“Mom? What would you do if I got suspended for getting into a fight?”
I naively asked my mom that question, as if she wouldn’t immediately deduce that I must’ve been in one. Why else would I ask? In true mom fashion, she didn’t put me on the spot by asking, “Well, did you get into a fight?”
Instead, she said, “That depends.”
Each and every fight I’ve ever been in was pitiful. I’ve never won a fight, and I’ve never lost one, per se–if you want to call them fights. Most of them ended typically with shouting or a shoving match, but one in particular ended in an extraordinarily unexpected way.
Dixon Kane was the combatant in 8th grade at Best Junior High in Oak Park, Michigan. We were the same age and in athletic, but he was a little taller. Just two active junior high kids.
The build-up was a suspense-laden scene where I challenged him to a fight in front of a bunch of other kids. He accepted, and we would meet after school in the little oak tree forest beside the school, which offered some cover from adults.
In 2021, via Facebook Messenger, I asked Dixon if he happened to remember anything about the legendary fight more than 40 years before.
“I remember that,” he said. “Although we hung with the same crowd, you at some point had determined that I was a dick who needed his ass beat.”
Dick: “Someone who is constantly
Urban Dictionary
acting like an asshole when unnecessary.”
Dixon was not a dick. He was a good guy (still is) with plenty of friends.
I, on the other hand, was a dick, which is, of course, why the whole thing happened at all. He was also the kind of kid who wasn’t going to back down, so there was a possibility that I would suffer a beatdown.
I had no idea how the after-school brawl would turn out. I don’t even know where I got that kind of confidence.
Well, Dixon didn’t play the whole hypermasculine bullshit. His self-esteem was intact, he was smart, smiled easily, laughed plenty, and he got along with everyone. In fact, he and I actually had bouts of friendship and, after the fight, we remained friendly with each other. After high school, though, that was all she wrote. Like so many other former classmates, Dixon and I didn’t see each other until Facebook happened.
It must have been late spring or early fall, because we were in jeans and t-shirts. Me, Dixon, and the clump of guys (about ten other kids, mostly mutual friends) walked out of the school together, marching over to the lot of trees. We were focused, so we didn’t really consider how obvious it might have been to teachers or the principal — had they seen us — that we were up to no good. Either they didn’t see us, or they did see us but preferred to ignore it and go home.
We got out to a nice little opening in the forest and squared off with our fists up (because that’s what people do when they’re about to get into fisticuffs).
In Dixon’s Facebook recollection, he continued:
“After days (weeks?) of referencing female genitalia in my presence and calling me out, we somehow reached an accord that a tussle it would be.”
What he meant to say was that I called him a pussy and challenged him to a fight.
Dick.
So we faced each other, turned round in circles like magnets of opposite polarity, and waited for someone to throw the first punch. I don’t think he wanted to start it because he never had beef with me.
God knows what my beef was, but before either of us struck, I visualized my future success in order to realize a desirable outcome. That is, I imagined what it might feel like to throw the punch before I threw it so that I could build the courage to do so. I believe that I challenged him to a fight because it sounded like a good idea, but I’d never actually punched someone in the face before.
As soon as I made the decision to swing, everything went dark. I have no idea what happened in the next few seconds. All I can recall is my right arm (not my fist) moving in the direction of his head but not making contact, and then we ended up in a tight wrestling ball, all knotted up. If the adults had interrupted us, they couldn’t have separated us with crow bars.
In Dixon’s words:
“Now I have very little recollection of the fight itself (were any punches actually thrown or landed?) …”
Isn’t that pitiful? I blacked out, and neither of us can remember giving or receiving a single punch.
Dixon continued:
“… but what I do recall was a short wrestling match during which my body decided that the best defense it could muster was to release gas in close proximity to your cranium, at which point I believe the skirmish may have devolved into an outbreak of adolescent fart-joke laughter. The end.”
“Skirmish,” he said. That’s generous.
Translation: he farted in my face, so we were rescued by the inescapable collective hysterics that immediately ensued. The gaseous output effectively eliminated any previous need for hostility, however needless it was.
Abysmal. Legendary. A “fist-fight.”
It belongs in the vast canon of junior high fight stories as among the most insignificant displays of warrior valor. A tussle it was, in which violence was kept to an absolute minimum, our core muscles toiling to keep each other as stationary as possible so that, preferably, nothing would happen.
But a winner must be declared.
Dixon’s gaseous expulsion ended the fight with laughter, friendship, and ultimately, peace. Whatever disturbing psychological reason I had for provoking the so-called fight, I can be credited with enduring his flatulence and humiliation. Despite my dickishness, I sided in favor of hilarity, allowing potential prideful animosity toward Dixon to dissipate into the canopy of the little oak forest.
Consider: These are the kind of humiliating childhood experiences we often repress. In retaliation to Dixon’s body’s best defense, I could have been resentful and thrown more imaginary punches at the dark space in front of me. Instead, we all laughed our asses off, and that was that.
However, because Dixon was responsible for the only known offensive that either of us managed to strike, he must be declared the winner.
As this story began, it was the day before the big donnybrook, I asked mom she would if I had been suspended for fighting in school.
She was clever by being noncommittal, thereby extracting more information before giving me a definitive response.
“That depends,” she said.
“On what?”
“Did you start it?”
“What if I did?”
“Then I’d whoop ya.” Mom never spanked me, but her Western Kentucky roots would sometimes suddenly affect her speech. It scared me a bit because I was definitely the one provoking it, so I turned the conversation:
“And what if he started it?” I asked, still trying to pretend it was all hypothetical.
She replied, “Then whoop ‘im!”
On the one hand, her response surprised me because Mom was never violent or had she shown much taste for it. On the other hand, she had a tough survivor side to her as well, so her strong “don’t back down” attitude was consistent. I’ve always appreciated her vigor to take on challenges, as well as her implied confidence in my ability to fight.
If she only knew.
Written May 6, 2022