The last memory I still have of my first month of being a transfer student at Broad Ripple H.S. in January 1963, during the last month of my first term as a high school sophomore, is of feeling myself being unexpectedly pushed and shoved hard in an unfriendly way, from behind, by some white freshman or sophomore student guy, who was about my height and weight, as I was putting a textbook inside my assigned locker in the school hallway. And, when startled by feeling myself being pushed and shoved hard from the back without warning, I turned around suddenly to see who was pushing me and to find out why I was being suddenly shoved, my elbow accidentally hit the nose of the white bully, accidentally causing his nose to bleed. So with his nose bleeding, he quickly made his retreat from the space where my locker was located in the school hallway.
Although in my previous years as an elementary, junior high and first term high school student within New York City's public schools in Queens in the 1950's and early 1960's I had never been especially targeted in a school hallway in this way by either another student I was acquainted with or by some student, like this particular white bully, that I had never met before, I pretty much immediately forgot about the incident.
But about a week later in late January 1963, while I was in the middle of delivering that weekday afternoon's edition of the Indianapolis Times newspaper on my route and walking back from a subscriber's home to my parked bicycle near the street, on either Winthrop, Guilford or Carrolton Avenue, I suddenly noticed the same white bully who had shoved me inside Broad Ripple's school hallway, jumping out of a double-parked car on the street, that was driven by a teen-aged companion, and rushing toward me. And then he began to punch me until he apparently felt he'd proven to his teen-aged male companion in the car that he had gained revenge for the bloody nose my elbow had accidentally given him inside the Broad Rippel H.S. hallway.
The white bully then ran back to the double-parked car on the street that was driven by his teen-aged male companion and jumped back into the front passenger seat of the car, just before his male companion drove the car away quickly. And after the car disappeared, I finished delivering that day's issue of the Indianapolis Times to those subscribers that I still had not yet delivered newspapers to before being assaulted; and then rode on my bicycle back to my home.
In retrospect, I probably could have told my parents about being punched by the white bully, filed a complaint with the police, gone to Dean Jackson's office at Broad Ripple and told him about this out-of-school incident involving the Broad Ripple freshman or sophomore who had previously shoved me inside the school by my locker, or telephoned Mr. Evans at the Indianapolis Times office to notify him about this assault on an Indianapolis Times newspaper carrier.
But not having suffered any particular injuries from the white bully's flurry of out-of-school punches, and having previously been socialized to not be a "tattle tale," a "stool pigeon," an "informer," or someone who ran to adult authority figures like parents, teachers, deans or cops to resolve conflicts with fellow students or playmates, I ended up telling no one about this out-of-school bullying incident.. And since I never encountered or ever noticed this particular white guy either inside Broad Ripple H.S. (since it turned out he and I were never scheduled to be in the same classroom at any time) or on the street outside Broad Ripple again before my family moved back to New York City in June 1964 , and was also never bothered while delivering the Indianapolis Times on my newspaper route again, memory of this particular bullying incident quickly seemed to recede; and it seemed not to have impacted my life's direction in a significant way.
Ironically, it was only when watching James Dean in the Rebel Without A Cause movie again in the 21st century that I began to, retrospectively, recall and then reconsider why I had been particularly targeted in the Broad Ripple school hallway and, later on the street after school, by this white student, who didn't know me from Adam, only a week or two after I first began attending Broad Ripple as a transfer student in January 1963.
An individual high school student who has transferred from another high school in another neighborhood, another city or another state is less likely to know other students who might align with him or defend him in response to being picked on or targeted by a student or group of students who might neurotically get their kicks out of bullying others, than a student who is not a newly arrived transfer student at the high school; and who is, thus, more likely to be able to call on other students who have attended the same grade schools with him, in previous years, to align with him in response to any attempt by bullies to target him. So that might explain why, like the James Dean character in Rebel Without A Cause, I was immediately targeted by some freshman or sophomore Broad Ripple student misfit who was apparently looking for some student to bully, after he apparently had taken notice, unbeknownst to me, that I was a newly-arrived student at the school in the last month of the fall term in early 1963.
