Imagine having a friend who turns on you and starts bullying you.

Would you try to ignore the bully, or would you find a way to get him to leave you alone for good?

In today’s story, one high school student comes up with a plan to get the school bully to leave him alone, and it was so effective that he felt a little bit bad about what he had done.

Let’s read the whole story.

Nerd becomes bully and I bring him down to earth

This took place in the mid 1990s when I was in high school in Alabama, and well, homophobia was rampant.

Also, I will be using real first names, but nothing else identifying.

So, let’s start in the late 80s.

Mike and I became friends because of band. We both played trumpet.

Mike was your stereotypical nerd and momma’s boy.

His mother picked his clothing to wear.

She controlled everything he did and he absolutely abused her as a spoiled brat sometimes.

Mike decided to play football.

Fast forward to our junior year.

After years of being in band and a couple marching in high school, Mike, the nerd, decided he wanted to be a bit more popular and he tried out for the football team.

I can’t blame him, I might have done the same thing.

Now Mike had about zero athletic talent, but since everyone that tries out makes the team, he was junior varsity B team wide receiver.

What happened?

The band laughed at him and the football team didn’t respect him either.

Mike let football go to his head.

After football/marching season finished, Mike came back in concert band.

He thought he was the BIG man because he played football.

He fit right in with a few of the misfit goofballs and then he had his little clique/gang.

That kept going and when he returned to marching band (no football) senior year, things were coming to a head.

Mike has become a bully.

He was full on bullying. So after school in the band room one day, he started up on me with two of his groupies and started throwing permanent markers at me when I was writing notes for my band section on the white board.

He wasn’t going to let the bullies get away with it.

One of them hit me and marked my jeans, basically ruining them.

I was fed up and I started chasing them through the school, eventually catching one of the groupies, (Samuel was his name) and holding him up against the wall by the throat getting him to try to apologize to me.

It was a bit of a Darth Vader moment and felt really good.

I might have hurt the guy had it not been for one of the teachers still in the school who heard us in the hallway and she broke it up.

I was surprised that I didn’t get into trouble because there was physical violence involved, but she did send a note home to my parents for them to be notified.

He had to give his parents the note.

So then, after things calm down at school I have to take the note home and so I did.

Mom and dad read the note and were quite shocked.

I then told them everything that had been going on, and they were really shocked because they thought Mike and I were friends.

They asked me what I was going to do about Mike because they, like I, thought that something should be done…

They all agreed on a plan.

And did I come up with a plan…

Remember when I told you at the beginning about homophobia?

I told my parents the plan and they WHOLEHEARTEDLY agreed to it!

The plan was that I wanted to drive to an ‘alternative’ bookstore on the south-side of the city we lived in to get a rainbow flag sticker.

The sticker was going on Mike’s car.

Scared to death because I was around gay people (for what was then a very scary time for me and mom and dad still thought I was straight) I ventured into the bookstore and bought the sticker.

The sticker was then to be sliced into two thin strips to put on Mike’s front and rear license plates on his car… you know, like the kind you might see from some people in the LGBT community have.

On a school night at 3am, my sister and I went to Mike’s house and she looked out for me and I placed the stickers on Mike’s car.

Mike didn’t notice right away, but everyone else did!

Fast forward a few hours.

I get to school a bit early and wait for the fun to happen.

Mike drove in, completely oblivious, and parked.

You might as well have shined a spotlight on Mike because word spread like wildfire that Mike was gay.

Mike didn’t know who did it.

People were laughing at him, making fun of him and he was instantly shunned by everyone.

Now after a few days, people did start to get word of who pulled a prank on him and yes, it was me.

What was funnier is that people kept the ruse going! NO ONE told Mike who it was!

Mike’s bullying effectively stopped. Problem solved.

He eventually told Mike what he did.

I did realize that I shouldn’t have gone that far.

I could have caused him to commit suicide and I would have never forgiven myself if it had happened.

So a few weeks later, I got him aside and told him that I did it and why.

Let’s just say that he never bothered me or anyone else again because I told him that if he messed with me or anyone else, I would bring it down harder on him.

Mike’s life turned out okay.

For the record, Mike is straight.

He’s got two little girls that I know of and is living a happy life, and I’m glad for him.

He just needed to be brought down from his pedestal a bit.

Also, I know that as a gay man, this really goes against what the LGBT community is about and I was playing into the hatred and fear of LGBT people, but times were different then.

Gays were still being harmed in Alabama and AIDS was still a death sentence.

That kind of revenge wouldn’t work today, but it’s great that the bullying stopped and nobody got hurt.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.

This person found the revenge boring.

Another reader commented on Alabama.

He definitely didn’t help anyone who really was gay.

At least he wasn’t bullied anymore.

That said, he might have been able to accomplish this in a better way.

If you liked that post, check out this post about a rude customer who got exactly what they wanted in their pizza.