Oh, there was going to be blood…

*Update* Oh man, I’m such a dumbass, I didn’t process the phrase “Photo Assignment” on this week’s League challenge. Sigh. What a dink I am…

This week’s topic from the league is pretty broad, just the word Red, which usually makes from some interesting interpretations. Can’t wait to see what others have written about frankly. For me, after writing about my sister recently and having to really dig through some of my childhood experiences, there was only one thing that immediately sprang to mind, blood and the only time I was ever in a “fight”. I was a pretty harmless kid. A little butterball obsessed with G.I. Joe, action films, and comic books, but if you knew me you knew the likelihood of any actual fisticuffs was beyond silly. I just really didn’t have it in me. Still don’t. There was one time though, one instance where I was pushed a little too far. I wish I had a Ralphie (from A Christmas Story) experience with a bully that just pushed too far and I beat the tar out of him while letting loose a string of obscenities that were still hanging over Central Florida as I type this, but alas it wasn’t anywhere near that cinematic or therapeutic. I’ll set the scene. I was 11 years old. It was 1987, and I was in the middle of my G.I. Joe phase (i.e. typically wearing a cammo T-shirt and olive drab shorts, and very often wore what I thought was a badass “green beret” beret – see below.)

I’d just begun the sixth grade, which meant riding the big yellow Twinkie to and from school. I’d also just recently watched the film La Bamba, and was telling a friend about it on the bus. For some messed up reason we thought the scene where Ritchie Valens’ mother found out about his passing was funny (I was eleven, cut me some slack), and we kept reenacting the scene, throwing up imaginary laundry in the air and calling each other’s names (instead of “Ritchie!”) Real quick, looking back, I was being a little callus douche, and if I could reach back through time and hit myself upside the head I totally would. Anyway, I wasn’t the only Shawn on the bus that day. There was a kid who lived a couple streets down from me that I was sort of friends with (you know, enough to go over to his house but not sleep over) who shared my name (and spelling.) I’d had a beef with him earlier that month in a dispute over trading some baseball cards. He wanted my Bo Jackson rookie card and I didn’t want to trade it. He kept badgering me relentlessly, so one day I took the card out of my binder, showed it to him and tore it in half. I thought I was ending an argument, but I guess he took it really personally. Long story short, while goofily reenacting the scene from La Bamba, he assumed I was making fun of him and when we got off the bus, well, IT WAS ON.

He hung back for a bit, but when I was in my yard heading towards our front door he came running at me full steam, screaming, with his right arm out to the side in preparation to clothesline me. I turned around and honestly didn’t know what to think. It was kind of in slow motion, enough so that I thought to myself, “Wow, Shawn’s going to clothesline me, and isn’t it weird that Ritchie Valens’ mom was hanging laundry on a clothesline…?” While processing the coincidence, he totally clotheslined me, right in the face, hitting me hard enough to give me a couple black eyes but luckily he didn’t break my nose. Here’s where the story got downright pathetic. As I confessed, I was quite the pudgy kid, and a little tall for my age group. The other Shawn? I swear he weighed 50lbs soaking wet, and for real, his gums would start bleeding if you looked at him askance. Though he tried his best to waylay me, he just hit my face and them tumbled over me. A little stunned, and honestly still thinking about clotheslines, it took me a second to really get mad. But when it hit, I was pissed. Seriously, like, pissed right the fuck off. Part of it was the group of other kids that had gathered around and were chiding me, urging me on to fight, and part of it was some twisted pent up rage that I’d apparently been harboring and didn’t realize. All of a sudden I wanted blood. Like seriously, I wanted to see Shawn bleed. So I bent down, grabbed him by the shirt, and hauled back and, um, well, slapped him across the face. I so wish I had punched him, but like I said, I just didn’t have it in me. But boy did I give him a slap he’d never forget. More importantly, the blood started flowing. From his nose, his gums, it was like I’d turned on a faucet. Honestly, he was like a little scrawny Andrew WK…

For me, this was mission accomplished. I proceeded to then resort to the only other thing a butterball like me could do, I sat on him until he calmed the fuck down. About ten minutes later most of the other kids had dispersed, and Shawn had started clotting. I got up, he sulked away and I felt like a million freaking dollars. I was so stupidly proud of what I had done. And you know what was the real cherry on top of this stupid childhood sundae for me right then? I had Shawn’s blood all over my shirt. I couldn’t wait to show my parents and sister. “Look guys, I was in a fight, and I won! See, this is his BLOOD!” Let’s just say my parents didn’t see it quite in that light. But my sister did. And at the time, that’s all that mattered.

You can see the residual of what was left of my two black eyes in the picture above, just a little red around the sockets…