It was January 1979, the first day of spring semester sophomore year and of Mrs. Coombs' health class. We were surveying the room, seeing who our classmates would be and choosing seats. Some kids started teasing me.

This was not new. As one of the smallest, geekiest kids in our class, I had been a favorite target of bullies all my life. In the early years, they made me eat dirt or made me late for class. In high school, it was mostly verbal. By the way, I hear schools no longer tolerate bullying. Good for them.

I didn't know today's bullies—maybe they were in a different year. Or maybe I'd encountered them before and I just didn't recognize them, because I have a touch of face blindness. Sometimes when I'm watching a movie, a character appears in the first scene and when he shows up again 15 minutes later I think he's a new character.

But their routine was familiar even if they were not. The first two made the usual sarcastic comments about the way I was dressed, the way I talked, or my haircut. The third was a little more original: "Hey, Henderson's cool. His dad drives a Porsche!" It was an odd jeer, but I had given up long before on understanding what goes on in the heads of popular kids. I guess it's a badge of honor to come from a Porsche-driving family and this kid was making fun of the fact that he could tell by looking at me that I didn't. If that's what it was, he was not wrong. My dad drove an inherited Dodge Dart; we wouldn't know a Porsche if we were sitting in one.

In any case, I knew what they were doing, and I responded by rote: gave them a dismissive eye roll and turned away.

But the harassment continued. In fact, it continued all semester. Through the drug unit. Through the sex unit. And it wasn't just the taunting. One day, I took off my shoes in class and they threw one of them out the window of the portable into the rain. Another time, they applied a classic kick me sign to my back. For my part, I agressively ignored them, in the most belittling way I could.

At the end of the last day of class, they were getting in their final assaults and a girl came up to me and Mr. His Dad Drives a Porsche and asked, "Why do you guys hate each other? You've been fighting all semester, and I can't figure out why." I said, "Ask him -- he's been harassing me since day one." He responded, "He's a stuck up jerk!" Really? He didn't even know me. He continued, "He and his dad once gave me a ride to school in their Porsche, and when I brought it up he acted like he was embarrassed to know me. He thinks he's better than me." I informed him that he had mistaken me for someone else, because nothing like that ever happened. The bell rang and we both walked away, shaking our heads, and I never saw him again.

I spent the next 24 hours trying to figure out what the hell had happened. Did I have a doppelganger out there? Had this kid had a psychotic break? And then it came to me.

In October 1978, my main teacher and mentor Mr. Bennett discovered that his friend Tom Salmon knew the guy who ran Allied Data, a Lacey computer company, and thought if I met the guy, he might give me a job. Tom Salmon was a shop teacher, and as the shops were far from the main drag of the campus, shop teachers were rarely seen. If you weren't a shop student, you probably would not recognize Mr. Salmon. I know I didn't the day he drove me to Allied Data during lunch to meet his friend. I didn't recognize his car either; I only knew it was a perversely shaped foreign job and was impractical because it had only two seats.

On the way back, it began to rain. Mr. Salmon spotted a kid walking down Ruddell Road and said, "He's probably going to the school. Should we give him a ride?" I said, "Good idea," so we pulled over to the curb and I called out and asked the moist student if he would like a ride to Timberline. He accepted, so we both squeezed into the passenger seat and rode the rest of the way to school.

When we got out, the stranger turned to me and thanked me for the ride. That was strange, because I was just a passenger like him, but looking at it now from his point of view, it's obvious what happened. Of course the middle-aged man driving me to school was my father. I had seen the kid walking in the rain and said, "Hey Dad -- that's my classmate. We should give him a ride," relishing the chance to show off our Porsche.

It could have been the beginning of a beautiful friendship. Someone to defend me against kids who thought they were cool picking on me. Instead, ...