It is 1979, and I am 7 years old living with my parents and sister in Zurich, Switzerland. I go to school here and have just started. I have had to learn the German language from scratch. I have gotten into fights after school with the local bully, because he hates foreigners like me. I know how to fight now. Looking back, it was probably one the best things that happened to me, learning to endure harm and having the reflexes to cause harm back.
Although that was tough for me as a 7 year old kid, I was not the only one that the Swiss boys picked on and tried to beat up. Us foreign kids lived in the same apartment building because all our parents were foreign scientists working for six month at the University of Zurich, which was close by. One day after school the Swiss assholes went after the Japanese boy, who was only 6 years old and had nobody to protect him on the way home. I knew of him a little bit and came to his aid when they were hitting him and walked with him home to our building, all the while swinging my school bag around us in circles to keep them away. It worked. We got back home but I did not tell my parents anything, because in those days things like this were kind of normal. My mom however was contacted by the Japanese mother of the boy and she thanked my mother, for me saving her son. My mom was nice to me that night.
