In the beginning of my 6th grade year, I had the worst experience ever.
I was having one of those long-term, knock-down, drag-out battles with another kid, Rocky Hill. It was the stereotypical school-yard battle, where each of us were evenly matched and it was a daily standoff between mutually respectable adversaries. And by “daily standoff between mutually respectable adversaries,” I mean, “Rocky Hill decided he could beat me up every day without ever getting so much as a girlish slap in return.”
I mean, come on. I didn’t stand a chance. Rocky. The kid’s name was Rocky. It was 1981, and every public staircase in existence was still swarming with little boys running to the top and jumping around– some even wore actual boxing gloves!
And not only that, his name was a pun! I mean, who the hell do you think is going to win “King of the Hill” when there’s a kid standing on top of it yelling “Try to climb this hill boys, but be careful! It’s a rocky hill! This is my hill!”
Jesus, he sucked.
Rocky Hill, was popular. He was so popular that he stole my skateboard in front of a crowd of witnesses and then convinced them all that I’d wronged him by asking for it back. He was popular, and he was smart.
Me? I was geeky, and unpopular, and– worst of all– I was completely clueless.
The only thing we had in common was our mutual hatred. We spent the early part of that school year trying to publicly humiliate each other in increasingly ingenious ways. During this battle of words, we pulled out our most fiendish verbal assault weapons and focused them squarely on our hated enemy.
For me, this amounted mostly to trying to convince the class that he smelled like poo, a tactic, I now realize, that is probably the sole reason that the rest of the class enjoyed watching him beat me up on a daily basis. Continue Reading »
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