A Brief Taste of Power

A new blogger friend I read, Chloe, recently added a post to her blog that triggered a memory from my high school days. I have many memories, most of them happy, but this particular incident gave me a brief look at another side of existence that I had not to that point ever visited, nor did I think I could handle should I have ever visited again.

I was a lanky, uncoordinated kid in high school, with no athletic ability to speak of, unless you consider bowling a sport. And falling. I could fall down like nobody's business. I wasn't the fastest runner, but I wasn't the slowest, either. Because I have an older brother who thought, when I was 10, that he could turn me into the talented baseball player that he had been by screaming at me and dragging me to the park to practice when I just wanted to play in my front yard with my Matchbox cars, I actually had some ability above others in gym class at catching and throwing a ball, but it did me no good to lord that over the girls in the class. Well, MOST of the girls. And, for ability with a bat, I was close to the bottom of the gym class.

Juniors and seniors at our school had the luxury to pick elective gym classes for the last two years of their compulsory schooling, and because I had somehow missed the first day of sign-up for the electives, I wound up with second-semester leftovers fencing, badminton and floor hockey.

Ms. Beeman was the woman who taught us and then oversaw fencing...or should I say who taught us the two most basic moves in fencing and then took a three week working vacation -- some say sleeping off the breakfast booze -- while we hacked away at each other with thin steel rods!

I was embarrassed when badminton started, because the school actually fielded a badminton team...and it was all girls. I thought for sure I would be the only boy in badminton, but there was Gary Block, one year ahead of me as a senior. If I was the Prince of Geeks, Gary was the King. Sorry Gary, if you happen to be reading this (HAH! I kill me! I don't think any of the two of you is Gary Block!). Sadly enough, he fit the stereotype: uncoordinated both physically and socially, excelling in science and Mathletes. I think he was in the Chess Club, too. Fuzzy, almost afro-like hair. And large-framed glasses.

I couldn't understand why the badminton courts had the lines like a tennis court (only smaller). I always thought of baminton as that silly little poof game you played at the beach and at picnics, batting the little cone-shaped "birdie" back and forth over the volleyball net. And that's another thing. Why was the badminton net the same as the tennis net? Everybody in the class seemed to think of badminton the same way as I did. Everybody, that is, except for Gary Block. I learned this when I so gaily batted the birdie across the net toward him and suddenly had to duck as the thing nearly took my eye out on his return! Then I began to understand. Badminton is tennis for people who don't like to chase after the ball when it goes out of bounds! Before long Gary Block and I were the only people in the class who took the game seriously. Leave it to the only two boys in class to make it a competition! The only prblem was, no matter how good I was at it, I could never beat that pipsqueak, that badminton powerhouse, Gary Block! And then, just as I felt the tables turning, as I began a surge that would inevitably result in Gary Block's badminton demise, we switched electives. To floor hockey.

Kids were scattered in all directions, so it wasn't all of us from badminton going to floor hockey. But some others besides me did. Tony Zomparelli was in the floor hockey class. Tony was one of those kids who was very well physically coordinated, but didn't feel the need to show that to people on a playing field in organized, competitive play. His true forte was soccer, but he was not at all shabby at maneuvering a ball at the end of a hockey stick from one end of the hockey floor to the other. And when I say he was not too shabby, I mean he was fantastic. The down side? I was considered the second best. A far distant second best. I always wound up as the center (forward? The guy who got to run anywhere on the floor (help me, Chloe!)), opposite Tony Zomparelli in the same position on the other team. The guy could run circles around me. I mean that literally. I mean, he literally did that to me one day. And my team always lost. No matter who was on it, if Tony Zomparelli wasn't on my team, my team lost.

Then one day the teacher decreed that Tony Zomparelli would be the goalie for his team. I was the (center? forward?) for my team, as usual (ugghh!). So his team had to re-organize, and as their forward/center, they chose none other than Gary Block! I swelled with pride and bravado. I had this guy beat. I was a faster runner, I was better with stickwork, and I was more agile. And I had a score to settle!

Near the end of the game the score was close, thanks to a goal or two scored by Tony Zomparelli, from his position as goalie!! It was down to the last few plays before the class bell would sound. The teacher/referee dropped the ball for our faceoff at center court. Gary and I slapped sticks and managed to knock the ball toward the left side of the court (according to my intended direction of travel). He and I sprinted after it, and I watched as he fell behind in the race. I had the height. I had the legs. I had the speed. Gary, however, had this little aversion to losing, so he aimed his stick right at my knees and thrust it right between them. With the sudden stop of my legs, I quite literally launched into the air and somersaulted, landing on my back, with Gary's stick and my stick launching into the air again as if for an encore. Gasps echoed throughout the gym. My momentum carried me through the roll and I wound up rolling up onto my feet in a crouch.

(When I wrote earlier that I was good at falling, I mean that I excelled at pratfalls. I knew how to throw myself to the floor and make it look like I didn't mean it, and yet I never (okay, seldom) got hurt. I wasn't the most graceful, but I knew how to tumble. And this skill lent itself to times when I really fell. It had become instinct, and when I did lose my balance or my feet, I was able to turn it quickly into a tumble and roll out of it, to witnesses who knew me thinking I had done it on purpose.)

So I sprang back up onto my feet in a crouch, and I was more than a little perturbed at Gary Block for the dirty trick he had just pulled. I didn't think to clobber him or kick him or wring his neck, but I was angry, and my eyes found him. He literally turned sheet white, jumped backwards and put his hands up to his mouth, and he shouted, "Oh, my god! I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I didn't mean it!"

The guy honestly thought I was about to pummel him and, according to the bylaws of The Guy Code, I had every right to pummel him. And I think he knew that, too. It was the first time, the only time, I ever instilled abject, menacing fear in someone, and it felt good. It tasted good. But, somehow, it sufficed. He apologized, quite profusely I might add, and his demeanor let me know that he knew he had done wrong, and he was truly sorry. Had it been one of the many class tough-guys who I had rolled up and shot that look at, there would have been a fight, and I probably would have been the one who was pummeled, cause I ain't no tough-guy.

Inside, I knew Gary's fear at that moment. I had been in his shoes, and for much lesser infractions, cowering before bullies and toughs. I had been there, so with the tables turned, after that first sweet taste of power, I didn't want to be one who made others feel impotent.

He did something stupid, I got angry, he apologized. He almost wet his pants, but he apologized. What was there left to do? So I ran and got my stick, slapped the ball toward the goal, and Tony Zomparelli stopped it. And he probably shot from there and scored on us, and we probably lost.

I should have ripped the guy's tongue out of his head.

Thanks, Chloe, for helping to bring this fond memory to the surface!


dassall