I have a skill at invective and a talent for contumely.
I’ve had those since I was a kid because although I knew how to fight and was something of a roughneck as a younger kid, (did tumbling and gymnastics and was not at all intimidated about taking lumps), I was also idealistic and focused on using words rather than fists.
So I learned to defend myself with words.
And given the bullies who went after me, this required some serious word research.
I was the kid who knew all the swear words and what they meant, their roots, and how to spin them and their roots to powerful effect. Plus I understood ad hominem and how to showcase a bullies flaws and fears in front of their friends.
One day during my fifth grade experience I was walking down a hill toward a corner, along a stone wall that surrounded the school property, with a couple friends.
As we rounded the corner into the alley leading up to the door we were to go in, a side entrance, we saw this strutting bully named Bob Macon and his gang of sycophants, (Dale Lauer, Bill Streicher, et alia), striding down toward us with a very large crowd of onlookers.
My friend Jim said, “They’re coming for you, you know,” and I said, “Yeah.”
He asked me why I didn’t run and I said, “What for?”
I was entirely unafraid.
So Macon reached me, grabbed my shirt front, knocked my books on the ground, and shoved me back against the stone wall, which hit me about lower back level. He pushed and bent my backwards over it and leaned against me.
I asked him how long he’d dreamed of fucking me.
I continued to abuse him verbally. He punched me.
I asked him if that was all he had.
He punched me some more. I laughed and asked when he was going to start trying. I kept harping on how gently he touched me and asked if this was how he treated his girl friend. I glanced at her and saw I’d scored a hit with that one.
I also continued on the homosexual theme, pounding at his insecurities.
I told him I could feel how stiff he was getting and whether he wanted to admit it to his girlfriend, who was standing close behind him. I watched her eyes. They started to change.
I knew I had it right.
I kept talking, belittling his strength and emphasizing how desperate he must be to touch me.
He tried forcing me to eat grass and I upbraided his mistaking me for a cow and suggested maybe remedial Kindergarten would be in order.
I had the gang laughing at him by this time.
And I remained calm, detached from my body.
I hectored him and hounded him verbally and finally his gang turned away in disgust, his girlfriend put a hand on his arm and said, “Come on, let him go, this is stupid,” and so on.
He completely lost the crowd, and all his power.
And all I did was take his shit and hurl words at him.
He never bothered me again.
All words.
I left myself a mess as I entered the school and when asked what had happened to me I said, “Macon tried to beat me up.”
I’ve no idea if he got into trouble for it or not, and don’t care.
He was nothing and I showed everyone that.
By the way, he was the son of a lawyer, a spoiled little semi-rich kid, and I was dirt poor.
Fucker deserved it.
I did get into one fist fight, though. Joel Pelligrino, another lawyer’s kid come to think of it, had moved to our small Pennsylvania mountain town from California and thought he was hot shit. He was also a born criminal and thug. He took an instant disliking to me and hounded me one day, saying he wanted to fight me.
In retrospect, it was some kind of pecking order thing, and he felt he had to knock me off what ever pinnacle he thought I was on. I’ve no clue how he saw me.
He pestered me all that day, literally begging me to fight him.
Finally I agreed to meet him after school and we’d fight.
I met him with two of my friends and about six of his. I said, “Okay, let’s find a good place,” and started walking. I led him several blocks and found a spot by a small stone wall on Julian street, a block down from High Street. It was a wall where our cats that ran away ended up living, in a hole, so I knew the place.
It was funny how I had taken command, and was in charge. He squared off and I said, No no, hang on, we have to shake hands and do this right. He listened to me and took the right hand I extended.
I pulled him toward me and landed a left cross on his chin, knocking him down.
He got up, charged me, and bowled me over, then sat on me.
And that was the fight because I began using words again, mocking him for sitting on me. He was considerably bigger, and pinned me down easily, but it was awkward for him after a few of my mockeries and suggestions.
So I lay there and he sat there for awhile, him hitting me half-heartedly now and then, me laughing at those attempts, and the fight urge drained from him. I said, “Let me up and we’ll shake and be friends.”
He said, “If I let you up you’ll hit me again.”
I told him that was a risk he was going to have to take unless he wanted to spend the night sitting on me.
He saw that logic eventually and let me up, then actually shook hands with me properly — I did not sucker punch him that time — and he rubbed his jaw and said, “You pack a wallop.”
We called it a draw and I picked up my stuff and headed home with Tim Meyers bouncing around me like a collie begging me to fight HIM this time. lol I told him I didn’t want to fight him and he eventually got distracted by something shiny and bounced away. What a nut.
Then, another time, I learned a weird lesson once when I was in probably fifth grade again. I was in a special summer art program with various kids from other schools.
There were these two slightly older boys, very well put together — rich, probably — and dressed well, good hair cuts, all that. Attractive, in short, somewhat charismatic.
We know that can spell trouble but I didn’t then.
Anyway, I wanted them to like and accept me — meaning I wanted to be like that, kind of cool and a cut above the ordinary. I wanted validation, recognition, for what I had inside me.
Anyway, I approached them and complimented their art and they tore into me.
Lambasted me about being such a lower class loser, so unkempt and unskilled, etc. Vile bastards, sneering and condescending.
Boy, that stung.
And I recall thinking at that time, Pretty doesn’t mean Nice. (Like in need of help doesn’t mean safe, as someone paralleled.)
Lesson learned.
Y’know, there may have been a deeper lesson in that exchange, too. I learned, perhaps, that I am not One Of Them, one of the beautiful people, and so had to earn my attention, work harder to attain less. They got the teacher’s praise, I and a few other mongrels did far better work that was ignored. That stuck with me, too.
Same teacher, Mrs. Saylor, (hi Brett, how’s mumsy?), stole a mechanical drawing I did of a tangle of pipes in a nuclear reactor, entered it in an art contest in Pittsburgh under her own name, won a prize, and the only way I found out about it was in the newspaper, which happened to publish a picture of my art. I brought the clipping in and showed it to her and asked her WTF? She was shocked and embarrassed and yet never apologized or shared any prize money or anything.
So I learned there were people in positions of authority whom one could not trust. Good lesson, that one.
By the way, I was content to shame her, and make her feel small. I told her if she had asked I’d have let her use it, most likely, but she chose to steal it. I was harsh with her; idealist, remember. I shamed her and told people about it.
It’s weird, but when I go over these things it seems I’ve had it rough, yet I would not have characterized my experience that way.
Born cynic in the stoic sense, perhaps. I just took it the same as I’d take falling and scraping my knee, y’know? I also interceded and protected kids I spotted being bullied.
I was for awhile big on turning the other cheek, and taking it without retaliation. Idealist, remember? This led to another odd lesson. I was waylaid, again by Bob Macon, outside the public library. Again I was with Jim Lankford and Michael Karolchik; we walked home together after school because we lived near each other. This happened before the stone wall incident. Anyway, Macon grabbed me and began punching me, a few to the gut but mostly to the face. Broke my glasses, bloodied my face pretty well, pulped a top lip and made my nose bleed but did not mash it.
All the while I just took it. Said nothing much, just took it. He got bored and left. I accepted my books picked up by Jim and Michael, and walked home without trying to clean up. When my mother saw me, she was appalled and asked what happened. I told her I got beat up by Bob Macon. He was, for the record, a few years older.
She made a slight fuss and this drew the attention of my father, who came out from the other room, took one look at me, and said, “So, what’s the other guy look like.”
I told him I had not hit back.
He immediately got angry at me and berated me for being a pussy, a whimpery little push-over, and probably a faggot. Charming moment in father-son relations but please, before you judge him harshly, realize he was under tremendous pressure, having lost his job and being in dire financial straights. He was merely venting on me from his own sense of powerlessness. It was about him, what he was saying, not really about me.
So my parents made me go wash up and the incident was forgotten.
Another time I was caught by an older bully called Fang Huber, Mark was his first name, as we were riding skateboards down the alley, Beech Street, that ran beside my house at 600 West Lloyd Street in Ebensburg, PA, the town where all this happened. He was considerably older, already driving. He was parked in the paved lot to the left at the bottom end of the alley where we curved into so we could circle it and slow down at the end of our skateboard rides.
I came around the corner of the building from alley into lot and there he was parked with a few of his friends, smoking a doobie and feeling up his girlfriend. He saw me, snarled, and grabbed me by the shirt. He slammed me against the grille of his car, bent me over the hood, and told me to open my eyes.
I remember how hot the hood of that car was and how the chrome projections of the grille poked into me.
“Open them. Wide.”
I did, not knowing what he wanted me to see.
He spat into my eyes.
He threatened to kill me if he ever saw me again as he did this three times.
He then threw me aside and let me go. I walked up the alley carrying my skateboard wondering what vile diseases I’d get now and whether I was going to die.
Apparently my eyes proved stronger than his spit.
Me and bullies; there are many other examples. I think I drew their attention because I was smart but not smart enough to hide it. Sheldon from BIG BANG THEORY comes to mind; pure nerd and proud of it. I did not fit in and a big part of me did not care or want to bother trying to fit in.
Oddly, I was good at athletics. I played basketball well, a center, and I played little league, where the rich kids got the good positions and got to bat first due to their fathers sponsoring the teams. I played center field a few times and right field once, that latter suiting me fine as I was a Roberto Clemente fan. I also hit a triple in a game but was left stranded. My best game as a center was 12 points inside three minutes when I started taking shots instead of passing off to the guards or forwards. Also made 3 of 4 foul shots on that streak. The coach got all excited and called us in to tell the huddle I was on a hot streak so feed me the ball. We went back out and I got punched by one of my team mates and the guards stopped feeding me the ball and that was it.
Thanks, coach.
By the time I got to high school I was no longer being bullied. I’d gotten tall and I was muscular but then the bullying shifted to teachers. Al Solomon, years later to be arrested for child abuse and pornography, loathed me, and flunked me three of four semesters. The lowest grade I got otherwise was one B. All the rest A’s. Further, as I documented and proved, he would mark my papers with an F and my friend Doug Smith’s with a B despite the fact that we did our homework together and handed in identical papers. My parents showed the principal and later the school board this but they backed Solomon and dismissed our complaints. We did not have the social standing in the community to make any trouble for the school mafia.
There were other kinds of teacher bullying too but I don’t want to go into any of that.
All this fed into what makes me who and what I am but it was by no means all that happened, and is not all I am. Oh, I loathe, hate, and detest bullies. I thwart any I come across. I am not a crusader, though. And so many good and positive things happened, too, that the balance must fall on the bright side.
Still, as Sir Terry Pratchett once wrote, and I’m paraphrasing, “They say light is faster than everything else but no matter where it goes, it always finds dark has beaten it there.”
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