Getting Beat Up at 15

When I was 15 years old, I got beat up by a 17-year-old boy. My stepdad started dating again a few years after my mother was murdered. I was 12 years old when my mother died and when my stepdad started dating this ‘barmaid’ I was 15 years old. This woman had three kids, a 17-year-old son, a 16-year-old daughter, and a 9-year-old daughter. He moved them in with us. They fixed up the garage as a room for the boy, so he didn’t actually live in the house, but he had a key to the house. I didn’t really care for him or the 16-year-old girl, but I did get along fine with the 9-year-old girl. The boy was a country fried hick, and he wore cowboy boots all the time and carried a hunting knife on his belt and was always taking it out and flicking it open and threatening to ‘cut someone’…

So, one day, I didn’t go to school, I was not feeling well, and my stepdad said I could stay home from school. I was laying on the couch watching tv when I heard the door handle rattling and someone trying to get in the front door. I looked out the window and saw it was the boy. I opened the door, and he drew his fist back in a startled motion and said, “Girl, you scared me! I didn’t know anyone was at home.” I just shrugged and said, ‘awe boy, go on…’ Well, he started play hitting me in my face; acting like he was slapping me; just picking at me. So, I punched out at him to hit him, and he’d jump back so I’d miss him then he’d laugh and do it again. So, he kept doing this and then I decided to kick him since my leg was longer than my arm and as he jumped back, I missed again so I just turned to go back to the living room and decided to ignore him.

The next thing I know, he threw me against the wall and was kicking me and whaling on me with his fists. He kicked me so hard in my legs with his boots that I could not feel my legs at all. I fell down and had to craw to my dad’s bedroom and close and locked the door when he finally stopped. I was crying and massaging my legs trying to get the feeling back in them. I finally could stand up again. I picked up the phone on my dad’s bedside to call him at work and the boy picked up the phone line in the foyer by the front door. He was dialing the phone at the same time which caused my number not to go through. I opened the door and screamed at him, “You better let me call my dad!” He said, “I’m trying to call my mom!” So, I marched out of the bedroom and said, “Well, I’ll just go downtown and call from a pay phone!” When I got to the front door, he took my arm and slung me into the dining room and said, ‘You’re not going anywhere!’ so I ran to the kitchen and pretended to go out the back door but didn’t really go out. I slammed the door and then locked it. I waited until I heard him go out the front door, I ran to that door and locked that door. I waited until he got halfway across the street and then walked out on the porch and said, “You’d better run! You better not ever come back here! I’m going to call my dad and he’s going to kill you!”

I called my dad, and he came home and as he was pulling up the boy was coming back across the street, and he had one of his buddies with him. My dad said, ‘Get your knife out! Come on, let’s go! You want to beat up a little girl, why don’t you fight a man since you always want to prove you are a man with that knife.” He took the knife out and threw it away and said, “Awe Red, I don’t want to fight you! She kicked me in my balls, you’re a man you know how bad that hurts.”

After that my dad put me in Karate so I could defend myself. I didn’t really stay in it long enough to get very far but my brother went all the way to a third- or fourth-degree black belt. My stepsister, Sandy went pretty far as well, and she and my brother participated in Karate Tournaments and won trophies.

Bo and Sandy with one of the Karate trophies that Sandy won… Bo has plenty of trophies too.

This is my sister, Sherry (17), me (BG at 16), and Bo (15)…