Words for My Enjoyment

Words For Your Enjoyment: Calling Out Your Nemesai

February 9th, 2007

nemesai: noun, plural of nemesis.

When I grew up on Long Island in New York State as a small child, I was teased and tormented by a group of children who I now refer to as my nemesai — tough as nails malcontents whose only reason for living involved the teasing, fighting and psychological hammering of those around them. At the time, I never thought my evil tormenters would ever be brought to justice. Until today.

And now it’s your turn to be a part of it as well.

It’s not often someone gets an opportunity to confront their nemesai. Usually, before the Internet, you had to hire a private investigator to track down said nemesai so that you could hover outside their crappy little trailer house on the end of Route 12 at three in the morning until they got home from that job at the docks so you could punch them in the face after years of expensive karate classes.

But today — there’s the Internet!

So I would like to take the opportunity in today’s “Words For Your Enjoyment” to allow all my readers the opportunity to call out (by name) those who tormented them in elementary school, junior high, high school, college, or even at an afterschool job. I urge each and every one of you to put their full names out here, let us know how horrible they were, and using the wondrous Google Page Rank that WFME possesses — any of them searching their name will most likely bring them here.

For my part, I would like to call out the following childhood bullies:

Jon Donnis: My next door neighbor. A little malcontent whose inability to grow tall caused him to lash out at those around him. On one particular day I asked to borrow ten cents from him in the lunch line so I could get milk and he launched into a tirade reminiscent of the “I’m Funny, How?” Joe Pesci speech in Goodfellas. “You need ten cents for what!? What, am I a bank!? I’m your little piggy bank!?” For some reason, the trauma convinced me that I then needed to give the kid ten cents back later that day — at which point sad little Pauly D knocked on his door and John Donnis slapped the ten cents out of my hand, yelling into my face and causing said referenced “me” to run home all teary eyed.

Mikey Miller: Lived at the end of the street. Any time you’d walk past his house and other kids were outside, he’d get urged by the others to start a fight with me. Every time I walked past him, a fist fight ensued. He, too, was a horrible little toe-headed kid who had no mind of his own, and solved everything with violence. Pu-taw! I spit on you, Mikey Miller.

Jonathan Goldberg: Also lived at the end of the street where all the kids hung out waiting for the bus to arrive for school in the morning. Convinced me to take my elaborate collection of baseball cards and throw them up into the air to a crowd of kids who clamored for the cards on the street. He explained to me, of course, in a perfect extortionist way that if by keeping kids busy chasing baseball cards (that would someday be worth thousands) it would probably keep fights from happening.

So, greetings to Jon Donnis, Mikey Miller and Jonathan Goldberg when/if you arrive here at WFME. I hope all your childhood tormentings affected you later in life in a kind-of karma-esque way. I hope someone looking up your name for references in a new job finds out just how unbalanced of a child you actually were.

Oh, and happy Friday!

So — what were the full names of the kids who bullied you? Let’s string ‘em up!

Posted under Bullies, Nemesai, WFYE. |