Best Threads of '04 Tour bump!
Also, there should be NO DEFENSE OFFERED for these things. If you defend them it's not really a confession.
Another contribution:
When I was in 8th grade and was only 5'4" 105lbs, I got picked on quite a bit, and was friends with a couple of other kids that also got picked on. For the most part, I got along with everyone, but there are always a couple of kids with troubled home lives and premature puberty that would take out their anger and frustration on weaker kids, and at this point I was one of those weaker kids.
This big kid, he was on ALL of the sports teams. Loved them. Was about 6' tall in 8th grade. (The next year, my growth spurt would hit, and the year after my growth spurt when I saw him next he was still 6' and about 160lbs, while I was my current 6'4" 220). He made me and my best friend miserable, and one day after we'd both been punched in the stomach by this kid -- this was one of those things that would just go around schools, like guys hitting each other in the balls -- we decided that we were going to do something to hurt him. Not to make it stop or anything, because we knew that without this kid doing it the next biggest kid would probably take over, it's a law of nature, but just to HURT him.
We both had a class with him, and we made sure that one or the other of us always ended up in the row in front of him. We would fill in fake tests and quizzes for him whenever possible, and even steal his homework out of the pile and replace it with our altered version.
This continued the whole semester, and by winter, he was flunking. And he didn't understand it! He went to the teacher in tears, because he was going to -- oh yeah -- be INELIGIBLE for any sports! Well . . . wah lil fag0t?
No sports for him.
In retrospect, yeah, I'm sorry about it.
His parents were divorced, he came from a poor family; sports were all he had. But not at the time, not at all.