Blag-Togged

Wow! I’ve been tagged!

While reading Irb’s blog, I was shocked, appalled and thrilled when he told of his being tagged and, in turn, tagged me!

So now I’m supposed to tell five little known things about me, and then I have to tag five people. I think I can muster up five things no one in the blogopolis knows about me, but I don’t know if I can scrape together five bloggers who read me and whom Irb hasn’t already tagged.

Here goes, Five Little-Known Facts About Me:

1. I once “peeped” on a neighbor boinking her boyfriend. It was entirely by accident (the peeping, not the boinking…though I guess I wouldn’t know about that) as I was walking my dog off-leash in the field beside the apartment complex where I lived at the time. It was raining pretty hard that evening, so I hugged close to the building. I walked past her first floor bedroom window, the light was on, and something in my peripheral vision caught my eye that resembled a guy’s hairy ass in the air. So I looked. And then I watched. Hey, they were the ones boinking with the blinds wide open!

2. I am blind in my left eye. It has nothing to do with Five Little-Known Facts About Me #1 above. At least I don’t THINK it does. I HOPE it doesn’t! CRVO, ensuing retinal hemorrhage, surgery, 95% (my estimate) blind in the eye.

3. I never drank until I was over age 20, and I’ve never done any recreational drugs.

4. I didn’t have sex until I was 21, which has given me second thoughts about my life choices detailed in Five Little-Known Facts About Me #3!

5. I have performed onstage wearing only a towel, socks and shoes.

And there they are, five things you didn’t know, didn’t care to know, and can’t possibly forget about me, no matter how hard you try.

Claire, Chloe, Trina, Toast and Random Squeegee, it’s now your turn.

Pride Run Amok... or, "Would You Like Fries With That Smirk?"

It was one of those moments where I didn’t know whether or not I was supposed to be angry.

I was at a McDonald’s restaurant yesterday morning. Okay, say what you will, but I had to be to the job extra early, and I had no time to eat breakfast while standing still.

In the Chicago area there is a large number of Hispanic immigrants. I’m sure a significant portion of them are here illegally – probably not the majority, but a significant number just the same.

So I got to the counter at this McDonald’s just as an older white guy – say mid-50s to early 60s -- finished ordering his breakfast. The young woman behind the counter – Hispanic, most likely Mexican, who seemed to speak and understand English well enough – misunderstood something the man said, or he misunderstood something she said, and she had to recount his change. Then he said, quite loudly, “Do you have a green card?”

The woman again raised her eyebrows, at first not hearing or not understanding, perhaps as if she didn’t quite believe what she heard, and then she nodded vigorously and said, “Card? Yes, I do,” while she absently patted her chest near her name tag.

He responded with an “Uh huh” that resonated with doubt, almost contempt.

She went to retrieve his food, and the man said, “Do you like working in my country?”

She didn’t respond, either unhearing, or ignoring.

She brought him his food and his drink, and said, “Have a nice day.”

The man said to her, “Oh, I’m certain I will!” as though he was certain he had ruined hers. The woman didn’t appear to have been offended or rattled. He walked away moments before my food was handed to me.

On the rest of the drive to work the scenario kept eating at me. Did that guy – or does ANY of us – have the right to ask someone who’s apparently or even obviously not from this country originally for their green card? Other than if that guy – or any of us – is an employer interviewing a prospective hire, I mean. She didn’t show him her green card, nor did he actually demand to see it. It was more as though he was just fucking with her, but he did it with the attitude of subtle intimidation.

On the subject of illegal aliens in our country, I feel I stand pretty firmly: the important operating word in the term is “illegal.” If they’re undocumented and are here illegally, then they should be deported. The argument that “this country was built by immigrants” holds no water in this particular argument; my great-grandfather came here, spent ten years of his life here working to get his family here and working toward citizenship. Documented. Resident Alien. Naturalized Citizen. He earned the right, as did the rest of his family, as did hundreds of thousands like him after they arrived here, to stay here and raise their families with all the freedoms and benefits a United States Citizenship affords.

The argument gets deeper, of course, but it’s not my topic.

In the car I kept addressing the ass-wipe.

Her answer to your green card question was “Yes.” So she’s here legally. She has the right to work in “your country.” She’s most likely working toward citizenship, which should make your bigoted ass proud that you live in a country for which so many are willing to leave their homes and much of their family and try to make a new life. Where did your family come from? What twisted arrogance makes you think we should have shut the gates after your exalted heritage slowed to a trickle? You smug prick.

But then I got to thinking…what if I had misheard him, and he had actually asked her, “Do you have a green car?” And what if he had actually said, “Do you like your McNuggets crunchy?”

It was early, after all. I was still pretty tired.

So I’m not sure if I should be angry with the guy.

To Chloe, If You're Reading

Chloe,

I'm still reading "Moo Deux," however, it seems there is no longer an invitation to comment on your blog. I wanted to let you know I still click on you just about every day to see if you've posted.

Thanks,

Farrago

Does It Understand You If You Scream?

I almost wet myself watching this.

Don't throw away your keyboard yet!

A Kick in the Can, The End

Washington Junior High School was the flagship of its school district. The only junior high in the district, it took in all of the students graduated from the elementary schools and prepared them for high school. What this meant for a lot of students – myself included – was first experiences with lots of kids of different ethnicities and races and skin colors. Most notable for me were the black kids.

A certain relative, who will remain nameless, had warned me in the final days of the summer before 7th grade to “watch out” the black kids at Washington Junior High…only this relative wasn’t so kind as to use the term “black.”

Innocent that I was, I took my relative’s advice and I “watched out” for all the black kids. And while I watched out for the black kids I had my back to all the white kids and Mexican kids and whatever other non-black kids there were back there, and they were kicking my ass! That was when I learned a life lesson: kids are kids. People are people. Take the time to learn which ones to trust, and which ones to avoid, and you find the two groups are not separated by color.

Unfortunately, not everyone learns that lesson.

As happened in a lot of schools, certainly during the time I was at Washington, the black kids and the white kids just didn’t hang out together. The black kids always occupied the northeastern half of the playground while the white kids and the Mexican kids stayed closer to the main building and the Kick the Can court. (In the photo above, there can be seen a fair amount of landscaping in the northeastern corner. Back then there was no landscaping, just a chain-link fence and gate enclosing the playground at the edge of the sidewalk.)

One day, in the middle of a game, one of the black kids showed up at the side of the court and asked one of us why we never let the black kids play. It was almost a chorus of voices as we told him that everyone was welcome to play. For some reason, the more kids playing, the more fun it was! We invited him to join us.

As there were few rules to teach him, and the game was learn-as-you-go, he was on a team and playing inside of two seconds. It was hindsight then just as it is sad hindsight now that we should have told him it was a brutal game, and that capturing the can the first time would be quite an eye-opening experience. But we failed to tell him that. We just figured he’d get it. Someone eventually passed him the can and he captured it, and was immediately pounced upon by five or six kids gripping his shoulders and kicking at his feet and shins.

A minor, angry scuffle ensued as the can was wrangled away from him, and he singled out one of his opponents and tried to strike back. But his opponent, seeing the can kicked away, chased after the can and left the fight behind.

The new player then just disappeared, and my friends and I laughed him off as a sissy.

The very next day the same kid showed up with a couple of his friends and asked if they could all play. Looking back at it now, it was the kind of formula action movie foreboding we all recognize when we see it. But we were just kids on a playground, not in a movie. And we just wanted everybody to play and have fun. So we said “Sure!”

Play resumed for a few minutes until one of the new players captured the can. I remember the absurd moment when he bent down and, in flagrant disregard for the rules, picked the can up in his fingers and ran. A bunch of us started screaming, “Foul!” or “No fair,” oblivious to the fact that he wasn’t running toward his opponent’s goal, but rather OFF the court and bearing northeast! Quicker-witted kids – like Lu, for instance – caught on to what was happening, and someone shouted, “Get the can!!” We took off after the kid, who ran between the friends he had brought along, who then turned and acted as though blockers on a football field. They stuffed the first couple of guys nearest the culprit, but Lu got past them as the can thief tried to disappear into the crowd of black kids.

Tenacious Lu chased him around until he snagged the kids shirt and started to reel him in. The rest of us caught up, and a few ran to help Lu, who was by that time grappling with the kid.

There had been, a few years earlier, what were termed “race riots” at the high school, where my older siblings had attended, which had started as a singular fight between a white teenager and a black teenager, and then escalated. On the playground I saw my friends converging on the mad scuffle to help Lu. And then I saw a couple of the black kids doing the same to help their friend. In essence, I saw our own race riot in the making, whether or not it was truly racially motivated.

I have the distinct image in my head of a pile of kids grappling, swinging fists and shouting, and Lu at the edge of the pile, head down and driving into it, his hands still gripping the kid who took our can. But I saw it turning ugly and, rather than jump in and exacerbate the situation, I thought it was time to get an adult’s attention before anybody got hurt. I wore a zip-front hooded sweatshirt that chilly fall day, and I had my hands in the shirt pockets, covering my belly. I turned to get the attention of one of the deans who, since it was so chilly outside, had chosen to monitor the children’s behavior from inside the doorway to the cafeteria.

I had made no more than one step toward the school building when another black kid, who had been standing behind me, quickly wound up and punched me in the stomach! My hands were already there and, in reflex, I had tensed my arms and hands inside my pockets, so all he hit were my fists. It was then that I realized this whole fracas had been highly organized by the culprits who took the can. They had the forward operating team, which had seized the treasure, then acted as first line defenders, and then baited the rest of us to pursue. They had a rear team to join the fight when we arrived, as they quickly piled on to Lu and the kid in possession of the can. And they had containment sentries to seal off anyone’s escape to the south to get help!

I was actually impressed! To this day I am still impressed with the seeming precision with which they pulled off the event! They were just 12 and 13 year-old kids! I don’t know what their motive was, if it was just simply to fuck with us and take our can, or if it was more sinister, and truly a ploy to lure us into a huge fight.

So I stood there, glaring at the kid who punched me, who must have at that moment regretted that he hadn’t hit me in the face instead, seeing as how his gut punch hadn’t hurt me. I didn’t strike back, so he didn’t continue.

The next thing I knew I heard someone shout “GET HIM!” and Lu went streaking past me – can in hand – and headed back to the Kick the Can court! Only one or two kids chased after him, and then there were the rest of the Kick the Can players in the mix. The race riot that was to be... wasn’t, so life was returning relatively back to normal. We just wanted our can back. The kid who had punched me drifted back down to the northeastern corner, and I trotted back toward the court, smug for having "blocked" that guy's punch. I was about 20 feet away from the game which had already resumed in earnest when a voice somewhere cried, “[FARRAGO]! LOOK OUT!” I turned just in time to see two sneakered feet filling my vision and connecting with my chest! I hit the asphalt hard, shoulders and chest first, the rest of me flopping down gracelessly. I didn’t swear as a general rule back then, but I do recall that when I hit the ground, I shouted, “FUCK!” Then I got up and learned what I was made of: anger spiked in me so fiercely that I faced the kid, one of the crowd from the northeastern corner of the playground, and suddenly… a lump formed in my throat… I was... in tears?! What the…?! And then I turned my back on the kid, determined to tell a dean. At first I walked, but then I felt a jolt in my legs, and they were suddenly very limber! In what I now know is the “fight or flight” reflex, the adrenaline pumped into my legs and I was inexplicably compelled to sprint, with much agility and more speed than I ever had before, to the door behind which stood the dean of 7th grade boys.

Flight.

I blubbered incoherently for a few moments until one kid, a black girl, shouted “David W. did it!” She used his full name. It was the first time I had ever heard it. When the dean waded out into the playground and called out David W., I recognized the kid as the one who had knocked me down. The dean dragged us both back to the cafeteria door and started yelling at both of us to the point that even David was crying. He forced David to apologize to me, which, even then, seemed macabre. We were forced to shake hands, and then we were sent back out to the playground.

I can remember moments of that day so clearly, and remember so clearly the helpless feeling after being slammed to the asphalt of the playground. As a boy, as a man, I wish I could have had the balls to immediately give back what I had gotten, but as a clear-headed adult, I am glad I didn’t react in that way. What I wound up doing, though embarrassing in the eyes of male culture in our society, was exactly what I should have done, and may have prevented me from turning a corner I’m better off not to have turned.

Perhaps the events of that day signaled the start of the end of Kick the Can at Washington Junior High School. Perhaps it was the advent of the soft-drink industry’s “progress” to an all-aluminum can the next year, which doesn’t flatten as well, nor does it fly as well or as far, and without the kind of control the original cans did. Whatever the reason, well before the end of my 8th grade year, Kick the Can was “outlawed” by the powers that were. My father may have invented it (or not), but I and my friends ended it.

Long Live Kick the Can!

New Link

As a regular reader of my blog, you may notice a new link to the left among my "Better Blogs Than Mine" list. "Sons of July" is an excellent writer, a poet among us who writes from a point of view most of us can't. He is (yet another) writer who makes even the best of my efforts appear a shameful bile of blather and random punctuation. Please pay him a visit.

As a new visitor to my blog, what the heck are you doing reading this shit?! Jump directly to the list of "Better Blogs Than Mine" and read some good stuff!

A Kick in the Can

At Washington Junior High we played a playground game in which a group of us daily split up into two teams, flattened an empty pop can (soda can to those of you on the eastern seaboard and abroad, “Coke” can to those of you west of the Mississippi…even though it was usually a Pepsi can) and kicked it back and forth trying to get the can to hit the opposing team’s wall. The game was called, quite imaginatively, “Kick the Can.” It was a game I thought we kids had invented, but when I began to describe the game to my father, who had also attended Washington, he said he knew all about it, and that HE invented it. Yeah, right, Dad.

Someone would procure a can, usually from home, as the school then didn’t allow children access to vending machines, and would step on the middle of the can and then fold the ends over and flatten it further. It was necessary to do it right, as a properly flattened can, when kicked just right, would spin like a frisbee and become airborne and, potentially, score on a team’s wall above anybody’s reach to block it. My game was back in the waning days of the heavier cans made entirely of tin; they flew better and lasted longer. It was truly an art form, as some kids were much better at shaping and smoothing a can than others.

Of course, looking back on it, Kick the Can was a pretty dangerous game, not to mention brutal. Girls didn’t play. They were welcome to play – everyone was welcome to play – but after one or two minutes they realized that we boys were just stupid.

The game was very simple: the court lay east-west (see photo). Either team had to kick the flattened can to the other team’s wall for one point. It was forbidden for a player to pick up the can in his or her hands during play, except after scoring a point, when someone from either team could carry the can to the middle of the “court” to have the face-off and begin play to the next score.

To block the can with any part of the body was allowed, but to catch the can was forbidden.

Common techniques during play were:

-The Capture – a player would step on the can to control it and keep it away from opposing players. This technique was effective for finding teammates to pass the can to them. The drawback to the capture was the opponents surrounding the player, placing their hands on his shoulders and kicking at his foot, ankles and shins in an effort to dislodge the can from beneath his foot…or his foot from his leg.

-The Slide – a player, having captured the can, slides the can beneath his foot to perform a rearward pass. This technique was effective for faking out opponents and sending the can quickly across the court without having to lift the foot off of the can to kick it – which could afford opponents the opportunity to kick it away – and, if lucky, nailing the nearest opponent behind him in the berries.

-The Sail Kick – a player would kick the can, contacting the edge of the can nearest his body with his foot, which would lift the front edge of the can as it gained momentum, causing it to become airborne. An agile, experienced player could apply some English to the can and cause it to spin rapidly as it sailed, which greatly enhanced accuracy, as well as improving the odds for serious bodily injury to anyone attempting to block the shot.

-The Ground Kick – a player kicked the can, contacting the middle of the can with his foot, keeping the surface of the can flat to the ground, causing it to skitter across the court. This kick was the easiest to block and intercept.

There was only one recess period at Washington, and that was after lunch. The lunch period was 45 minutes, and the die-hards among us saw lunch as an obstacle between us and Kick the Can. The number one fastest eater of lunch, and I mean the whole lunch, was always my best friend, Lu, at an average time of five minutes. The second fastest was usually me, usually around five and a half minutes. I still remember chugging my chocolate milk from the little half-pint cardboard carton every day while speed-walking from the table to the garbage can to the dirty tray stack, and then dumping my emptied carton into the last garbage can before the door to the playground. How I never threw up on the Kick the Can court, I’ll never know.

As one might imagine, you had to be a pretty tough, hardy kid to play this game well. I could withstand only a moderate beating about the ankles before I coughed up the can, and I always managed to pass to the wrong players.

Lu was one of the best Kick the Can players. He was always a short, chubby kid with a bilateral lisp. To this day, he’s short and chubby, and he still talks funny. I wouldn’t have guessed it, but being a short, chubby Mexican kid with a sideways lisp must make one tough, because Lu was always a tenacious guard dog type of kid. If he was your friend and someone was threatening you, Lu had your back. Actually, he had your front, because he didn’t let anybody mess with his friends.

On the Kick the Can court he was The Intimidator. One of the top scorers, he was the most accurate passer and he was unflappable when he captured the can. I think Bigfoot himself, wearing steel-toed boots, could have been kicking at Lu’s feet and never gotten him to cough it up.

For such a rough and tumble game, one might think our matches often dissolved into fights, but that just wasn't the case. We all knew what the game entailed, and what to expect when playing. If someone didn’t like how the game was played, then he didn’t play.

And it was always that way with Kick the Can, but for one very notable exception….

(…To Be Continued)