I don't know if this was out of porportion or not. In 7th grade, I had the misfortune to get a locker next to one of the biggest jerks/troublemakers in school. These were the types of lockers where you had two skinny ones side by side and then two square "cubbies" stacked on top. I had the top cubby, which sucked, because I'm short. Anyway, this kid would always try to make me drop my bag, slam my locker doors shut, crap like that. One day I told him that if he didn't knock it off, I was going to slit his throat with my nails and it didn't matter if he told, because who were they going to believe anyway? I was the good kid, he wasn't. I had them kind of filed into sharp edges because of this kid anyway. So he kept pushing me and I whipped around and did a cat-like swipe across his neck.
A teacher saw it happen and turned away. He went walking around with four red claw marks on the side of his neck and I never heard a single thing from any teacher. He also never bothered me again. Violence may not always be the answer, but sometimes small doses of it is. That did more than if I had gone to a teacher and whined that he was bothering me. Maybe it was overreacting, but it got the results I needed.