Believe it or not, this is a very true story....... I was not always a pacifist. When I was in my teens, I was devoted to a good beat down. Taking up Karate lessons, I was a wannabe Bruce Lee. Becoming Bruce involved my practicing swift-fleeting kicks, bone-crunching wrestles and, flying. Yep, you read correctly: flying. Since Bruce flew in his movie, The Big Boss, I knew that Air Phil had to take flight soon too. To prepare, I had to first have my Bruce routine down pat. His classic slow-burn glare was a must. Here my eyes would intensely look sidewise; silent with rage and coiled springs of action. After that curtain raiser, I would be all Fists of Fury. That’s how I would start all my fights: as calm as a field on the verge of battle. Then, suddenly, I would let fly a roundhouse left! Wham! The chop-suey express would be on its way. Sometimes, however, I would use psyche to beat an opponent. That’s when my mouthiness would come in handy, talking down my opponents. Everyone my age fell for it…except a creature-kid called John Reid. He was a boxer, in the first sense of the word. And he was a menace twice over. Whenever he got into a snarl with anyone, he would win. Once, he punched a guy skyward. And the poor dude joined the formation of a flight of birds. Nobody ever saw his aerodynamic ass again. Besides adding plumage to kids’ anatomies, John was a bully. Like a fox in a henhouse, he picked on everybody. So our swords had to cross soon enough. Regrettably, my being a sub-belt Karate kid made me the underdog. Still, Big Dog John wanted thought me competition. It all started in the school cafeteria. All the kids were lining up for some chow. John, as usual, got restless and felt that it was his due to jump the cue. Nobody in the line had any objections to this because they knew that he could change his diet to include them instantly if they did. Well, nobody except my pal Yinka. He was famished and had no intention of letting anyone cut ahead of him. So he told John to ‘wait his turn’. When John looked at him in utter shock, Yinka upturned his chin and stood proud. His manner, taken together with his refusal, pissed John off thoroughly. And he quickly turned Yinka into the latest enrollee in the school of hard knock-outs. Within moments, Yinka was one with the geography of the cafeteria floor. And blood was coursing through every pore of his face. His girlfriend Elle was in a faint upon seeing Yinka’s literal downfall. So she also hit the floor like a hostage at gunpoint. After this, silent tongues let loose whispering that John would someday meet his match. “Don’t look at me, I still like it here on earth,” I said, in response to a group of kids that thought I was that match. My liquid martial arts skills were still brewing. So I couldn’t yet fight John. Plus, I was still working on my flight ability. In this effort, I checked out my elder bro Martin practicing how to fly, kung fu-like. He would sail over the head of my bro Derek, cutting through the air in a fluttering white sarong like some updated Shoalin monk. This vignette would have been more impressive if Derek didn’t crouch down, I thought to myself. But when Martin landed, Derek would congratulate him on his frequent flier miles. Also, they would practice dodging imaginary Samurai sword thrusts. For swords, they would use sticks. And Martin would artlessly dodge the numerous swings of Derek’s cane. He would pull this off because Derek was swinging from approximately a mile away. Not to mention that he swung in slow motion! Both glad of Martin’s ‘skills’, they would congratulate each other again. Shaking my head and suppressing inevitable har dee har hars, I decided to step forward. “That’s not dodging and what you did before wasn’t flying either. I can prove it…give me the stick,” I said. Derek handed over the stick. Martin, feeling fit to the challenge, then agreed to dodge my stick swings. “Okay, dodge this!” I shouted. Martin moved his body thither and hither; this way and that…but at every turn his body met with a harvest of canes as I flayed, whipped him badly. Hiyaa! Ka-slam! Wshhhh…snap! Waah-chhh! His body was ‘Biblically hit’ so many times…that he realized that he wasn’t ‘Able’ to avoid my ‘Cane’. After this, Martin lost it. “Now, let’s see if you can dodge,” he yelled teary-eyed, and grabbed the cane off of me. But before he could take a swing, like a quick-change artist I went from whipper to whippet. Tucked tail and ran like hell. With John, if push came to shove, I would run too. John was a hand-hacker who had beaten Yinka to a pulp. And Yinka was not small fry. Yet Yinka’s face was re-arranged to a nightmarishly ugly degree. So badly mangled it was that he could easily out-Halloween Frankenstein’s monster in the holy-moly creepy sweepstakes. I hoped he (Yinka) would be on the mend soon, however. Or, at the outside, make a mint at the Box Office as a horror movie character. I tried to avoid John. But this proved impossible. To his mind, I hadn’t paid sufficient court to his ball breaking credentials. Like Yinka, I was a hard head. So he came after me, taunting and insulting me. I remained unmoved. Until, that is, he insulted my mother. Thereupon, an inexpressible anger swept over me. And an ominous shadow fell about us. “ Are you talking about my mom?” I asked rhetorically. “ Yeah and your daddy too…hahaha!” John replied, suicidally. There and then, I threw a Calvary of kicks and punches at him. The kineticism of my assault proved the finishing blow to John’s invincibility. At that first acquaintance with my fists of fury, he collapsed. Lying prone on the floor, grimed with the dirt of defeat, John was cold product. And I was duly crowned the king of Macho-dom. I guess I didn’t need to fly after all.
Posted on: Thu, 06 Mar 2014 05:48:12 +0000
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