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%u00a9Jack Fritscher, Ph.D., All Rights ReservedHOW TO LEGALLY QUOTE FROM THIS BOOK62 Jack FritscherAfterwards, after the shock, after the blood, after the dentist, after my permanent dental bridge, after my parents paid a lot of money, Peter Rimski said, %u201cIt sort of makes you feel like a real jock to be able to brag your teeth were kicked out in a football game.%u201d%u201cYeah,%u201d Hank the Tank said, %u201cand you were sitting in the stands.%u201d Ka-boom!I hated Hank Rimski so much it would have been a mortal sin except I couldn%u2019t help my own true feelings. He had injured my body permanently. My hands were perfect, but my front teeth were not. His kicking out my teeth was our secret. I never reported him, because I didn%u2019t want to give him credit, especially when he said he did it on purpose. I was afraid of what he might do next.The pecking order was pecking.Father Polistina, our classical Latin teacher, began calling on me every day, five days a week, in a class of thirty-eight boys.Singled out, I prepared my translation of Cicero%u2019s Pro Milone. Daily I had to be ready to stand up in my desk, the second desk in a long row of six desks, and line-by-line recite my translation and explain the grammar, sometimes for twenty minutes of the hour.%u201cBe prepared,%u201d Lock warned. %u201cPolly%u2019s got it in for you.%u201dDuring my recitations, oftentimes the four or five boys in the row of desks behind me horsed around, joking, putting their feet on the desks in front of them and, slowly pushing with their four or five sets of legs, shoved the connected row of desks, with me standing in the row, forward inch by inch, foot by foot, until the boy in front of me, the boy in the front desk was only twelve inches away from the face of Father Polistina.%u201cPolly hates me,%u201d I said to Lock. %u201cAnd I hate him. What did I ever do to him?%u201dFor reasons I could not divine, Polly Polistina found my mere existence fearsome, but to me he was only another kind of bully. I vowed he%u2019d never win whatever contest we were playing. He would never catch me unprepared. I honed my daily Latin class performance always to earn B%u2019s and sometimes A%u2019s. I grew to love my slow-shuffle advance toward Polly as my classmates pushed the row of desks, causing me to tip-toe baby-steps closer to him every day, inch by inch, two feet up to his face.Father Polistina, Misery%u2019s mystic, was a mystery to me, but I obeyed him, studied for him, and hated him, personally hated him for personally hating me for no reason at all.I thought about the priestly mystery behind things the priests made us do. Especially in the shower. I could go in a stall and be alone, the only