Jimmy the Badass Bleeder

There were some kids back in cripple elementary school that even I felt sorry for. I felt sorry for the bleeders, better known as the hemophiliacs. I mean, all the kids who were sent away to cripple school were considered to be “fragile,” but they were the fragilest

Nobody wanted to even come near those kids because we all feared that if we touched a bleeder the wrong way they would gush blood from the nearest orifice like a geyser. Nobody had ever actually seen one of the bleeder kids gush blood, but nobody wanted to be the first to find out if it was true.

The bleeders weren’t allowed to play any rough games like dodgeball in PE. That’s another reason I felt sorry for them. The fun games in PE were the rough games. But the bleeder kids were only allowed to keep score or play checkers with the brittle bones kids, who also weren’t allowed to play any rough games.

One of the most legendary kids at the cripple elementary school was Jimmy the Badass Bleeder. He was an older kid, like a seventh grader, so he mostly hung around the other end of the school which was fine with me because I was afraid of him. It seemed like every week a buzz went around the school about how Jimmy was sent to the principal’s office again for trying to pick a fight with someone. It was a win/win situation for Jimmy. He knew he could be any kind of asshole he wanted to be to the other crippled kids and nobody would fight back because imagine the kind of trouble you could get into if you punched out a bleeder and he gushed blood all over the place. You could probably get sent to the electric chair for something like that!

Legend had it that Jimmy was a punk who tripped kids and snatched away their lunches and stuff like that. If everybody was going to be afraid of him, he wanted it to be for the right reason, dammit! It was gonna be on his terms.

Well then one day Jimmy was gone. I don’t think he graduated so he must’ve gotten kicked out. That made him even more legendary because it was pretty damn hard to get kicked out of the cripple school. You’d have to be a super badass to make that happen. I don’t know what became of him. I imagine he’s dead because he could only successfully pull off his particular badass bit if everybody he picked a fight with first knew he was a bleeder. So unless he always wore a t-shirt that said CAUTION: I’M A BLEEDER, no doubt somebody punched him out. Did he gush blood all over the place?



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