Before Tonight
When I was little and lived in the Matanzas neighborhood, I was the eldest of our group but by no means the biggest. I was actually quite a little guy, though I suppose Spencer Blackwell was about my size, so I wasn't the neighborhood shrimp. Ryan Seymour and Jeff Maddigan certainly had the height and weight advantage over me, and while Chase Miller wasn't much taller, he sure was heavier. There were other kids who came and went, all of about average size, and we'd play football in the street on Saturday and Sunday afternoons.
As we got a little bit older and moved toward the upper echelon of elementary school and then on to middle school and the testosterone levels in our bodies increased, football became too sissy a sport for us, so we moved on to "Smear The Queer," a truly violent game with an alarmingly obvious gay-bashing title. We didn't know what a queer was, but we sure as shootin' knew what it meant to smear one. The game evolved from football in the sense that the ball made the transition, but apart from that, it really bore little resemblance to the game we played in the streets as children.
You're probably all familiar with the game, which basically punishes the person who most wants possession of the ball. There's a large group of guys all running about on a field, all trying to beat the living hell out of whoever is unlucky enough to be holding the ball at the time, and once you've been sufficiently tossed about, you yield the ball to someone else, who tears off in fear of his life.
Somehow, I was a moderately good player at this game because I could usually hit people in the right spot to knock the wind from their lungs or up-end them from the hip-down and was able to combine that with a general avoidance of ball-possession. Somehow no one noticed I was a total coward when it came to ball-control, that I only took it when it hit me in the chest, and even then it had to be obvious that if I didn't take the ball I would be a total yellow-belly.
So on my merry way I went, beating the snot out of kids bigger and smaller than me and generally feeling confident in my ability to hold my own in a fight. I never got into a fist-fight, which I think is a definite mark against my young boyhood, but there it is all the same. I beat the shit out of Spencer and Jeff knocked me about, but fists never flew -- it was always a fantastic wrestling bout that usually ended at the drawing of blood from one side or the other.
In fact, the only time before tonight that I can remember being in a fist-fight was in an arranged boxing match with Spencer just a few short years ago. I thought, "He's slow, he's overweight, and I'm smarter than he is. I've watched enough fights to know what it takes; this will be over shortly with the decision in my favor." Not so. I had absolutely no idea what I was doing, and it showed within seconds of the bell's ding. I got a few quick jabs in and blocked a couple of his, which he undoubtedly did to build my confidence prematurely, because when I thought it was time to strike and threw a huge right hook his way, he leaned his head back three or four inches and avoided me completely. Because I'd committed myself so wholly, I had nothing to protect my completely exposed face, which he rather quickly turned back against the direction my momentum had sent it just moments before. One hit and I was down. TKO. Not such a hot-shot any more, are we?
There are times when we must rise to an occasion we don't wish to face, and when Jeff came into the party tonight and told us that three guys were outside on the sidewalk picking a fight with Brittany, there wasn't a moment's hesitation. Out we all went to stop it happening before it started, but we were a moment too late -- as the shoving started, we knew it was not going to end with a conversation about settling down and parting company, so in we went, and it felt at times more like I was fighting my own friends than the offending strangers. We had them at at least a 3:1 ratio, and one of their posse turned on a dime and split as soon as he saw us coming down the steps.
They got the shit kicked out of them.
The police stopped the proceedings and it seems nothing will come of it, but the knot above my left eye and the sting in my knee will remind me for at least the next few days of the time when we all took possession of the ball and ran straight into the crowd.
As we got a little bit older and moved toward the upper echelon of elementary school and then on to middle school and the testosterone levels in our bodies increased, football became too sissy a sport for us, so we moved on to "Smear The Queer," a truly violent game with an alarmingly obvious gay-bashing title. We didn't know what a queer was, but we sure as shootin' knew what it meant to smear one. The game evolved from football in the sense that the ball made the transition, but apart from that, it really bore little resemblance to the game we played in the streets as children.
You're probably all familiar with the game, which basically punishes the person who most wants possession of the ball. There's a large group of guys all running about on a field, all trying to beat the living hell out of whoever is unlucky enough to be holding the ball at the time, and once you've been sufficiently tossed about, you yield the ball to someone else, who tears off in fear of his life.
Somehow, I was a moderately good player at this game because I could usually hit people in the right spot to knock the wind from their lungs or up-end them from the hip-down and was able to combine that with a general avoidance of ball-possession. Somehow no one noticed I was a total coward when it came to ball-control, that I only took it when it hit me in the chest, and even then it had to be obvious that if I didn't take the ball I would be a total yellow-belly.
So on my merry way I went, beating the snot out of kids bigger and smaller than me and generally feeling confident in my ability to hold my own in a fight. I never got into a fist-fight, which I think is a definite mark against my young boyhood, but there it is all the same. I beat the shit out of Spencer and Jeff knocked me about, but fists never flew -- it was always a fantastic wrestling bout that usually ended at the drawing of blood from one side or the other.
In fact, the only time before tonight that I can remember being in a fist-fight was in an arranged boxing match with Spencer just a few short years ago. I thought, "He's slow, he's overweight, and I'm smarter than he is. I've watched enough fights to know what it takes; this will be over shortly with the decision in my favor." Not so. I had absolutely no idea what I was doing, and it showed within seconds of the bell's ding. I got a few quick jabs in and blocked a couple of his, which he undoubtedly did to build my confidence prematurely, because when I thought it was time to strike and threw a huge right hook his way, he leaned his head back three or four inches and avoided me completely. Because I'd committed myself so wholly, I had nothing to protect my completely exposed face, which he rather quickly turned back against the direction my momentum had sent it just moments before. One hit and I was down. TKO. Not such a hot-shot any more, are we?
There are times when we must rise to an occasion we don't wish to face, and when Jeff came into the party tonight and told us that three guys were outside on the sidewalk picking a fight with Brittany, there wasn't a moment's hesitation. Out we all went to stop it happening before it started, but we were a moment too late -- as the shoving started, we knew it was not going to end with a conversation about settling down and parting company, so in we went, and it felt at times more like I was fighting my own friends than the offending strangers. We had them at at least a 3:1 ratio, and one of their posse turned on a dime and split as soon as he saw us coming down the steps.
They got the shit kicked out of them.
The police stopped the proceedings and it seems nothing will come of it, but the knot above my left eye and the sting in my knee will remind me for at least the next few days of the time when we all took possession of the ball and ran straight into the crowd.