Friday, October 28, 2011

Good times in 7th grade


Zak Smith thinking crazy thoughts...



Zak getting air-borne



Zak confused


Zak sick of me taking pictures of him


This post is in direct response to yesterday's post. Zak, thankful to be alive and full of pop, went out and ninja hopped over that same barrier. He did it as an expression of human vitality, spirit, and triumph. Thanks, Zak, for carrying the torch for us... In the last picture, are you thinking of giving me the finger? Don't do it, Zak, bad things happen when you start flashing limbs at me... Speaking of flipping people off, I just remembered flipping off Bobby when I was in 7th grade. Not skater Bobby from St. George, if any of you know him. He's my homie. But  other Bobby from St. George, the one that was in my scout troop... Oh yes, fighting at scout camp outs, that's where it used to be...

So Bobby was only 11, but the scout master gave him special permission to come with us on a week-long camp out somewhere in the mountains at this really pretty lake. That was the scout master's first mistake. Bobby, being younger than everyone there, felt he had to prove his manhood by threatening people with hatchets and such. That was the scout master's second mistake, giving Bobby permission to touch the hatchet. The kid didn't know how to swing the thing, he missed the log completely, and tried chopping a nice granite rock in half, chipping the hatchet and pissing off our scout master. Feeling even more stupid for what he did, Bobby then refused to let anyone else chop any wood with the hatchet because that might make him look like a fool. So he would slap this would log with the hatchet, not getting any closer to cutting it in half. It was starting to get dark, and we needed wood, so we got tired of him trying to chop this one piece, and someone tried taking the hatchet from him. Bobby freaked out and threatened to hit the kid with the hatchet. Then I think Matt might have tried taking it, and Bobby did the same thing. Being the Godfather-like figure that Matt is, he knows when he's supposed to fight, and he knows when someone's supposed to fight for him. This was the latter case.

So Matt walked up to me and was like, "Hey, go up to Bobby and try to get the hatchet from him, and if he pushes your or anything, beat him up!" I didn't think it would really come to blows, so I walked up to Bobby and said, "we need the hatchet to chop wood..." and I tried grabbing the hatchet. Bobby pushed me (I was 12, about the same size as him) and held up the hatchet like he'd hit me with it. There was a confrontation of words, I don't remember what I even said (nothing bad, just like, "dude, calm down, just give me the hatchet" something like that...) , then Bobby pushed me again. Years of scout training taught me to recognize an idiot when I saw one, and he was glowing on my radar. I was threw mincing words with him and decided to just start punching him. So that's what I did, punched him in the face a bunch of times. He immediately dropped the hatchet and flailed a couple swings but didn't make any contact. He then fell to his knees, putting his face in perfect level with my swinging arms, and I let him have it. He grabbed onto my sweater and just held on. I remember Matt was like, "Beat him up, Jonny!", Tom Henderson had a big smile on his face, Robert Shumate looked away and fled the scene, not wanting to be associated with violence, and everyone else was in shock that it had come to this. I pushed him to the ground, picked up the hatchet, then started chopping his own log right in front of him, as a statement that I was not to be effed with. Bobby tried telling on me, but the scout master disliked Bobby so much that he wouldn't even hear him out...


So then in 7th grade, a couple weeks later, Bobby would always call me names at school and talk about how he beat me up. I remember getting off the bus and he yelled, "Pussy!" out the window, so I flipped him off. Things escalated into another fist fight right outside of shop class where I got Bobby's blood on my Planet Earth shirt, and he ripped my shirt in half. I had go home looking like a caveman with a shirt that only had one arm hole and shoulder on it, the other half being completely ripped off. I put the ripped-off part under my backpack should strap and kind of covered my naked chest. Middle school is jungle rules...

1 comment:

  1. wait, HOW did I never hear about this? You boys and your fights, it just gets me every time!

    ReplyDelete