My best short story

My oldest grudge goes back to when I was a little ninth grader in a small town with a P.E. teacher who refused to fudge the numbers.

Refrigerator Perry is credited with saying that even when he was little, he was big.

Well, when I was little, I was especially small, and the fact that I can tell you exactly how short I was at the end of ninth grade is the source of what I’ve come to regard as my oldest and perhaps my favorite grudge.

Oooh, that sounds bad, doesn’t it? My favorite grudge. I will admit that I have more misgivings about it now than I used to as I’ve come to understand the negative impact that I’ve experienced from the heavy, bone-deep resentments I carried around not for weeks or months, but years and in one case, decades. This isn’t one of those, though. It’s a story about a 15-year-old boy, a tape measure and a sweat-suited shrew who did not feel inclined to round up.