In 7th or 8th grade, we got a new student in class that had been in reform school previously. They put him next to me (we sat in pairs) because they thought I would "calm" him. When I refused to just give him answers to math problems and such, - I was willing to help him work out the answers, he wanted to copy mine - he started harassing me - both non-sexually (deflating my bike tires) and sexually (petting my hair and making lewd comments.)
At one point, when my head teacher was in the teacher's lounge to get/do something, I had had enough,and I simply marched through school, into the teacher's lounge without knocking (we weren't supposed to go there) and shouted that I refused to sit next to him ever again, and that I wouldn't go back to class until they moved my desk. They moved me, and he wasn't in class the next year, probably because he had led most of the boys in class to gamble and try drugs.
Part of his melt-down, though, came from me refusing to acknowledge him afterwards. I had read Jean Auel's The Clan of the Cave Bear, and I employed the you are dead to me-punishment on him. I looked right through him, didn't "hear" him when he spoke, ignored him in class and out of class. Drove him over the edge, I think, because it was probably the worst thing anyone could do to him. Most likely he had a family history of neglect, and a lot of what he was doing was acting out to get attention, and me refusing to give him attention must have seemed like the deliberate poking of a wound. In retrospect, I am not triumphant at what I achieved, but neither am I remorseful. I managed to take control of what happened to me, when so many times prior, with other boys, I had been told they harassed me because they liked me, and all the other bull girls get told to be conditioned into patriarchy.
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