Tuesday Afternoon at the Fights
We lived next door to the neighborhood bully. His name was Robbie (we won’t mention his last name in the age of Google). While Robbie could be a friendly guy, every so often he developed a need to beat the snot out of someone a few years his junior. There was never any real reason for this turn of mood. It just happened every so often.
So one afternoon after school, Robbie decided it was time to find a victim. For whatever reason this particular day, Robbie decided it had to be me. So Robbie and several of his posse came marching across the field that separated our houses. As I recall he knocked on the door and Mom answered the door. She immediately knew something was up because there was Robbie and his gang looking rather serious. Besides his serious demeanor, all Moms in the neighborhood had their radar on high sensitivity mode when it came to Robbie.
When Mom asked him what was going on, Robbie never the retiring type told Mom in effect he was calling me out for a showdown. Faced with this challenge to her son who was all of seven or eight years old knew she had to make a decision. She
could either tell Robbie to go away knowing that he and his friends would catch up with her son sooner or later, or she could referee a fair fight in the back yard. She decided on the latter. If I remember correctly, Mom told me this was the best way to deal with this challenge to my boyhood and out the door we went.
The odds were stacked in Robbie’s favor. He was more than a year older and was quite comfortable with beating up smaller kids. Well I don’t know what it was other than pure fright and luck, but I sucker punched Robbie in the nose before he thought the fight was supposed to start. Then I put him in a head lock before he could punch me. Robbie realized that his nose was bleeding and started crying. At this age the real object of a fight was to make your opponent cry first. I had succeeded and Robbie retreated with his friends.
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