Bill Hillman is founder and host of the Windy City Story Slam and a former Chicago Golden Gloves champ.
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When I started high school I was a five-foot-nothing pud with slicked-back hair and a bad attitude. I became an immediate target for all the sadists amongst the juniors and seniors at St. Joe’s. There was this ritual of theirs called a locker check, which basically consisted of a towering meathead shoving his equally large friend into a freshman who was extracting or inserting books into a locker. A high-level locker check would result in the freshman getting his head bounced off the sheet metal causing a deep, harmonic gong to echo through the corridor.
By my senior year things had changed. I had a seven-and-three record as a boxer in the Chicago Golden Gloves and Chicago Park District. I was nearly six feet and was voted “Toughest Senior.” Loved and respected, I basically did as I pleased that last semester. There were times when groups of us seniors would leave class to wander around the halls, jump off of high ledges in the gymnasium onto these big blue foam gymnastic mats, or just leave campus for a late breakfast at Steak ‘n’ Egger.
