Fighting Words
A story of pushing back, by Felix.
I grew up in a bar.
My mom worked at Sonny’s, the neighborhood dive, a fine place to drink cheap beer and listen to a juke box as vintage as the clientele. After school I’d sit there waiting until the end of her shift, stuffing my face with all the frozen pizza and Shirley Temples I could handle. Which was a lot.
Sonny’s had regulars slumped over their drinks at any time of day, mostly old guys and off-duty cops. Charlie had a metal plate in his head. He spoke slowly and crossed his eyes during full moons and thunderstorms. There was Ha-ha, a name people called him since that’s all he ever said. One guy, Don, covered his gray hair with shoe polish which ran down his face in the summer. And Jim Big-Nut had to sit side saddle in the barstool. Don’t ask.
Kids absorb all kinds of things from their environments. I learned to play pool, poker, and spades. How to shotgun a can of soda to produce a cavernous gaseous eruption. And I collected an enviable repertoire of off-center jokes and off-color language.
Sonny’s prepared me for life.
One summer day, fresh out of elementary school and before the grind of middle school, I lounged in my back yard on a beach chair thinking about how to make a million dollars and get out of dodge. Just then the kids who lived behind me climbed the chain link fence in their yard just high enough to peek over the hedges in mine. They were about my age. One was named Tommy, and the other one, well, I forget his name, but he was one of the most unfortunately ugly people I have ever met, even considering the guys at the bar.
The ugly one cleared his throat and did his best sugary cherub impression. “Hey Felix! Do you want to come over and play football? We have three and we need one more.”
Three. That could only mean their friend Kevin, a year older and much bigger, who liked to ride his bike around the neighborhood looking for prey to terrorize.
“Sure,” I replied, narrowing my eyes.
I knew them well enough to know better. But in those years, when I still thought it might be possible to play in the NFL, I didn’t turn down any opportunity to sharpen my skills, such as they were.
Their back yard looked like construction started and promptly stopped, only to be reclaimed by a wild animal. Streaks of bare dirt with patches of long, shaggy grass lay scattered with dips, ditches, holes and more than a few cinder blocks.
Tommy, Kevin, and Ugly stood together like perfect budding delinquents, two with their arms crossed and the other casually tossing and catching the football. Kevin turned on the smug.
“So,” he sneered, “we’re playing tackle football.”
“Cool,” I nodded, and he tossed me the ball.
They looked at the ball. They looked at me. And then they charged.
I immediately dropped the ball and turned to run but they had me cornered, crashed their bodies into mine, and pounded me into the dirt. After a tussle, I got up and they tackled me again as I tried to get away. Over and over, every time I got up, they decked me. I was too small and too weak and had no way to fight back. However, I had alternatives.
From the bottom of the pile I growled, “Get the fuck off me you goddamn assholes!” Surprisingly they did, looking wide-eyed and slack jawed.
“What the fuck! You shit bricks! What the hell is wrong with you!”
Tommy looked scared, looking up at Kevin, who held up his hands and whispered, “Hey calm down, you're going to get us in trouble.”
“Trouble? Trouble?!” I channeled Charlie plate-head near a lightning strike. “What, after you spent five minutes dog piling me? Get stuffed! You fuckwits deserve whatever whooping your dumbass parents give you!” I shook the grass out of my hair, brushed the dirt from my clothes, and shouldered my way past them, muttering, “Trouble! Ha! You deserve having this ball shoved where the sun don’t shine. That means up your ass, you goons.”
All three followed, begging me to stop. “Back off, dipshits!” I warned.
A toothless old lady in a weathered bathrobe and pink slippers came out onto her front porch across the street wagging a finger at me. “Shut your foul mouth!” she scolded with a voice like a truckload of cigarettes.
“What?” I snapped back. “I’m bad because I dropped a couple f-bombs? Well golly gee, lady! You should ask these numbnuts what they’ve been doing to me in their back yard!” I turned back and caught them all in my glare – even the old lady – and roared, “Fuck all of you!”
They never bothered me again. Their parents probably told them to stay away from that bad kid who would soil their sweet innocence.
Word got around and I entered middle school with a reputation, a kind of repulsive force shielding me from all but the worst of the worst. No one wanted my foul mouth to draw attention to them.
Funny how the adults seemed more concerned about bad language than about kids getting the actual crap beat out of them.
Strangely, as much as I repulsed the would-be bullies, I became a magnet for the would-be victims, each one hiding under the protective umbrella of crass language I learned in a dive bar.
For the little guys, words offer a way to fight back. And swear words are the only words some people understand.
This is a work of fiction based on actual events.
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