WHEN I LOOKED at the front page photo of that fat, sad, funk of a 14-year-old boy from Plymouth Whitemarsh High School in handcuffs and manacles, I thought of when I was the same age and of every bully I wanted to murder. Spectacularly. Apocalyptically. Exploding pumpkin head splatter. Awful to imagine.

When I laid me down to sleep, such were my dreams of revenge. And I was what you would call a normal kid. If you could have read my mind, you would have arrested me. If you could have read my heart, you would have applauded.

Of course, I never spoke of these thoughts out loud until just now. Had I spoken of them then, and had I enlisted a friend in my dreadful fantasy, and if my mother had bought me a semi-automatic rifle, and if my father had served five years in prison for manslaughter, and if I had been really, really fat instead of merely pudgy. . . well, I'd be a different person.

But what I recognize in this alarming story from the safe harbor of a good school in a comfortable suburb is the homicidal desire to do something dramatic against those who made me feel so powerless. Who made me feel ashamed to be me.

The front page image of a chained and shackled Dillon Cossey, the alleged Columbine wannabe, was beyond pathetic. He looked as menacing as Bobby Hill, the doughy pre-teen son of a clueless cartoon father who sells propane and propane accessories. And yet this kid faces charges of mass murder in his mind.

I'm glad he's caught. I'm glad he's been found out. I'm grateful to the young man who turned him in. And yet I can't help but feel sorry for him, this poor fat sad funk of a boy who is now labled a monster for the rest of his life. And I can't help but feel a familiar rage toward those invisible demons, those boogiemen, those horrible mean children who hurt this child so much he wanted to kill them all.

One of the biggest regrets in my life is that I may have been a bully and didn't know it. I must have been, somehow, a bully. I was getting even with the wrong people. And I want to apologize. I hope that matters. Even bullies grow up.