The Day of the Fight
[ Note from Natural: I'm honored to present this guest-post by CardioGirl as a contribution to ThinkingOutLoudBlog.com. When I first found her blog, I read it quietly, in awe. Cardiogirl's gift, in my humble opinion, is her ability to write about a variety of topics and make it interesting and humorous. Show some love and support to CardioGirl as she blogs about The Day of the Fight. ]
It’s time to jump into Mr. Peabody’s WABAC (pronounced “wayback”) Machine And if you don’t know who Mr. Peabody is, you must check out the link. But please tell me you know about Mr. Peabody. I don’t want to believe I’m getting old.
Okay, let’s set the dials to Spring of 1982. There were two girls in my 8th grade gym class who did not like me — K!m S. and Lis@ F. I don’t know why, they just did not like me. I know, that’s shocking. So they would both bump into me during our gym class and do things that could be construed as a little extra game play. So the teacher didn’t do anything about it.
I’m not completely clear why, but K!m was the leader of that twosome. She was really preppy and one of the pretty girls. So she didn’t really get her hands dirty by pushing me around. She had a wicked tongue, as I recall, and hurled quite a few insults my way. She did push me around on occasion, but Lis@ was really her henchman.
And Lis@ was a burnout.
You know what a burnout is, don’t you? A person in middle school or high school who smokes! And that same person, if she’s a girl, wears black eyeliner under her eyes and black clothes. The guy burnouts just wore black clothes and smoked. No eyeliner. That was a burnout.
Of course I told my mom about this and she said, incredulously because she couldn’t understand me, “They bumped into you and you didn’t beat the crap out of them?” Um, no. No I did not beat the crap out of them Mom. I’m a pacifist.
So it went on for a while longer and as I told my mom about it she started getting angry at me because I wasn’t fighting back. She said the only way to get through to people like that is to pound them into the ground.
Yes, that’s what she said. My mom was really animated and grew up on 24th Street in Detroit. She had a lot of fights in her early life. She grew up in a crazy family and had to literally fight her way out of Detroit. You kind of have to consider the source when you hear about the advice she gave me. Plus, all of my sisters and my brother had gone down this path before me.
My mom was used to other kids beating up on her kids and her advice was always the same: beat the other kid back with everything you have so you teach him never to touch you again. This is the motto she lived by and it served her well all those years ago in Motown.
Now the one piece she did not make clear to me was that the other kid had to initiate the fight. If the other kid touched you first that’s the clearance to go medieval on him. My mom did not make that piece clear to me and that will become important later on.
I think the abuse from those girls started in the winter and continued into the spring. My mom was getting angry at me for not defending myself against K!m and Lis@. She finally gave me an ultimatum: if you don’t fight them today you’ll have big trouble when I get home from work tonight.
You know, as I lived through that experience I didn’t really focus on what my mom said to me. My thoughts on that have always been about K!m and Lis@. But when I write that out in black and white it seems kinda crazy.
My mother threatened to beat me if I didn’t beat up the girl at school. At least that’s how I interpreted that. I was more afraid of my mother’s wrath than I was of fighting the girl at school.
I think it was May of 1982 when The Fight finally took place. My sisters were home so they were excited because they knew to expect a call from the principal that day.
My mother reminded me that morning, before I left for the bus stop, that it was okay that I was going to get in trouble at school. She knew the principal would call her at work and she was totally fine with that. She told me she would be expecting that call today. My mom curled her lip and said, “Just beat her with everything you’ve got.” She then shook her fist in front of me to emphasize her point.
As I walked to the bus stop I felt the knot form in my stomach.
I did procrastinate in the morning as I really didn’t want to get in a fight. But I quickly realized I was going to have to fight K!m at lunch time because that would be my first opportunity to see her. I remember sitting at the round lunch table telling my friend Karen, “I am going to beat up K!m Sh@rp right now, I’ll see you later.”
I slowly walked toward K!m’s table as my heart started pounding crazily. There was no turning back, I realized, as I weaved my way through the tables. When I got to K!m’s table, she was holding a sandwich and her head was turned away from me because she was talking to someone else.
I politely tapped her on the shoulder and when she turned to look at me I punched her in the face. I do remember seeing her Wonder Bread sandwich take flight in the air.
Of course she stood up and thus began The Fight. I kept punching and aiming for her face, I don’t really remember what she did to me. I do recall the lunch ladies trying to pull us apart and I actually thought to myself, ‘It’s gonna take more than a lunch lady to pull me off of K!m.’ And that turned out to be true. It took a male teacher to pull me off of her. And I was secretly proud that it took a man to pry me off of her.
Soon after the fight was over I learned the particular technique I employed is commonly referred to as a “Sucker Punch” and is not highly regarded in some circles. When it was all done, I had a swollen lip and K!m had a bloody nose. She was talkin’ smack to me on the way to the principal’s office and I remember telling her, “I’m not the one bleeding.”
Anyway, in the Principal’s office we had to tell him what happened. K!m was all self-righteous telling him she was just eating her lunch when I came up out of nowhere and punched her in the face. Her attitude was such that she was sure I would deny starting the fight.
So she told her side as I patiently waited my turn. Then the principal turned to me and said, “What happened?”
“I walked up to her at lunch, tapped her on the shoulder and punched her in the face.”
So of course he wanted to know why I did it.
I told him the truth, “My mom told me to.”
He sat in his chair stunned. Then he said, “I can’t believe your mother told you to start a fight.”
I said, “Call her. She told me I had to fight K!m S. today.”
As you can see, back then I wasn’t quite the storyteller I am today. I am quite certain I did not give him the back story of how K!m had been spearheading a bullying campaign against me for the past four months in gym class.
It was my mother who explained the circumstances that led up to The Fight. She told me later that the principal apologized over and over but said he had to suspend me because I had started the fight. My mom was totally down with that and reassured him that it was quite alright. She looked at it as a well-earned vacation from school.
Since she couldn’t leave work to pick me up, my mom sent my sisters to get me. When they got to school they were really excited to hear all the details of the fight. They were shocked, as well, that I just walked up to her and started pounding away.
Later, my mother clarified that it should be the other person who pushes or shoves first. The other person has to initiate contact then it’s a fighting free-for-all. And she gave an example: “Remember when you were in gym class and they shoved you?”
“Yes.”
“That’s when you should have started the fight. Because they pushed you first.“
So I filed that information away for future reference.
It was split among the school as to who actually won The Fight. I will say I had the majority vote as the winner and I did earn the respect of some kids at school. But K!m lobbied and won a few outlying precincts.
Most importantly, she and her henchman Lis@ never touched me again.
Now, tell me about your most memorable fight. Why did it happen and how did it come to blows? Did you win? It really doesn’t matter if you won or not. I’m just curious.
