「故事·听力」I Made My Classmate's Life A Nightmare And I Am Ashamed

I Made My Classmate's Life A Nightmare And I Am Ashamed

This is Stan, and until recently he was the biggest bully in his school. 

So he was the guy who bullied other people. He’s too ashamed to go into detail about how he did it, but a lot of the other kids were scared of him. He regularly picked on people who he thought were losers or weirdos, and he even had other guys who followed him and “helped” him with it. 

It made him feel like he was the king of the school, and if someone tried to stand up to him – well, they had no chance. Even the teachers knew about it, but they didn’t really try to do anything, because they knew that even if they called Stan’s mom she wouldn’t care that much.

And, well, the fact was that she had good reasons not to care. Stan’s dad left the family when he was a kid, and it was really hard for his mom to make a living to support him and his brothers. He didn’t really like being at home, so he spent most of his time with his friends.

His teachers mostly ignored him, because they thought that he wasn’t very smart and basically didn’t have a future. And to be honest, that’s what Stan thought about himself as well.

There was this guy in Stan’s school, his name was Julian, and Stan HATED him. He was this small guy with glasses who always got good grades, and all the teachers loved him. This really irritated Stan, and so Julian became his next victim.

Stan would always sit next to him, and he used the opportunity to make fun of him in many different ways, like calling him names and taking away his stuff and, well...bullying him. Regularly. Like, every day. And Julian never did anything; he just asked him to stop – quite politely, too scared to even look at him. This only annoyed Stan even more.

So this continued, like, for months on end, and it got to the point where Julian would usually sit in the classroom during breaks so that Stan wouldn’t have a chance to mess with him.

And then one day, Julian stopped coming to school. Stan thought that maybe he had got sick, but he didn’t care that much – he wasn’t the only guy like that in the school.

One day, Stan’s mom got really angry with him, basically because of everything – his grades, his attitude, everything; and he didn’t want to hear it, so he left home when she fell asleep.

He was hanging out outside, angry at everyone who had normal lives. He knew that all he had to do was to say sorry to his mom so that she would let him go back in, but he didn’t want to. It was getting quite cold outside and he was really hungry, so he tried calling his friends – maybe one of them would let him stay at their place for the night. But all of them said “no,” without even offering a good reason why.

As he was wandering around, he noticed Julian coming out of the store. He didn’t see him, so Stan walked up to him, and he was visibly frightened. Probably because there was no one else around, Stan didn’t feel the need to mock him, so they just talked about stuff and he told him about his situation.

He asked Julian if he could crash at his place for the night. He clearly didn’t want him in his house, but...he was just a nice guy, you know? So he said “yes,” and they went to his place. Stan was really SHOCKED to see that Julian lived in even worse conditions than him. His house was very old and in a bad condition, and it seemed like he was alone there. He asked where his parents were, and Julian said that they were usually out during the night, drinking. He almost didn’t talk to him at all, but he gave him some food and made sure he was comfortable. Stan finally asked him why he didn’t go to school. He said: “Um...well, because of you…”

He really hadn’t expected that. This dude was living worse than him, yet he was like, super-smart and also kinda of a good guy, and he couldn’t even say “sorry” to him. He thanked Julian in the morning and told him that he wouldn’t mess with him anymore because he was a good guy.

Stan went home the next day. Soon, Julian was back at school, too. His friends started making fun of him again, and Stan told them to leave him alone. At that point, they started mocking Stan as well, and for the first time he felt the same as all the people he’d bullied.

Eventually he stopped hanging out with those guys, and stopped bullying people entirely. Not like, right away, it’s just that every time he wanted to mock someone, he felt kinda guilty.

Stan hoped that he and Julian would become friends, but it turned out that Julian really didn’t want to after all he’d done to him. And he gets that.

Some time had passed since then, and life has got much better. He’s almost solved his problems with his mom, and his grades have improved a little. Plus, he now tries to defend those that he used to bully before.