April 16th, 2012
The Bieber Shuffle

The following is an excerpt from Tiger Son: the Story of a Boy Unjustly Labeled “Bully,” a memoir written by Molly Mackenzie, whose son, Thomas, was forced to transfer several schools after various series of bullying incidents resulted in multiple expulsions. Thomas, unable to last long in any school due to his behavioral problems, is currently enrolled in a GED correspondence course from Red Wing Correctional Facility in Red Wing, Minnesota, where he is serving a two year sentence for repeated counts of assault and battery.

I know a lot of you, dear readers, are still skeptical. You’re thinking that I’m just reacting the way any indulgent, doting mother would, justifying unjustifiable behavior out of the pure unadulterated love that is motherhood. I ensure you, though, that I am no indulgent mother, I am strict and logical and able to see my son’s actions clearly, even when his younger sister has night terrors of her older brother slowly strangling her to death. If my honest, heartfelt, but totally practical entreaty doesn’t convince you, I hope the following story does.

I was at home, cleaning Little Tommy’s room — I had told him to clean it weeks ago, but he had to beat a level on Halo, so he never got around to it. And when the mold infestation began to spread beyond his door jamb, I decided it was time to stop waiting him out, forcing him to live in his own filth until he put in the work to clean it. So that morning I put on a mask and some yellow gloves, rolled up my sleeves and got to work, figuring I would have his father beat some sense into the boy later. I had just discovered the source of the mold (a plate of macaroni and cheese that was about three weeks old) when I got a call from Tommy’s principal.

Me: Good afternoon, this is the Mackenzie residence, Molly speaking.

Principal: Well you don’t have to be so unabashedly rude. Listen, your awful, useless waste of a life son has done something so wrong, so atrocious, so disgusting that he basically no longer deserves to live. That’s what I think as the person in charge of his well-being for seven hours a day because the liberal media has told me standing up for non-Obama supported opinions is wrong and I don’t want to get fired.

After stammering my way through a totally polite goodbye, without using a single four-letter word, because I’m a classy lady and all, I grabbed my things and headed to the school, fearing the possible repercussions of not being able to properly contain the mold before it spread down the hall to his sister, Kathleen’s, bedroom.

I was greeted in the principal’s office by a very wet, very small, very homosexual looking young man, who was shivering from the sheer excitement of being allowed in the same room with a boy as obviously cool as my Tommy. My Tommy, though, was acting very upset, obviously distressed by the false accusations that had landed him here, preventing him from learning (one of his favorite things to do — he’s so interested in learning new things that he once disemboweled our neighbor’s cat just to see what was in inside!).

After I took a seat, the principal asked the shivering boy to explain exactly what had happened. Apparently, the boy had been in the restroom between classes when my dashing Tommy walked in and began calling the boy a faggot before reaching into his backpack and pulling out a hamster he had taken from the agricultural sciences classroom in the Poly Tech wing of their high school. He then proceeded to shove the hamster down the boy’s pants and yelled at him to do “the Bieber Shuffle” while he simultaneously urinated on the boy’s leg.

Well, I was furious! To call me down here, to interrupt my day, to make my boy feel ashamed about a harmless prank that we do at home together all the time (because I love my boy and want to be involved in his life and not because of that crazy look he gets in his eyes when I say no to him — I know that look’s just a joke!) was absolutely absurd, wrong, and discriminatory against real men who were willing to take a stand against the evil crime of homosexuality! Why, I bet this little boy was looking at my handsome son as if he were a filet mignon! I bet he tried something! And my Tommy, rather than reacting harshly and defensively, just tried to save this boy from an eternity in Hell by attempting to awake him to the evils of homosexuality, a mental affliction that is totally curable!

Plus, who was this principal to try to interfere with the affairs of these children? We always taught our children that he who hits hardest rules the roost. That’s why my husband always has the final say. And it should be the same way in school. If that little homosexual didn’t want to do the Bieber Shuffle, he should have hit back while he still had the chance. Tommy shouldn’t be punished just because this boy was unwilling to defend himself. He was just rightfully claiming his place at the top of the totem pole.

It was disgusting, and after spending a few minutes trying to make the principal see the injustice of what had just occurred, I took Tommy and we left. On the way home we stopped and I bought the poor thing a dozen cupcakes, to comfort him after his ordeal and not because he threatened to kill me in my sleep if I didn’t. The school, of course, stuck with its original course of disciplinary action and expelled Tommy, forcing our family to begin the struggle of finding a decent education for our son, who, like I said earlier, just loves learning.

Meanwhile, the little boy who was involved in the incident was coddled, even given indefinite psychological leave from the school when he swallowed a bottle of Tylenol and washed it down with some boxed wine. Apparently that’s considered a suicide attempt! Hah! A real man would take his hunting rifle out to the woods and be done with it. At least use some prescription painkillers and hard liquor. It was all just an excuse for him to lounge in front of the TV and watch Justin Bieber videos all day without failing any classes, I’m sure.

So now, my dear readers, I’m sure you more fully believe me in my claim that my son is just the victim of overblown accusations made against him for standing stoically by his principles. But don’t you worry; Tommy continued to stand up for himself against the administrations of several more private schools, against waves of mentally disturbed homosexual classmates who continued to look at his privates in the restroom, and against all odds.