I had a real Teen Wolf moment about a month ago. Do you remember that scene where Michael J. Fox woke up one morning and looked into the mirror to discover that he had fur and fangs -- that he was not the sweet, ordinary guy he thought he was but in fact really just a big, stupid dick with bad hair?

Same thing happened to me.

I was at a party recently and had about four too many drinks and wound up blurting out something pretty hateful -- just this bubble of pure vitriol -- about another partygoer who had wronged me in the past but was making an effort to be friendly again, only to discover that person was three feet from me and had heard everything. I can’t really describe how bad I felt. I was just paralyzed with shame. It was like all of the negative energy in the universe just came shooting into me at once. Like I’d just lopped the noggin off the last Highlander. In that instant I became the Biggest Asshole In The Universe (action figures to come, patent pending).

Have I always been this way? I had always fancied myself as the nice-guy, but have I always had this great penchant for evil? In the interest of self-flagellation and other SAT words that only a true bonafide jerk would use, I figured I’d hop in the Wayback Machine and see where all of this started. I knew right away my first stop had to be Brian: the fat kid I almost killed with a lawn dart.

In 1986, on my small, crescent-shaped street of townhouses in Reston, Virginia, I pretty much ruled the playground. I was an awkward twelve year-old. This skinny, bony kid with a head two sizes too large for his frame, and didn’t really fit in with kids my age, but for some strange reason, all of the younger kids really looked up to me. Especially Brian.

Brian was the chubby kid that no one could stand, with a finger that seldom left his proboscis. He was two years younger than me, a spoiled kid who picked on anyone smaller than himself (which was everyone). But there was something sad about Brian that I had always sensed. His mother was very young, and his dad was nowhere to be seen, and it was very clear that he was troubled. No one in our crew of neighborhood hellraisers could stand him, but I felt the need to be nice to the kid, so I was always sure to include him in our games.

One day, however, we were playing superheroes, and as the oldest, I was divvying out roles. We needed heroes and villains, and I’d be damned if anyone else was going to be Wolverine. I pointed my finger at each kid, anointing each of them with a power and a name, “You be Batman … you be The Hulk .. you’re Scarlet Witch…” And I don’t know what it was that made me say it -- I knew it was incredibly cruel before the words even left my lips -- but I raised my finger and pointed at Brian and said “You can be The Blob.”

Something happened to Brian’s face over the seconds that followed. It turned from a pale white to a chimney red, and began to start rearranging itself right in front of me. Water began to squirt from eyes, and a slow rumble built up inside him until his entire mug just exploded into this wailing vision of pure anguish and snot. With a few words, I had destroyed the kid.

Brian ran into his house, and all of the neighborhood kids just stood there staring at me, mouths agape. I had crossed a line and they all knew it. Brian’s mother burst through the front door and came storming up to me, furious, shouting “What the HELL is wrong with you, Drew!?”

I had no idea.

Skip forward a few weeks into summer, and things had settled. I was in the middle of a field with my friends playing lawn darts. The sun had begun to set, and my mother had already called me in for dinner, but damnit: I was Voltron that day, and I had Ro-beasts to slay.

One of the smaller kids decided to challenge me to see how high we could throw our lawn darts. I let him go first. His was a clumsy throw that went more outward than upward and I knew would be no trouble to beat. So, I made a show out of it. “Stand back,” I said. Dart in hand, I began twirling my arm until it became a magnificent whirring pinwheel and I launched that fucker right into orbit. We all stood with our heads tilted back watching the glorious ascent, until we heard a tiny voice from across the field shout:

“Hey guys!” It was Brian, running towards us, a blur of elbows and jiggletits.

As the dart finished its climb and began to arc downwards, I knew exactly what was going to happen. Brian was directly in the path of the falling dart. Time slowed down. I thrust my hands forward to try to get him to change his course. All of the kids screamed “Noooooooooo!” as we watched that spike of plastic and metal careen down towards Brian’s unsuspecting head.

I knew that the dart would kill him. Either that, or it would bury itself into his skull, leaving him to live out his days a drooling, pooping mess with a spike of metal embedded in his squash -- perhaps his only chance at happiness being if some trailer walrus married him to get better television reception.

CLONK!

I’m not a person who’s been blessed with a lot of lucky turns in his life, but this was one of them. You see, these particular lawn darts were built with a small plastic cup at the end of the spike, to blunt the tip against such catastrophes. It was one of the only times in my life I was truly thankful for child safety laws.

The dart bounced off his noggin and Brian fell to the ground clutching his head, and screaming.

I heard his mom’s voice once more. “What the HELL is wrong with you, Drew!?”

I just have no idea.

Brian, if you’re out there, I’m truly sorry. If there’s any chance there is a God and he gives us all another turn around this wheel, I promise you, brother:

Next time, you get to be Batman.