Your Illusion of Dignity

I have been inspired by a number of things:
The Bloggers of ConFab, Baby!
ConFab's location in Lexington, Kentucky
DutchBitch's latest entry about bullies
A desire to move the Green German Walkman with the Enormous Member down the page a skosh
to author another post on this dreadful blog. You know, I only signed up so I could get the cool Icy Mountain avatar when I posted on everyone's blog. I apparently don't have the proper synaptic connections in my brain to suddenly think "I'm so going to blog this" and then follow through before something else happens. Maybe I should write notes on my hand for later.

Over the summer between my Sophomore and Junior year in high school, my family moved from a small town in Eastern Kentucky to what passes for a large city in Kentucky, Lexington. I was not entirely fond of the idea. Therefore, I had a rather large chip on my shoulder and walked around like Robert Blake just hoping that someone would knock it off. I spent the summer helping my mom repaint, remodel and generally move into the new house. I made myself as scarce as possible around there and hung around with my new friend or mowed lawns to earn a little walkin' around money. My new friend was a year younger and had lived his entire life in St. Louis before being uprooted so we got along famously.

The first day of school he and I were standing outside one of the many front doors into the place. His older brother had just dropped us off thus saving us the indignity of riding the big orange twinky. We had a few minutes to kill so we stood on the curb and smoked a cigarette. As we were walking up to the doors, this monster jock grabbed me by the shirt, spun me 90 degrees and said, "New meat, gimme a smoke." Eureka! Some idiot had clearly knocked the chip off my shoulder! Staring up roughly six inches and at another 100 lbs. or so, I said, "There's no need for that, all you had to do was ask politely and I'll give you one." The big knucklehead actually put me down, sort of bowed, and said, "Gimme a smoke...please."

That's when I kicked him squarely in the nuts. When he doubled over, I assisted his head downward so his forehead could meet my upcoming knee. When he straightened back up and didn't appear to be able to fall over, I punched him in the solar plexus with the goal of trying to see if I could get my knuckles to touch his spine. Apparently, this was enough persuasion for him to hit the dirt. The whole thing took maybe 15 seconds. I turned to the rest of the spud boys standing around gaping and asked "Anybody else want a cigarette?" Undoubtedly the finest performance of my life. I was scared to death but I had managed to channel every bit of anger at my parents and their employers over being moved away from all my friends into 15 seconds of unfettered violence. The calm that descended and the clarity to pull off that parting statement left me even more amazed than my friend.

Shed of my anger and firmly established as One Who Is Not To Be Fucked With, I rather enjoyed the last two years of high school.