So Matt brought up a funny incident from our childhood in his interview a couple days ago. It was the incident of beating up Bobby at our scout camp out. Yeah, scouts are supposed to be all cute and cuddly and what not, but this time things got out of hand. Words were said, things happened, fists were thrown, blood was shed... Actually, I don't think there was any blood. But Bobby's face was red, I can tell you that much... So I was 12 at the time, and it was the summer. We were heading up to bear fish lake with my scout troop for a week long camping trip. Me and Matt actually showed up a couple days late because we had a golf tournament the first couple days of it. So my dad drove us up half way through the week and hiked up with us to the camp site. What a trooper... So as soon as we got there, everyone started filling us in on how utterly annoying Bobby was, the 11 almost 12 year old new comer to the troop that thought our troop ran on prison rules rather than good old fashioned Western hospitality, which meant he tried intimidating people twice his size into letting him play with ropes and stuff like that. Our scout master, one of them at least, really hated him too because he was trying to chop a log and missed the log and hit a rock, leaving a nice solid chip in the hatchet. I remember the scout master, John Ward (a man among children, he was...), muttering under his breath, "there's always gotta be at least one stupid kid in the troop..." John Ward hated most people, so him hating Bobby wasn't too impressive. But still, Robert Schumate even hated Bobby, which Robert was nice to all and indifferent to most situations, so seeing him take a stance against Bobby was quite a feat on Bobby's part.
You know what, I think I might have already told this story on the blog... I don't care. I'm telling it again. You don't remember it anyway...
So we got to the camping site, and everyone was way pissed at Bobby. After a couple hours around the kid, I understood full well why. The kid was an idiot, straight up. The next day we were there, everyone was seriously about to blow up on Bobby, but nobody had the nerve. It was getting towards dinner time, and we needed to get some good firewood to cook our food. But Bobby had claimed the hatchet for his own personal use, and he refused to let anyone chop wood with it, making it hard to collect wood, and pissing the aitch out of everyone. What was worse was Bobby couldn't even land a successful blow on the wood he was trying to chop. Every time he came down upon it, his wrists went limp, the pansy that he was, and the hatchet blade just slapped the wood sideways instead of cutting into it. After about an hour of Bobby trying to cut through a little log and making no progress, Zack Warner, the autistic, psychotic, video game addicted, on the verge of exploding on you all the time kid of the troop (every troop has to have at least one of those kids too. Side story: on the way home from our first trip to Havasupi, Brian got in a fight with Zack Warner in Zack's dad's suburban in the parking lot of Denny's in Kingman, AZ because Zack stunk up the car with his farts. Brian bit Zack's fingers after Zack tried gagging Brian by ramming his fingers down Brian's throat. No joke! Bit his fingers hard, and Zack screamed pretty loud. I watched in awe from the parking lot as the entire thing quickly escalated from farting to biting) where was I?.. Oh yeah, Zack tried getting the hatchet from Bobby, but Bobby pushed Zack away, held up the hatchet like he was going to hit him with it, and said, "don't touch my log!" He was very protective of his log... So then Matt came up to me and said, "Jonny, go up to Bobby and try to take the hatchet, and if he pushes you, beat him up!" I didn't think it'd seriously come to blows, but being the obedient brother that I am, I followed through. So I went up to Bobby, told him I wanted to chop the log, tried to grab the hatchet that was now on the ground, and Bobby pushed me back and held up the hatchet at me. Now I go into the discourse between me and Bobby:
Me: Dude! Calm down man, I just want to chop the log!
Bobby: Don't touch my log!
Ok, the rest is fuzzy, but Bobby said he would beat me up, so I beat him to the punch, literally, and started punching him right in the face. As I rained down blows upon him, Bobby could do nothing but grab my sweater to hold himself up, which set him up perfectly right in front of me, unarmed. I don't know how many times I punched him, but I remember while I was, Robert Shumate walked off really fast so he wouldn't be associated with it, Matt was laughing and yelling out, "Hit him, Jonny!!!" and everyone else stood around in shock, having probably never seen a fight before. I finally threw Bobby on the ground, having just accomplished a flawless victory over my opponent. I guess it would have been a good time to use my fatality and rip his spine out, but I spared him. I instead grabbed the hatchet and started chopping it right in front of him to prove a point: ... Well, there was no point, but don't push me! The only other thing I remember from that camp out was getting sun burnt super bad and wanting to kill the fat kid at the camping store that said the sleeping pad I bought was really comfortable. That quarter of an inch piece of foam crap did nothing for me. If you're going to go through the trouble of carrying in a sleeping pad, why not bring in a good one? Anyway, that was the rest of the trip.
Back at school a couple weeks later, Bobby was under the impression that he had beaten me up and I was terribly afraid of him. He'd always call me names and stuff in the hall. Then he'd give me the real evil eye during deacon's quorum. So finally one day after 7th period shop class, Bobby challenged me to fight again. He sucker punched me as I walked out of my class, and then he proceeded to hold onto the collar of my shirt as I proceeded forth to rain blows upon him once again. This time he fell to the ground, ripping my Planet Earth shirt in half. So I was at school with a ripped in half shirt... I had to keep my backpack on after that so the shoulder strap would hold my shirt together. That sucked.
Thinking back on it, Bobby probably had some kind of messed up childhood that made him really insecure and think he had to beat up people to be tough. So don't fight kids, it'll mess you up...
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