High School Enemies: Brid

I first met Brid about the same time I met Led. I was in the second grade and he was in the first at Hermosa Elementary. My first impression of him was that he was this mean loudmouth. Later, I would recognize him as having a Napoleon complex. I think it had something to do with his last name sounding like "girly." I can imagine kids in kindergarten giving him a hard time over that name, so he had to toughen up at an early age and figure out how to fight back.

He was that rare bully: One with friends. All of his friends were mean loudmouths like him, but they had the stature to back up those mouths. Trying to beat up on Brid would probably result in getting attacked by boys who could definitely deliver a pounding. Brid was the kind of person that if he saw you (if you were one of his targets) on the other side of the road, he would actually cross the street to give you a hard time. His bullying was largely verbal, but it still hurt knowing that he hated me so much and for no good reason.

When Brid started high school, his parents bought him a brand new, red Trans Am. (In 1980, Trans Ams were the most desirable cars for many of us because we knew there was no way we were going to get a Corvette. However, one joke I heard at the time was "T.A.'s are like hemorrhoids. Sooner or later, everybody gets one.") If he ever drove past me, he would yell some insulting remark or tell me to get my butt out of the road (even though I was on the sidewalk).

I remember seeing him drive one of the Druds around. At the time I thought, "Is that really the best you can do with that car?" I guess some girls would consider him "cute," but to choose from the Druds would seem to indicate that he didn't have much respect for girls at our school (or just wanted to go for whom he thought would be easy).

One day during the school year, I was working a rare Saturday morning shift at my part-time job. I came home and took a nap afterward. Mom came to my room and woke me up. She told me that Brid had died in a car accident the night before. She asked if I knew him. I told her I did, but I didn't tell her to what extent. She asked me if he was someone I cared about. I told her no.

I don't know all the details of the accident. I know that he had been drinking alcohol and struck a telephone pole. He supposedly flew through the windshield. I don't know this for a fact, but I think that while he was drinking, he shot off his big mouth around the scary punks from the refinery and there was a challenge to race. The accident likely happened during the race. Perhaps he got run off the road. However, I never read or heard anything that indicated there was anyone else involved in the crash.

There was another person in the passenger seat with him when the accident happened. He was injured and in the hospital for several weeks.

I know this is terrible, but this was the only time in my life I was actually glad someone was dead. I actually felt a tremendous weight lifted off my shoulders knowing that I was never going to have to deal with this jerk again. The only thing I felt bad about is that there weren't about a half-dozen other guys in the car with him to suffer a similar fate. (I should note that I did not feel that way about the person who was in the car with him. That guy was pretty decent. However, after he got out of the hospital and returned to school, he had this whole "I cheated death" vibe about him that became pretty much intolerable.)

In recent years, I entertained a fantasy of running into his parents. (From what I can tell, they're both still alive and live in Artesia.) They would realize that I had gone to school with Brid and ask about my experience with him. I would tell them that since the day we met, Brid treated me like crap and went out of his way to make feel bad. I would tell them how grateful I was that they got him that red Trans Am. At this point, they would break out into tears and call me a horrible person, and I would tell them I got that from Brid all the time, so he must have learned to do that from them.

But I don't know if I'd actually say that to them. You'd think that after 34 years, they would stop dwelling on his death. However, according to the obituaries of his grandmothers, there's a chance he may have been the only child his parents had. At the very least, he was the only son they ever had.

There's a funny thing about being bullied by someone: You often feel like you are the only person they are picking on and you wonder what it is that made them single you out for punishment. I never knew how things started with Brid. He was just nasty to me from day one. But about a year and a half after Brid died, I found out that he had being pulling the same stunts with another person named Sted who was a year younger than him. Sted had gone to school at Abo, so that means the bullying probably started in the sixth grade for him, when Brid was in the seventh grade. Sted told me he was also glad that he died.

I'm certain other people feel the same way when the bullies currently in their life die, but I know some who dislike that they never got proper closure, to get that chance to get back at those who created misery for them.