The Fate of Your High School Bully
and of Several Generations of Butterflies
Now Rests in Your Hands

by Peter Alsante

Remember that kid who tormented you all those years ago at school?

Who teased you, beat you up, repeatedly pulled your pants down in public, causing immeasurable psychological damage? You know the one.

Guess what he or she is doing right now. They’re not thinking about you. In fact, they never do. They hardly even remember you. But you remember them. You sure do.

Since we know what they’re not doing, want to know what they are doing? They’re eating Wheaties. The breakfast of champions. And it’s not even breakfast time.

Can you fucking believe it? I bet you can.

And if someone came along and reminded them about what they put you through, you know what they’d say? They’d say ‘who?’ or maybe ‘oh yeah!’ and then they’d laugh and go back to the Wheaties and forget about you again forever.

Like the piece of shit they are.

Are you good and mad now? You should be, considering the capacity for joy that was taken from you by them at such a young age, and never returned.

But fret not, because I come with news.

They have a rare disease. Very rare. And terminal. They just don’t know it yet. The doctors don’t know it yet either.

But when they find out, one thing will be certain. They’re going to need a new pancreas. And it can’t just be any pancreas. It has to be a very specific type of pancreas that only a handful of people in the world have.

Prayers finally answered, right? Not so fast.

A woman who has that special type of pancreas is going to die on the exact right day in the exact same city where your bully will be hospitalized. She’ll be walking along when a beautiful butterfly will flutter by and, distracted, she’ll step right in front of a city bus and bam! Your bully’s got a new pancreas.

Un-fucking-believable, right?

But get this.

You’re going to encounter that very same butterfly tomorrow. Yup, it’s going to land right in your path, in a ray of sunshine on the sidewalk and you’ll now know that it’s not just a butterfly but the butterfly. The one that will allow your bully to go on living in this world, with even more reason now to eat Wheaties and celebrate their champion status whenever they choose because, not only do they still not give a shit about some loser from high school–you, to be clear–but they’ve now beaten an ultra rare, almost unbeatable disease.

But only if the butterfly lives. The one you’ll encounter tomorrow. Which will land within easy stomping distance for you.

See where this is going? I think you do.

Now there’s a wrinkle to all this. Should you kill that butterfly tomorrow and, as a result, the organ donor doesn’t die, and your bully never receives the special pancreas and they die, then their children will grow up filled with a rage they’ll spend years taking out on society, culminating in their involvement in an incident that will wound dozens and ruin the sport of baseball for dozens more at a Mets game.

But there’s a wrinkle to the wrinkle, so try to stick with me.

As result of the whole Mets game fiasco, the younger of the two children of the dead bully will suddenly veer from the troubled path he’s been on and return to school to study advanced genetics, where he’ll find a cure for the ultra-rare disease that killed his father. And while the cure will only save a handful of people each year, one of them will go on to become a tremendous relief pitcher for–get this!–the New York Mets. And God knows they could always use some extra help in the bullpen.

It’s a lot to think about. I know. But hold your horses because there’s one last piece to this puzzle, and that’s the butterfly itself.

Or herself, I should say. See, when you come across her tomorrow, she’ll look to you like every other beautiful butterfly. But within her butterfly world, she’s an outcast, considered ugly and bullied because of nuances in her markings that can’t be perceived by the human eye.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. She sounds a lot like you, right?

Well, unlike you, she couldn’t be happier, because butterflies have short memories and she is completely clear of all the hurt she once carried and is now living her best life with a strong-willed butterfly partner who sees her for who she is and they’re experiencing their own fairytale romance with hundreds of eggs laid and fertilized, which is especially meaningful because, before her brother could have butterfly children of his own, he was captured and stuck through with little pins by a nerdy butterfly collector, which, in a certain sense, is the story of the bullied becoming the bully, but that’s a whole other thing.

So. There it all is.

Suffice it to say that there’s a lot hinging on your encounter with the butterfly tomorrow, including the revenge you’ve emotionally salivated over for all these years, the advanced genetics community, butterflies, and the Mets bullpen.

And sure you can just forget about all this, do nothing, just walk on by when you see that butterfly, and keep living life as you know it, telling yourself you won’t won’t let yourself be defined by that bully, and actually believing it 98% of the time.

But for what it’s worth, if it was me, which it’s not, but if it was, I’d like to think that stomping on a beautiful butterfly would help make up for the beautiful part of me that was stomped on all those years ago. At least a little bit.

But again, your call.

Peter Alsante is a writer and freelance creative director and has won two Emmy awards for his work with the nonprofit group Sandy Hook Promise. He currently lives in the Catskills in New York State with his wife, Cara, and dog, Arlo.