Who Would Jesus Stab?

When considering the theological thought experiment “What Would Jesus Do,” bear in mind that flipping over tables and chasing people around with a whip, according to all four Gospels, is not out of the question.

Which evokes a memory from my days in junior high school.

We had lunch in a multipurpose gym/auditorium/cafeteria, with long tables set out for us. I would go get my tray with its little dishes for the main course, the vegetables, and of course the all-important dessert.

Kids like dessert. And what is better than a dessert? Two desserts, of course. And I was a scrawny little thing, teased and picked on a lot, so guess where they might acquire a second one?

I would set my tray down, and quick as a bunny a hand would reach out to snaffle my dessert, or my roll, or some other item, and it would be passed from hand to hand down the table until it disappeared from sight.

I hit upon the tactic of taking one bite out of every item right away, hoping to discourage this thievery, but that didn’t always work.

Then one day when I sat down and saw someone reach out towards my dessert plate, I impulsively jabbed my fork in that direction. The sharp tines of the fork speared mere centimeters to the left of the offending hand.

My tormentor jerked his hand back in a panic, and I followed up by running around the end of the table and charging him, fork still in hand, in a screaming, berserker rage.

He ran out of the cafeteria, desperate to escape my wrath, and I turned back after failing to catch up with him.

I confess that the reason I barely missed his hand was that I had carefully aimed a bit to the side—I’m not a monster—and I deliberately paced myself so that he barely escaped my clutches.

I didn’t want to harm him. I just wanted to send a message.

That worked. I had no trouble of that kind after that.

They say it’s always best to stand up to bullies. That was pretty much the strategy I used.

It wasn’t always a perfect solution, mind you. Sometimes I got the ever-living snot pounded out of me.

But they usually did leave me alone after that, even then: I was too much trouble. Bullies tend to be stupid and lazy, preferring easy targets.

Nowadays you’d risk gang retaliation. But gangs weren’t a thing in my area back then. And schools have zero-tolerance policies now, so you’d also be risking expulsion.

It was a simpler time.