It was Spring of 1989, and a day I’d never forget.
The air was perfect, the sun was still out, the grass and trees were green, and I was about to be taught a good life lesson. I was thirteen, a seventh grader at the time.
The whole preceding Winter was leading up to this moment. Brad Brubaker and I had been challenging Ryan Jenkins to a fight all Winter. And this was the night it would happen.
You see, I’d never been in a fight before. I was less than 90 pounds and was looking to prove myself. Earlier in the year I was friends with Ryan. All that changed however when I began hanging out with my parochial school “tough guy” friends. Jason, Jamie, Brad, they’d always tell these glory stories of getting in fights and showing another shmoe who was boss.
Now it was my turn.
So what do you do when you’re a 90 pound seventh grade wuss that wants to prove himself? You find someone similar in size and build...or smaller and try to beat them up. Who cares if you were cordial friends or allies just moths prior!
So anyways, every Saturday night, when I was over at Brad’s house we’d either prank phone call Ryan, or call him and tell him to meet us at such-and-such hill for a royal rumble. We’d go there, but he’d never show. “What a friggin wuss” I thought to myself.
All the groundwork of those preceding months had lead up to this point. One Spring evening, Brad and I found ourselves on Ryan’s front doorstep. Somehow we’d received word that his parents were gone. So if we went to his house he’d have to fight me! Yes, I could see the fight going down in my mind, probably to the sound track of a Metallica song. I’d have beaten someone up, and now I could have a glory story to tout.
So there I was, on Ryan’s front doorstep looking at him right in the eyes. I remember thinking to myself how stoic and resolved he looked. If he was scared, he hid it well. I remember hurling some smack-talk at him trying to get him mad. He remained unvexed and unshaken by my taunts.
“Fight me you butthole!” I finally shouted as I grabbed Ryan by the lapels of his his striped IZod shirt.
The next thing I remember, was getting socked in the eye. Stunned, I didn’t have a chance to gather my thoughts before I was hurled blindly in to the bushes behind me. I remember being disoriented and looking down at the ground and seeing the roots of the shrubs, and the grass at the bottom of the bushes, feeling the uncomfortable jabbing of branches and twigs and shrubbery pricking me as I was being rolled through them. All the while Ryan had proceeded seamlessly into his next stage of self defense; rapid-fire, machine gun kicks to the groin. (Thankfully his aim was off a bit)
To the best of my knowledge, I never even got a hit in.
All this must have taken place within the time frame of about a minute and a half before I rolled backwards out of the shrubbery and Ryan’s next door neighbor Brian Eady broke up the fight and told to shake hands.
“Gladly” I thought to myself. Still stunned and beside myself in a stupor I stretched out my right hand to shake Ryan's.
“Nice fight man.” I said. Ryan said nothing, rather he stared right through me, unmoved,unflinching.
After the fight, Brad and I returned to his lair, who knows what we did after that. I do remember walking back home a couple hours later in the dark rain and almost running face first in to a tree branch and falling into a small construction pit.
What a lowly estate.
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