Big Mac and Hunchback
“Okay, I think that’s good.” I backed away from the wall where we had just placed the last poster. Next to me was Wilson McDonahue, the biggest bully in Middletown High. Or, at least he used to be.

I was cleaning up the scraps when Wilson, known to most people as “Big Mac”, tapped me on the shoulder. “There’s one last poster that I made,” he stated with his hands behind his back. “It’s for you.” He pulled the bright pink poster board from behind his back and turned it around. THANK YOU PEYTON was written in big black sharpie letters across the top. The words were underlined three times, to add extra emphasis. The corners were rounded, and each side was traced with a different color line. It wasn’t the best poster ever, but I liked the attempt.

I never imagined someone like Big Mac writing a thank-you poster for me. ‘Thank You’, from the biggest known bully in school. ‘Thank You’, from the kid who made fun of my ex-marine father of what seemed like everyday last year. ‘Thank You’, from the football player who not only made me cry, but my father, too.

A month before I had started my freshman year here, my mom had been walking across the street to our town’s supermarket and had been hit by a drunk driver. After investigations and autopsies and everything else, my father and I were asked to visit the hospital, where they told us about the bad news. Her ribs had been cracked, and her chest was lacking stability. Her skull was cracked, and she never became conscious. They confirmed that Debbie Berkeley had been put into a severe coma. No one knew how long it would last, but I thought that she was a goner. As if it couldn’t get any worse, my mother worked as a lawyer, so she brought in all of our money. My father at the time had been just recently discharged from the military with scoliosis from all of the heavy lifting. His spine was crooked, and possibly cracked in some places. My father was always hunched over just the tiniest bit, but it seemed like he didn’t really care. Since there was not much money coming in at the time, my father decided to get a job. He searched all of the newspapers for local listings, but no one would accept him. The only place that would was my school, as a janitor. He didn’t really want to waste his time cleaning up after people, but desperate times call for desperate measures.

During the first week of 9th grade, I thought everything was going well. It was actually going too well, that I was really scared. All of my friends had either been beaten up or already failed two tests. I was a straight A student, and no one had even come near me. I saw my father in the hallway almost everyday, which was a nice change. “Hello Peyton,” he would always say leaning his knobby, old elbows on the end of a mop.

“Hi, Daddy,” I would always say back, with smile on my face. But I wasn’t smiling for long.

On October 11th, about a month after school started, I went home to find my father really upset, almost in tears. “What’s wrong, Daddy?”

“Oh, it’s nothing sweetheart.”

“Okay…” I wandered up to my room wondering why my dad would lie to me. But I wondered even more about why he would… cry.

He came home almost in tears everyday for a while. It’s weird to see an ex-marine cry, considering everything they go through, so when I came home every day to see him this upset, it was pretty overwhelming. I knew something serious was going on.
On the day before Winter Break, I left my eighth period class five minutes early “to go to the bathroom”. I walked past many classrooms as I headed towards the main Janitorial Closet in the West Wing. I heard a noise just before I turned the corner. I stopped, quietly listening in with my back to the wall and my right cheek rubbing up against the cold, hard surface.
“What is wrong with you? Hunched over like that? What’s your problem Hunchback?” It sounded like a boy, not much older than me.
The voice of a scared man got interrupted. “There isn’t any reason why you should be –“
“Hey! I don’t want to hear it!”
I slowly peeked around the corner to see the culprit threatening the victim. The victim, my father, appeared to be frightened by the culprit, a boy wearing a white and black football jersey. He was a sophomore; I knew that, because I had remembered seeing “McDonahue 27” written on the back of the jersey whenever I went to the high school football games in the past. I remembered that when I was in eighth grade, I saw him playing his first game.
“Now I want you to shut up so I can talk!” the football player had yelled. No one had ever talked to my dad the way Wilson had. Just because my father had a disability didn’t mean that Wilson could treat him with disrespect. It didn’t mean that anyone should treat him with disrespect. He was still a person, just like Wilson, me, my deceased mom… everybody else. I HAD to help him, even if it meant risking my life. I was going to try my best, but I couldn’t figure out any way to face my fears.
“I’ve got to go now Hunchback, but I’ll see you tomorrow okay?”
“No.” My dad wasn’t going to let this over-sized tenth grader get to his head.
“I WILL SEE YOU TOMORROW, RIGHT?” the football player shouted. At this point, I really didn’t understand how no one heard this conversation.
“SIR, YES SIR!” my dad spat back in his military voice.
I honestly felt really bad. Yes, I was upset for my father, but I was more upset for the McDonahue kid. How could he have the nerve to go out and make fun of my dad like that? Did he not know what scoliosis was? What would make him so insecure and cold-hearted that he would actually want to make someone feel bad about their existence?
I realized that those questions had to be answered and they wouldn’t get answered if I sat in my room everyday thinking about them.
That same day I went to the old and cruddy drawer of my desk and pulled out a partially torn piece of notebook paper. I titled what was left of it as “Questions to Ask Wilson When I Got the Courage to Do So”. It was a really long title, but it got me to the point. I wrote down the few questions that had already sprung up into my mind like flashing strobe lights. I left several spaces and underneath I wrote another title, “How to Get the Courage to Talk with Wilson”. My mind went blank for what seemed like several hours, but ended up being about two minutes. I had checked the clock several times, only to notice the skinny, red second hand moving a slight bit every time I looked at it. I had to figure out something.
I decided to “wing it”, because I had to help my father, and the sooner I did so, the better. Confronting the culprit would be the only thing I could do at this point to help out the victim. Before homeroom, I found Wilson wandering the halls thinking about all of the possible ways to humiliate my dad today. This had been my only chance.
“You’re Wilson, correct?” I called from one end of the hallway.
“Wilson?! Don’t you ever call me Wilson again, okay little lady?” He was all up in my face now.
“What do you want me to call you then?” I asked.
“They call me Big Mac, small fry.”
Since when was this McDonald’s? I thought. “You want a drink with that?”
“Very funny, little twerp. Now what do you want? I’m busy,” Big Mac said, clearly not busy.
“Anyways, why are you always picking on that janitor?” I didn’t want to express my true identity yet.
“Why does it matter?”
I sighed and crossed my arms. I thought Big Mac had sensed my attempt at an intimidating measure, because he finally acceded after a moment of silence.
“Fine, do you really want to know?” He continued without my response, searching the halls to make sure no one was still there. In a slightly softer voice he mentioned, “I bully because my life is hard. My mom died when I was nine, my dad is an alcoholic and has been in jail twice, my younger sister has been fighting leukemia for about two months now, my older sister has scoliosis –“
“Wait, what?!”
“Leukemia. It’s a disease where –“
“No, after that…about your older sister.”
“Yeah, she has scoliosis…so what?”
This sounded fishy to me. Why would he make fun of my dad for having scoliosis when he clearly knows what it is?
“Your sister has scoliosis? That’s what my dad has! Why would you make fun of him when you know what scoliosis is?!”
“What are you talking about? I’ve never made fun of your dad! I don’t even know who he is!”
Uh oh, I blew my cover. “Yes you do! Mr. Berkeley, the janitor? That‘s my father! I’ve watched you bully him! Do you know how hard it is to see my father come home everyday with tears in his eyes?”
“He has scoliosis? I didn’t know that! I guess it just makes me feel better to overpower other people, you know, to make them feel the same misery that I do,” Big Mac confessed.
“Well, I’m going to be late for class. I guess I will catch up with you later,” and before I turned away I added, “and I better not see you upsetting my father again.”
I had power-walked to my first class, even though it was already almost over. Behind me I thought I heard Big Mac whisper an “I’m sorry”, but I didn’t turn back because I knew the chances of those words coming out of his mouth were slim to none. I was happy for myself and what I had done, because that was the first day that my father had come home with a smile on his face.
Seeing that smile was heart-warming. It showed a sense of relief for him, and knowing he was relieved made me feel amazing. I rushed up the wooden stairs to my room where the old desk sat in the corner. I pulled out the drawer where the piece of notebook paper was, and tore my questions to pieces. I slept well that night, knowing that there wasn’t anything for me to worry about.
I had given it about a week to see if it was official. I waited to see if Big Mac had really changed. The next Monday, I had seen him wandering like a loner in the North Wing.
“Hey, Big Mac, I wanted to talk to you.”
“Oh, hey, listen… so I ‘m really sorry for being an idiot to your dad. I was stupid for making him feel bad. Last night, I thought about ways to fix this whole problem; ways to make this whole thing better. The best idea that came to my mind was to have a fundraiser or something to find the cure for scoliosis.”
I didn’t realize how smart a jock like Big Mac could be. “I love it! We could do like benefit concerts or something!”
The idea stuck, and we eventually received the permission to use the school auditorium on the third Wednesday of every month. The first concert kicked off two months after our conversation, and we have been doing them ever since. To this day, Big Mac and I have raised almost a quarter of a million dollars towards the cure for scoliosis.
Big Mac realized that being a bully isn’t cool. It doesn’t make you feel better about yourself and it ends up making you feel horrible instead. I found out that standing up to your fears is what matters. Judging someone by the way they act isn’t right, and no one knows what’s actually going on behind that hard-as-leather skin. No one knows how people really feel. Together, Big Mac and I just didn’t save my father’s life, but we’re planning on saving thousands of others.