Max Thames:  

I spent my high school years in the background. I tried to stay out of the way of bullies (and there were a couple) since I only weighed 145 lbs. I was a good student, well liked by teachers, but not so much by certain other students (particularly the "not so smart" ones). Since I was small in stature, and somewhat "nerdy". I got picked on on occasion but only had one actual fight. A guy named Dan McCarty picked me at random to beat up. I didn't really even know him but he stalked me for months, during my sophomore year, to fight him. I had no idea why. Finally, I realized that he would not leave me alone, until he had his conquest. On the appointed day, we met after school. I joked around and pretended to fight, since I really didn't know how. He finally punched me in the nose once (which bled profusely), and asked me if I had had enough. I replied that I had and that he had not accomplished anything but proving that he was a bully in front of a lot of kids. He looked at me oddly and shook my hand. From that day forward, he was nice to me. Go figure! Romantically, I was a failure through my junior year, since girls seemed to gravitate toward me for either advice or to use me to make their boyfriends jealous. an example would be my unrequited love for Janet Thurman. As you may recall, we were always assigned to "home room" alphabetically, which always seated me between Shirley Thompson and Janet. We had been seated this way since the 2nd grade. I didn't think about Janet much during the 7th and 8th grade. She was av...Expand for more