The thought of my close friend being hurt for no reason boiled in my brain and tempted me to savagely destroy the antagonist. The irritation beleaguering me was so great, yet it wouldn’t be nearly as bad as the boredom I would have delt with if I had chosen to step in. At the same time, I couldn’t accept how I reacted to the incident. My friend Joe had just been pushed incredibly hard to the point of injury and I did nothing but walk away. Feeling the heart-drenching guilt from not doing anything, my life changed. From this experience, I now believe you should always stick up for your friends and never let people push them around or bully them. To this day I have not forgotten the pain from guilt.
It all started one morning as I walked down the stairs with a group of my friends just ahead of me. As I was reaching the last couple stairs, I sensed something wrong. Looking down, I saw that my friend Joe bumped Dakota, the kid two steps in front of him. Joe bumped Dakota accidentally. He was just joking with his friends and he happened to ever so slightly impact Dakota.

My friend quickly apologized but the arrogant jerk didn’t seem to care what the reason for bumping him was. Walking away from the bottom of the stairs, I witnessed Dakota thrust Joe straight into the wall from behind. He wasn’t prepared for this assault so he went dead on into the wall with his foot and head. This happened so fast that I didn’t think Dakota pushed Joe that hard. Presuming my friend was fine, I decided to get to class. Later in my first class, I found out my friend was seriously injured. He was bleeding out of his forehead and he couldn’t walk on his foot. I thought to myself, could Dakota have really hurt Joe that bad? If it was an accident then why would he make such a big thing of it? At that moment, my blood began to heat up and my heart began to speed up. “Who does that?!” I thought to myself. At the same time I also started to think, “Should I have done something? I guess I at least could have made sure he was alright.”

I had heard about this kid, Dakota, before. Nobody found him appealing or fun to be around except for all the jerks in the school. He was actually quite strong and he had hurt many kids before. One of my close friends said he heard that Dakota always bragged. He said, “I’ll beat up everyone and nobody is strong enough to fight me, specially the glasses-wearing nerds.” Joe wore glasses and he was very smart. Many of his friends called him a nerd but he didn’t mind because he knew they were just messing around. It was the beginning of the school year and I already couldn’t take this kid, I was ready to burst.

Throughout the day I thought of so many horrible things I could do to this a$$h013! I came up with some of the most painful things a teenage boy could think of yet, as much as I wanted to do them, I couldn’t. I had to keep reminding myself I was the smarter, more exceptional man. It killed me from the inside out. I swore if he was to ever do anything like that to any of my friends again I wouldn’t hold my self back and I would tear him up!

It kept playing in my mind over and over like an awesome action-packed-super-cool movie scene, the ones where someone goes to start a fight and the other guy goes all ju-jitsu on him, except this time, only one person got hurt. It wasn’t cool. Each time it played I thought of things I could have said to the Dakota like “It was an accident!” or “how about you push me and see what happens!” After thinking about it, I concluded that if I had said any of those things then I probably would have gotten into a major fight. Knowing that, I began to think of things I could have done to help my friend. I envisioned I could have helped him up or I could have gone and retrieved a teacher but I hadn’t. The thought of me not doing anything ruined my day, the anger drove me crazy! I wanted to choke this kid. Every time I walked by him, I had to resist the urge to smite his face inside out. I don’t know how I made it through the day without spilling his blood. After school that day, I came to terms with myself. Although I didn’t help my friend, at least I didn’t make it worst. It was done, to late to do anything. I also thought of how my mom would have flipped out on me if I had gotten into a fight. She would have punished me forever! She would have put me on lockdown! She would have taken all my entertainment stuff from me which would have almost killed me! I realized the smartest thing I should have done, and will do if this ever happens again, is to help my friend and scout a teacher or adult.

This little event that occurred in 10 minutes has changed my life forever. Now that I know how painful the guilt is, I will always stand up for my friends. I believe if you stand up for your friends then it makes you a true friend, a friend who cares. Personally I have never bullied anyone, but somehow this incident made me feel guilty. I promised myself from now on, that anytime my friends run into a problem and they need me, I’ll always be there. After all, isn’t this why they call me their “friend”? I believe