I found this story:

So Summer is over and school is starting again. It's not just another year of school. It's the transition from middleschool to highschool and everyone is hoping for a fresh new beginning.

Class is about to start and everyone is abuzz talking about who did what over the summer, who's dating and all that jazz. Hunter is sitting at his desk away from the rest of the chatter idly feeding peanuts to his pet squirrel and teaching it new tricks. Priest is brushing up on her homework and chatting with warlock and rogue when warrior walks in with druid.

Druid and warrior have been going out since middleschool. Warrior is a star athlete and druid a star pupil. They were easily the most popular couple in school as warrior has always been a great athlete and druid gets along well with everyone. Warrior and druid take a seat in the middle of the classroom as everyone else waves "Hi".

Mage walks in and all the boys are whispering as she sits down. Over the summer, mage has really filled out. The only one who looks slightly distressed now is warlock, who blossomed early and always had the attention mage never got. Warlock is looking a little nervous now and maybe even a little jealous of how much mage has developed.

With almost everyone present, the classroom is getting pretty loud and everyone is bragging about how great their summer was and how well they expect this year to be. A few of them, like shaman, are a little more pessimistic about how the year will turn out claiming "I'll bet the teacher doesn't like me."

The chatter suddenly comes to a hush as a tall, awkward figure stands in the doorway. The class stops short of gasping as paladin walks into the classroom and takes a seat close to the front. Nobody can believe it. Paladin has been the fat kid that everyone picked on since elementary. He always did well in school but when it came to sports, paladin always came in last. Even into middle school, paladin was still looked down upon and everyone snickered whenever he tried in vain to excel at physical activities.

“Stick to academics” they cried. “LOLFAT” they mocked.

But puberty finally hit and paladin had grown a whole foot taller over the summer and was looking fit and trim. Nobody could believe their eyes.

It wasn’t that the other kids were exceptionally mean or they hated paladin. They just thought that paladin should be good at school and leave the sports to warrior or rogue who were the most physically fit in the class. Years of going to school with paladin had set it in their minds that he would never be fit enough to ever be a star athlete.

Warrior walks over and looks paladin up and down appraisingly.

“You’;;re looking pretty trim.” He said. “But I bet I could still take you in a sprint.”

Despite his past bulkiness, paladin was almost as fast as warrior in a sprint during middleschool.

“It looks like teacher is late, what do you say we run a race?” suggests warrior.

In a crackling voice that isn’t quite developed, paladin squeaks “Sure”

The whole class follows the pair outside and hunter calls the race. “Start when I shoot my gun!”

At the sound of the gun going off, paladin and warrior take off. To everyone’s amazement, paladin beats warrior by several strides. They run the sprint several more times with the same result.

“I just get lucky sometimes” Says paladin. “You’re much more consistent.”

Getting kind of upset now, warrior says “Well, I bet I can still beat you in endurance. Let’s run for 10 minutes and see who can keep up.”

The rest of the class is snickering now since they know that warrior can keep running indefinitely while paladin usually puckers out in just a few minutes and slows down to a trot for the rest of the race.

They both stretch and while they do so, the rest of the class starts joining in as well. As a group, they all start a light jog, building into a solid run. After a few minutes, mage and warlock start getting tired and lag behind the rest of the group. Priest is trying to keep them going by encouraging them but mage is the first to slow down to a walk. Priest and shaman are next to go and soon after that, even warlock and hunter are forced to slow down a little. The only ones still running at full speed are paladin, warrior, rogue and shaman. The endurance test is called at a four way tie and warrior looks a little sour.

“So you’ve lost some weight. I bet you don’t study so hard anymore though.”

“Actually,” responds paladin “I’ve found a way to fit school into my training schedule and so I can do both pretty well.”

“What?!” exclaims warrior. “That’s not fair. You should be good at one or the other. Since most of us are only good at one, you should only be good at one or the other too.”

The rest of the class joins in. “Yeah this isn’t fair. You should be bellcurved. You’re too strong.”

Class finally starts and Ms. Ghostcrawler starts the lesson by outlining the year’s expectations, what the objective was for all the students and the individual lesson plans she had for each of them. Throughout her lesson, she was interrupted by several students who raised their hands and quite without acknowledgement, simply shouted “BELLCURVE PALADIN!”

Paladin felt fairly awful. All these years he’d been trying to be more athletic believing it would make him more popular amongst his peers. No matter how much he tried, he couldn’t shed the pounds and do it. Now that he could, it seemed that all it did was earn him the enmity of his ‘friends’;;.

Recess came and paladin found himself more or less an outcast. A few people were still willing to talk to him. Most of them seemed to hate him though and constantly quipped “Overachiever! Incoming Bellcurve!”. This continued throughout recess and culminated with warlock suggesting that paladin should give up sports, go to the back of the classroom and write short essays for the rest of the term.

“Enough!” cried paladin. And he was the sort prone to crying. “This isn’t fair. I’m finally good at something and all you guys can do it cry bellcurve. Why can’t you guys just be happy for me? We’re all classmates. The better I do, the better our chances for placing in the rally and the faster we can complete assignments. Eventually, with enough standard testing, we can get more funding for the school. Warrior and rogue always place first and second in track and field, druid the best hide and seek player we have and warlock intimidates the hell out of every other athlete. Why is there suddenly such a big deal that I can finally join in on what you guys have been doing all along?”

There was silence for a few moments. No one said a word as bitter tears ran down paladin’s cheeks.

Finally mage spoke up. “You’re right paladin. There has been a double standard. Everyone here has been great at something and it’s okay that you’re getting good at things too. I’m sorry I picked on you. It was unkind of me. Forgive me?”

Mage pulled out her famous biscuits and refreshments. “C’mon guys. It’s time to move forward. It’s a new year and it’s highschool now. We should leave those old middleschool conceptions behind and study hard this year.”

Warrior was the next to speak. “Paladin,” he sighed, “I’m sorry bud. I’ve been pretty hard on you and I know we stopped hanging out since I started going out with druid. I think it’s great that you’ve come this far. Friends?”

He extended a firm hand toward paladin. Paladin shakily accepted and cheers erupted from all over the playground. They lifted paladin up and carried him back to class with cheers of “Paladin! Paladin! Paladin!”

Their cheers came to an abrupt halt when they saw who was waiting for them back in their classroom. Ms. Ghostcrawler was still there but two other people were there as well.

“Good day children.” Said principal Kalgan. “This is deathknight. He’s new and he’ll be joining us this year.”

Cool story, but I could have done without the whole school reference thing...

This is actually backwards.

The persecution complex of the Pally dude who wrote this story is pretty sad though.

Oh, I get it! It's like a metaphor. Schoolwork is healing and being an athlete is tanking. So subtle I almost read the whole thing...

Does this mean Tiddly's the [metaphor on] sprinter who tears his ACL leaving the blocks? [off]

Naw, Tiddly's the sprinter that inexplicably runs through the minefield.

I thought this was gonna be about that 12 year old pally I raided with in Tribulation, Osiris. Anyone ever hear him on vent? Yeahhhh...

Where's the F'in Druid? Why does everyone always forget about the Druid?

This story suks!