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!