Emotional Paper First Draft

Hatred is an odd emotion. Many years after it rears its ugly head it can still remain in the mind, a dull sensation that brings back memories tucked away deep, deep inside us. For some it is easy to maintain this hate but for others it slowly slips away. Who is better off? Those who forget and forgive their torturer or those that remain weary and cautious, preventing future ordeals? I personally am the former. A person who has to make an effort to maintain their anger towards others even those that I swear never to forgive. However, there is one that still haunts me today.

It was the summer of ’05 when I met the spawn of the devil. His name is Winston. At first Winston seemed like a fair enough guy, a little strange but oh my, I was certainly mistaken. By his evil doings my stay at nerd camp, a place I thought could never go wrong, was ruined.

The progression of dismay was not slow and by the second day I knew where this was going. Winston freely expressed his extreme right wing views, sexist opinions, and religious intolerance. And when I say freely I mean he actually searched out things he could make fun of or taunt people about. Let me give a few examples. Winston strongly and openly believed that all women only belonged in the kitchen, taunted people for being uncircumcised, and worst of all, constantly commented on how great of a man he believed Hitler was. Was he trying to be funny? Did he think he entertained people with his cruel words of hatred?

Winston was intent on hurting those around him, both physically and mentally. He frequently smashed chips into the carpet and blamed them on others. Routinely he would find someone else’s book and smother it with peanut butter. At one point in time he shot me in the eye with a rubber band because I tried to get back my shoes...which he stole from me. Worst, worst of all was what he did when we tried to make amends to our counselor.

Around the second week into camp my group decided to give our counselor a gift as an apology from the group. Everyone contributed except Winston. We decided a cool watch would be good since he wore a spider man one from McDonalds. Winston managed to ruin this for everyone. When we gave our counselor the gift Winston decided to take all the credit even though he didn’t contribute a single cent to the gift and he explicitly agreed not to contribute. If that wasn’t enough, we later found out that he stole an item valued over one-hundred dollars from the store we got the watch from. Of course he never got punished, or at least on his own. Our counselor thought it would help the group if he punished everyone at once. He thought we would encourage each other to act more civil even though it was Winston who was the source of every single problem that occurred.

In the end I couldn’t take it. One day while walking to rec. (or something like that) Winston thought it would be fun to issue a boat load of insults and taunts to me. I issued a punch to him- happiest moment of my life. Unfortunately for me (but fortunately for Winston because he was a little shrimp) my counselor pinned us against the wall in order to quell the fight.

Winston didn’t come back to camp the next year, or the year after that. Some say he was black listed, some say he was too afraid his reputation from last year would follow him. Nobody knows but we were all glad that we never had to see him again. And that’s my story about Winston.