NEW YORK—Citing the solemnity of the monument and the horrific events that led to its construction, eighth-grader Austin Holcombe just assumed his classmates wouldn’t bully him during his school’s field trip to the September 11 Memorial last Wednesday—an assumption that proved incorrect almost instantaneously, sources confirmed.
“I guess I just figured, you know, clearly this is a very serious and very sad place, and they’ll just know it’s not right to mess with someone at Ground Zero,” said Holcombe, who upon entering the memorial was told by several classmates that he should stand underneath one of the commemorative waterfalls because he smelled like he shit his pants. “The truth is, I was actually looking forward to today because I thought I’d finally get a break. But then Eric [Ritchie] punched me in the kidney so that I’d scream out during the moment of silence.”
“We might as well have been in the school cafeteria,” he added.
The frequently harassed Holcombe told reporters that if there were one location where he thought he was safe from his classmates’ constant ridicule and was free from being called a faggot, fag-face, or fag-tard, it would be where nearly 3,000 Americans tragically lost their lives in the largest terrorist attack on U.S. soil.
However, while a tour guide explained the significance of the memorial’s “Survivor Tree”— a pear tree that was recovered from the rubble at the World Trade Center, nursed back to health, and now serves as a symbol of hope and determination in the face of tragedy—he was quietly called all three names, as well as “Al-Gay-Da.”
“I should have known that when they were throwing empty water bottles at me on the bus ride there that they wouldn’t suddenly just stop when we got to the memorial,” Holcombe said. “But, I don’t know, I wanted to think that when our guide, who survived the attacks, talked about how he ran as fast as he could when the buildings came down, my classmates wouldn’t shove me or whisper ‘Ass-hat Austin’ into my ear when no one was looking.”
“I actually think that, if anything, they were worse to me because we were at such an important place,” he continued. “If you can believe that.”
Despite holding out hope that his peers, at some point during the visit, would understand the kind of behavior that is and is not acceptable at what is essentially the final resting place for those who died on the most tragic day in American history, Holcombe was physically and verbally tortured throughout the tour. Jared Rafferty, 14, told Holcombe he should kill himself by jumping into one of the two reflecting pools, and when one woman unaffiliated with the class was spotted silently crying at the memorial site, sources confirmed that student Owen Culp said he wouldn’t be surprised if Holcombe started crying too because he’s “a giant fucking pussy.”
While touring the museum portion of the memorial, looking at photos of those who lost their lives and listening to 911 calls from employees inside the World Trade Center, Holcombe’s expectation of not being on the receiving end of vicious taunts was once again unmet when numerous students, girls included, reportedly thought it would be funny to approach him and say, “I heard your dad flew one of those planes,” “Your dad’s a terrorist,” and “You’re a Muslim and so is your dad.”
According to Holcombe, the torment he experienced—being called a fatass and a porker—as he walked down the same staircase as the first responders was largely equivalent to what the bullied student endures between class periods, at gym, and during last year’s field trip to the zoo.
“We were standing where all the names are engraved in bronze, and I just assumed, ‘Okay, if there is one place, maybe in the entire world, where I won’t be made fun of, it’s here,’” Holcombe said. “Nope. Greg and Nate stood on either side of me and Greg punched my arm nine times and Nate punched my arm 11 times. I couldn’t take it anymore so I screamed, ‘You’ve got to be fucking kidding me!’ And then I got in trouble with Mr. Meyers for being disrespectful.”
“These people are fucking monsters,” the 14-year-old added.
Though the bullying continued on the bus ride home, and will reportedly continue for the next several years, sources confirmed that by 2035, Austin Holcombe will be a billionaire, and, as CEO of a major corporation he founded, will get to personally fire every single one of his former classmates, all of whom have inoperable skin deformities.