, I had many friends who were considered popular, played sports, and I had respect because of my sense of humor, which had expanded beyond self-deprecation and into more general class clown stuff.

Anyway, lunchtime is the iconic dilemma for students in high school. Where am I going to sit at lunch? This particular cafeteria had lots of round tables. I easily found a crew, and we started sitting together. It was a lot of male camaraderie and competitive vibes. One day, this kid Tony sat with us. We started making fun of him and teasing him. It was really horrible. I forgot everything we said but basically for many lunches in a row, this dynamic would exist where this guy would sit with us and everyone would just make fun of him all lunch.

Eventually, it started to escalate. I recall one day we made him pour soda on his homework in order to continue sitting with us, and he did. When I reflect on this, it is so awful and so cruel, it hurts me to think of it deeply. What the heck?

Also, I must mention that I wasn’t just participating to fit in; I was a ringleader in this, the soda idea might have been mine, but if it wasn’t, the spirit of it was led by me. I take a lot of blame for that; there is nobody to blame but myself, but I definitely think part of the reason I was able to behave like that was because of how tough my time socially due to the racism I experienced. This is not an excuse; tons of people experience racism and don’t incite others to ruin their scholastic assignments with carbonated beverages (which, side note, have no place in schools).

Anyway, yeah, this behavior is awful, and I did it to fit in, or to be cool, or funny. I felt good when I did it, I'm sure, powerful. I didn’t think about this guy as a human or something; if I had, I surely would not have been like this.

I don’t know the point of this; I think we should always be reflecting on our behavior, and realizing that circumstances make up so much of why we do certain things, as well as societal approval, encouragement, ostracization, etc. I think it’s important to realize that our behavior is dependent on a variety of factors that are vital to be aware of. Yeah, I don’t have a great bow to tie this all up with, but I wanted to share this memory!

Also, here is a very funny side note... for all my life I always wanted to write in a journal/keep a diary, etc. I would always write it perfectly for an audience and was never able to just write for myself. Until this one time. I just wrote a few entries from the heart and made them so honest. Well, one day I left this journal at my friend's house at college, and I went back to get it and without an ounce of hesitation, she was like, “I can’t believe you made that kid pour soda on his homework.” It was absolutely hilarious how little she flinched at having admitted to reading the journal. Zero.

When I was a kid, I always wanted to have a diary with one of those locks. That would have come in very handy in this scenario. But at the time, when I needed the lock, I didn’t realize that the best way to get people to not read something was to publish it as a blog post and send it to them.

Last thing: I once watched this lady make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich using just her hands. And it was amazing. At the time I was disgusted beyond belief, but now I realize that it was baller, iconic, and very advanced. Here is a blog post I wrote on her and that issue. PB&J without the tools. Thanks for reading, and please be good to others. It is heartbreaking to think about what actions of mine, or similar actions could cause in conjunction with mental health issues and how difficult these things can make someone’s life or worse. Thanks for reading, p.s I nowadays I try to be the best person I can be.