Having the Fight

“C’mon, man. You gotta fight.” I’ve said this to G during a round, at a time to gut it out, to this face that looks like mine when I was 9. The face of a good kid. I recognize this blessing and curse.

In the parade of tournaments, I’ve seen what may be pivotal moments in his life. It’s just speculation because it’s what I do at my age. As I do on my own past moments, forks in the road that maybe took me to a whole different hemisphere. For better or worse. On the subject of having ‘fight’, I track back in wonder.

1970. 

Richard Teichmann. 

Just ‘Teichmann’ if you were a 6th grade classmate. 

He was a punk copping a leather jacket with shoulder-length hair – a mishmash of an updated, hippiefied early mid-1950’s hood. A little dog with a festering gripe about not being a big dog. Wayward kids like this in my neighborhood linked up to an absent home life proportionate to their lostness. By that estimation, I’d guess he was probably being raised by an older sibling or cousin. He was a little shorter, skinny, bangs hiding the complete left side of his face. The tossing of his head, the flash of a second eye, was his signature move in life. It was all he had, not without some effect. 

I had an understanding of him, not void of compassion but not enough to outweigh my disdain. My understanding might’ve been a large reason he hated me. He may have thought I had his number, or too much of it for his comfort, even if I never used it. Yes, he was a struggling, wannabe shit, usually not even bold enough to pose a threat, avoided by kids less because of danger than avoidance, like sidestepping unsavory, unidentified matter laying on the playground concrete that had warmed in the sun and would be impossible to get off your shoe. He had a desperation of identity, as it was for us all, free-floating in deeper, early-pubescent waters, flailing for any buoyant idea of who we were. He had no friends. Cool look notwithstanding, his gig’s vibe was repellant, providing the distance that appeared as respect. And for him that was better than nothing.

That day, our 6th grade teacher, Mr. Lamont, had taken us for an unexplained, unplanned extended gym period. Just our class. We played volleyball. At one point, he teamed us up girls-versus-boys. He was an interesting cat, ahead of his time in many ways, a feminist especially on this day, intending to put the girls in a position to display their grit, with the only problem that, for these girls at this time, there wasn’t any. On every serve or short exchange, they surrendered to each other or the suspicion that the ball might detonate if struck. This tweaked Mr. Lamont, triggering his imitation of a cartoon character desperate to not lose his shit, complete with a controlled eye-bulge and simmering, wry smile – probably used as a self-calming mechanism to stop just short of the animators rendering sideways ear-steam with factory whistle. That character showed up when kids gave no effort – mostly coming from their fear rather then indifference or rebellion – in return for his passion. He was trying to wake us to be active participants in life. However effective, it did result in some momentarily mortified pre-teens. And this time, somewhat predictably, his expressed intent and passion made the girls shrink in a downward spiral.

On the other side of the net was us; boys whose currency was athleticism. We’d dive, shout, go all out, not because we wanted to win, but because that’s all we knew. We couldn’t calibrate it. All of us, that is, except for Teichmann. He looked lost and timid. He’d wait a split second before making a move, then two timid steps choreographed to send the message of ah-too-late-but-I-tried.

Even with our team unchallenged, Teichmann was being exposed, most painfully in front of the girls, who had just recently gone from collectively yucky to inexplicably magnetic. He aimed his blame at me. I had invaded his perceived territory a few times, but only as the ball was tracking for the floor after he’d given up. I actually thought I was saving him from the humiliation of the ball thunking at his feet. No matter – his exposure and rage needed a target, and I was it. With every volley I’d save, his glare became more laser to the point that he looked on the verge of tears.  

By the time school ended, word had spread. In my nascent tradition of being the last to know most things, a friend finally told me minutes before the final bell that ‘Teichmann’s wants to kick your ass’. Students emptied out into the schoolyard, but few rushed home, an impromptu convention of bad actors trying to portray meandering as the result. When I came outside with books and trumpet case in hand, a collective sideways awareness of me was palpable. Teichmann approached me. I now can’t remember if he’d said something to me or not, although, even if he had, it would’ve only been a clunky formality. We met under the basketball hoop. A three-deep fighting circle formed around us. The anticipation was viscous, and not because of history. It was a battle of the raw reputations since nobody had ever seen either of us fight.

Both of our reputations were constructed of mud and mystique. His was that store-bought cool, tough, brooding hollowness, displayed in full costume for the perception-impaired. Mine was that I played hockey, a faux-superpower in those parts. During a time when hockey and fighting were synonymous, kids used to ask me, “Do you fight a lot?” My silent squint and head-shake in response would be interpreted as ‘Whaddya think, idiot’, when what it really meant was ‘That would mean I’d miss ice time, so no, I’m not an idiot’. My prized black team jacket with ‘OAK PARK HOCKEY’ screaming yellow across its back – Oak Park being an exotic suburb a few miles away from our neighborhood – coupled with a touch of imagination, this luckily added up to a wearer not to be messed with. There’d never been a reason for either of us to burst our gifted, protective bubbles of conflict immunity. Until now.

So there we were, eye to eye under the basketball hoop. I knew I could waste him, even if I wasn’t carrying the requisite anger. Still, I knew the angrier person usually wins. It was all weird territory. My fighting resume only had two entries – one on the ice and one at school, both single-punch bouts lasting the time of a mosquito sneeze.

My schoolyard fight was to a bully bothering a kid. I gave an unheeded warning followed by a roundhouse that met his back as he turned from it. It sounded like a bass drum, getting an ‘ooo’ from bystanders, but did the trick of spooking the galumph, shocked, as I was, by actual action from anyone. My hockey fight was against a team who didn’t seem aware that the puck in the net was the method of scoring, who dropped their gloves so quickly sometimes that you couldn’t tell if they’d just hit the ice in the process of play. So in one game, yet another fight broke out and players partnered up to keep a contained peace in a sort of Canadian cotillion. A slightly bigger kid came skating toward me, dramatically shedding his gloves on the way for effect. My dad had once said, “I don’t know why kids drop their gloves – there’s no room between the helmet and mouthpiece.” He was right – a bare hand had about 4 inches to land between the cold, hard plastic of helmet and mouth guard to avoid serious injury. So I kept my gloves on. (Hockey gloves are not cushy – they’re built to withstand hits and slashes from sticks and pucks.) He might’ve been thrown off by my lack of protocol and no glove-drop, but I popped him, a clear shot he’d aided by skating into it. He fell backwards to writhe on the ice while I stood there – ‘stood up’, as it was. The smirking referee apologetically waved me to the box having seen my forced participation in protecting myself.  

“So what’s your problem?” I asked Teichmann to move things along, or stall.
He looked thrown off by having to actually form words from thoughts to state the obvious, but came up with “You were getting in my way during gym class.” He’d given it a tough read, but we both knew it was weak on content. 

“Seriously?” I snorted, incredulous. Meanwhile, behind my poker face I realized the spot I was in. I had my trumpet. If anything happened to that thing, my working class parents would massively wig out – the case’s handle might as well have been cuffed and chained to my wrist whenever I carried it, a courier someone would have to kill to steal the merchandise. I glanced to my side to see no friends I could trust to watch over it. And in that second it took to secure my stuff, the whole exercise became worthless, or at least not worth the risk. My heart wasn’t in it, which was saying something. A small bit of me had dreamed of this chance – a violent, little fantasy about inside-outing his leather jacket over his head like a hockey jersey to punch his face through the leather.

“If you’re that tweaked, I’m sorry. How about that?” 

Those words came out of me. Dispassionately. 

Everything stopped. 

Teichmann blinked. I stared. 

He backed away, a grin of unease and weird relief. 

I walked away. 

The audience was stunned. Nowhere on the list of possible outcomes was this.

A few kids caught up with me and asked me what happened, if I was scared. I remember looking at them, seeing their confusion increase when they saw no fear in me, calm, walking away. However it appeared, I certainly hadn’t asked myself ‘What would Ghandi do?’ I speculate that stinking trumpet might’ve steered me to my pacifist future. Or had as much to do with it as anything else. 

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I hope for G to be able to locate fight in himself, to turn it on when necessary in a sporting way, to move through lousy luck, to know opportunity, to strike, to claim his own. The things that aren’t innately huge in me. But, as a friend’s therapist says, “You can’t expect to inspire a nervous system in your kid that you don’t have.” Work to do. My own.