John got back from school and as usual he went straight to the kitchen and his milk and cookies. Well, he really was a high school freshman but he looked like an eleven-year old, people treated him like an eleven-year old so why couldn’t he act like an eleven-year old at times? He liked milk and cookies. As he was slurping his milk and stuffing his mouth with cookies his mother asked him how school had been. John, who was somewhat absentminded or if you want to be nice ”sometimes” got lost in his thoughts, started thinking back and to his surprise he realized it had actually been a very good day. John’s school-days quite seldom were very good.

Small, scrawny, no good at sports, no good in classes, no friends he was the favorite target of the bullies, ignored by the rest, including the teachers. The reason he kept his hair so short was so they couldn’t pull it. However, this morning when he was waiting for the school bus the other kids just looked strangely at him. Since there really were too many kids for the school bus John usually wound up in the worst place, squashed up against a window or barely getting a few inches of seat thus ”half-sitting” to school. This day John got a bench all of his own.

Going into school to his locker no one tripped him or pushed him. Some of the students, especially the girls even smiled at him. John was a bit surprised when he was called to the Principal before the first class. John never really understood why the Principal wanted to talk to him. Was he transgendered? What’s that? Being a girl in a boy’s body? Weird! Bullied? Of course he was! Why he hadn’t said anything about it? John had but since no one ever backed up his version of events he got told off for making false accusations so why should he bother? Political statement? ??? Then the Principal started to ask something but broke off in mid-sentence and sent John back to class telling him to report any new occurrences of bullying to the Vice Principal. The Principal could be heard saying something about “hate crime” and “end of career” and starting to make calls to teachers and others as John left.

An hour later John had reason to see the Vice Principal. This time he had a couple of cheerleaders backing him up. This was strange since the cheerleaders usually were like the Three wise monkeys; See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No …ehem.. well, they were cheerleaders so two out three wasn’t bad. This time however they acted very protectively towards little John. At the beginning of the school-day there had been 1034 students at the high school. By the end of the day there were 1029. The once very good prospects for the school wrestling team suddenly weren’t that bright any longer.

The rest of the day was uneventful. The bullies carefully stayed out of John’s way. For some reason some of the boys Johns sometimes talked with looked angrily at him as did some other boys and girls. On the other hand some of the students who the day before just could have walked over him appeared friendly. The newly protective cheerleaders asked him to sit with them at lunch. Since they mainly talked about make-up and boys he didn’t contribute much but he wasn’t sitting alone.

In class the teachers paid extra attention to John. Since he couldn’t fade away as usual he discovered, to his surprise, that the relationship of numbers could be rather interesting, that Ms Brown in Social Studies in fact was quite witty and funny but only if you really listened to what she said and in History class Mr Grey got John talking about the background of various flags; the Union Jack a combination of the cross of Saint Andrew and that of Saint George, the blood-dripping legend of the Latvian flag, the Danish (the oldest national flag) as a sign of Divine intervention on behalf of the Danes when invading pagan Estonia, that the Norwegian flag used to have a part called the “herring sallad” when in union with Sweden … Well, let’s just say this was a subject John perhaps knew a little bit too much about. His teacher was impressed though and showed it. John decided to put a little bit extra effort into his history home-work in the future.

After school one of the senior boys, best known for his rather spectacular break-up with his former boy-friend, offered John a lift home. Since John’s mother had told him to always use the bus and never get into the car of someone he didn’t know John politely declined. Especially since his next-door neighbor Mary wanted to discuss her new dress with him. The trip home passed very quickly.

So when John thought back on the day he was surprised to realize that it actually had been a really good day.

When he left the kitchen table his mother asked him:
- You are aware that you wore your sister's skirt to school today instead of your shorts?
- Oh!