In today's podcast episode, there's a story in which young G. Gordon Liddy, stops a group of boys hazing him by punching him on the arm, by hiding carpet tacks in his sleeve and cutting them.

Now I never did anything this unhinged, but I think I recognise this kind of thing from my own schooldays. One of the strategies I saw slightly misfit kids use to stop themselves being picked on was basically to massively overretaliate. For example, one guy got punched in the arm and, instead of punching back, he stabbed the other kid in the hand with a compass.

What this basically did was make sure anyone looking for someone to pick on them would say to themselves would say "OK, that kid's completely fucking nuts, so I'll maybe go for someone else instead."

We know he was already torturing small animals at this point, so it stands to reason he might have stood out and been a target for bullying. Put in that context, the story makes sense for me.

I have no fucking clue why he'd write about it in his autobiography though, so that's beyond me.