Bullied child becomes honored man.

Byline: Bob Welch / The Register-Guard

He has blocked out the memories of humiliation, but mothers don't forget. Even 10 years later.

"He got beat up nearly daily," says Carol Still, whose son, David Olson, was 12 at the time. "He'd cry every morning on the way to school."

At Madison Middle School, Carol says, a P.E. teacher humiliated him in front of the class when he could do only two push-ups. The bullies stuffed him into garbage cans, shoved him into lockers, pantsed him. Once, they ran an extension cord down his jeans.

"In middle school, if you aren't `cool' and `normal,' you're considered `weird,' ' says Sandra Stenius, who remembers David from her days as the school's counselor. And in a youth world where labels are tickets to acceptance, "autistic" isn't, say, Ambercrombie & Fitch.

People such as Stenius were supportive, Carol says. But others wagged fingers of fatalism at her - never expect your autistic son to graduate from high school, get a job or make much of himself, they said.

Once, after being bullied, David blackened the eye of - in his words - "a tormentor"; he got suspended.

Amid this pain, David watched "The Karate Kid" with his mom.

"I wanna learn that karate stuff," he said out of the blue.

Carol rolled her eyes. "I didn't think that's what he needed. I had visions of more violence."

But she was a single mom with a kid in trouble. Why not?

Alan Best, chief instructor at Eugene's Best Martial Arts Institute, remembers meeting Carol Still. David doesn't like to be touched, she said. He's anti-social. He flips out.

Best welcomed David. No meltdown ever came. Instead, David emerged as a model student.

Someday, David told himself, he would earn the coveted black belt.

After eighth grade, David enrolled at South Eugene to leave the bully gang behind. "At South, he simply got ignored by students," Carol says. "That's all he ever wanted."

It was hard, however, to ignore him at the institute. Respect between students isn't optional. And David was getting good.

"The place became like family for David," Carol says. "It was safe."

As classmates dropped out, David kept training: three times a week, 52 weeks a year, year after year, earning higher-level belts in the process.

He graduated from South in 1999, went to work at Down to Earth's warehouse and hung out with his girlfriend, Dawn, who's also autistic.

Last December, Best came to David, by then 22 years old. "I'm recommending you for a black belt in karate and tae kwon do," he said. David tried to conceal his smile. He couldn't.

Two weeks ago, David took the required two-day test. "He did 4,000 kicks," Best says. "He sparred with a 215-pound teacher who used to worry about hurting him. This time, the teacher worried about getting hurt."

The last item after 15 hours of physical testing was push-ups. Fifty were required. David did them all.

He had passed, becoming only the ninth student in 14 years to earn the black belt. When David walked into the gym the next day, his classmates stopped what they were doing and, as is customary, bowed in respect. It was a magic moment for David - as it was when Best asked him if he would help teach younger students.

But the greatest moment of all came recently when, at the counter of a video store, David realized one of his middle school "tormentors" from 10 years ago was working the cash register. "Hey," the kid said, "didn't you used to go to Madison?"

David nodded yes. "I could have really embarrassed him in front of his co-worker," David says. "I could have said, `Yeah, weren't you one of the guys who used to stuff me in garbage cans?' '

Or he could have returned when the guy got off work and pummeled him in the parking lot; "sure, I knew I could beat him up."

But David had nothing to prove to the kid. He'd already proven it to the one whose opinion, in the end, matters most.

He'd proven it to himself.

Bob Welch can be reached at 338-2354 or [e-mail].