Carl Levitian
member
I've never been that brave a soul. I didn't want to fight even as a young guy full of piss and vinigar. But like Gary Cooper said in High Noon, " a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do." So I got the snot beat out of me by one Terry Sprague when I was 13 years old.
Over a pen.
My dad, for some reason, decieded to give me a Cross pen when I was in junior high school. My penmenship was nothing to write home about, so I knew it wasn't for that.
Anyways, there was this school bully, one Terry Sprague. He'd already flunked 9th grade at least once, so he was the biggest kid in school, and everyone was scared of him. He liked to pick out a new victim everyother day to rob of lunch money, and anything else he could scare out of you.
One day, like an idiot, I had the Cross pen clipped in my shirt pocket. Dumb. Terry was comming the other way down the hall, and he stopped by me and suddenly plucked the pen from my pocket with glee, saying loudy "Hey, look at the fancy pen. I like it, thanks dweeb." and he stuck it in his pocket and walked off down the hall laughing with his gang of wanna be hanger ons.
I was stunned at first, but then a sense of dread came ov er me as I knew what I had to do.
They had stopped at a locker and were hanging around harrasing some other poor joker, and I walked up and snatched the pen back. "I believe thats mine." I told him.
Remember all those old westerns, where the guy comes into the saloon looking for the bad guy, and all the music, conversation, clinking of glasses, all noise stops? Right then, all life in that part of the hallway stopped. Nothing like that had ever happened before. Total silence. For a moment, even Terry was stunned.
The moment was short lived.
He punched me good, sending me reeling against some lockers with a bang, and then my main recollection was one of alot of numbing impacts on my person in a short period of time. Things were kind of confusing. But the I had the Cross pen in my hand the whole time.
This was the 1950's, and nobody back then gave any thought to tactical things. Certainly everyday objects were not thought to be dangerous. Certainly not a ball point pen. Even a nice ball point pen. But I guess desparation can do funny things to the brain in times of stress. I had a tight grip on that pen, with the clip end in my fist, and the buisness end one writes with sticking out past my thumb. I have no consious memory of planning it, but I was getting the snot beat out of me, and I just stabbed out with it.
The red gods of fate must have been watching over 7th graders that day.
To this day, I don't know just how it happened, but the point of that pen got Terry right through the throat. All I knew was that the blows of his fists stopped suddenly, and he was staggering back against the other side of the hall while holding his throat and gasping, and blood was oozing out between his fingers. In the silent coridor, his gasping was loud and erie.
Then teachers were there, and I was holding a Cross pen smeared with streaks of blood and a thumb was red with some stickly stuff. A weird collidiscope of images are my memories of that morning, like a slide show projected by a maniac. Then my mom and dad were there, and I was trying to explain. Dad told me to keep quiet, and then he got pretty offensive to the school personel. Yelled alot that this is what happens when they let a over grown hoodlum go to school with decent kids, he's holding them responcible for anything that happens to me.
He shut them up and we walked out of there. Just as we were leaving, with the police standing right there, he looks over on the princibles desk at my blood smeared pen, and reaches over and picks it up saying to the crowd of school officials and cops, "Thats my son's pen, he'll be having it back now!"
Later that night he took some poleroid photos of my face, two shots from each angle, and enclosed one photo each from each angle in a letter to the school board, advising them that since I have been assaulted, he's instructing me to defend myself in any mannor I need to. He kept the original letter and sent them the carbon.
Terry Sprague was expelled from school on the grounds of long term repeated violence to other students.
Dad gave me the pen back, and gave me a little talk.
"Son, life is not like hollywood, and you're not the lone ranger. When all things are equel, sometimes the good guy is going to loose. You have to make sure it isn't equel. You have to do whatever it is, use whatever you have to, to win. if that means driving something right through your enemys throat, then you do it."
He turned to leave my room, paused, and then tossed something bright on the bed besides me. It was a small little Christy knife.
"Let your hand know the feel of it over the next few days," he said, "Then when you know it, I'll show you what to do with it if the need arises."
A few days later, we went down the basement where dad had hung up an old pair of jeans stuffed with rags. I looked at my dad with a little different light after that. He had seemed so ordinary. A compact man, no more that 5'7", he was so inconspicous in his grey suit that he seemed more like someone who would be lecturing on the beauty of the logic of algerbra than somebody who knows the location of major motor tendons and nerve centers.
Now more than 50 years later, I still have that pen and Christy knife around. The pen has most of the chrome worn off, showing alot of dented and scarred up brass. The Christy knife has been through a couple blade replacements, and is worn out like the cross pen. Both have been retired for reasons of sentiment, and a new Cross was purchased some years ago. A Buck Hartsook replaced the Christy.
It was an amazing lesson for a 13 year old, to learn just how thin skinned and delicate a human being is.
Over a pen.
My dad, for some reason, decieded to give me a Cross pen when I was in junior high school. My penmenship was nothing to write home about, so I knew it wasn't for that.
Anyways, there was this school bully, one Terry Sprague. He'd already flunked 9th grade at least once, so he was the biggest kid in school, and everyone was scared of him. He liked to pick out a new victim everyother day to rob of lunch money, and anything else he could scare out of you.
One day, like an idiot, I had the Cross pen clipped in my shirt pocket. Dumb. Terry was comming the other way down the hall, and he stopped by me and suddenly plucked the pen from my pocket with glee, saying loudy "Hey, look at the fancy pen. I like it, thanks dweeb." and he stuck it in his pocket and walked off down the hall laughing with his gang of wanna be hanger ons.
I was stunned at first, but then a sense of dread came ov er me as I knew what I had to do.
They had stopped at a locker and were hanging around harrasing some other poor joker, and I walked up and snatched the pen back. "I believe thats mine." I told him.
Remember all those old westerns, where the guy comes into the saloon looking for the bad guy, and all the music, conversation, clinking of glasses, all noise stops? Right then, all life in that part of the hallway stopped. Nothing like that had ever happened before. Total silence. For a moment, even Terry was stunned.
The moment was short lived.
He punched me good, sending me reeling against some lockers with a bang, and then my main recollection was one of alot of numbing impacts on my person in a short period of time. Things were kind of confusing. But the I had the Cross pen in my hand the whole time.
This was the 1950's, and nobody back then gave any thought to tactical things. Certainly everyday objects were not thought to be dangerous. Certainly not a ball point pen. Even a nice ball point pen. But I guess desparation can do funny things to the brain in times of stress. I had a tight grip on that pen, with the clip end in my fist, and the buisness end one writes with sticking out past my thumb. I have no consious memory of planning it, but I was getting the snot beat out of me, and I just stabbed out with it.
The red gods of fate must have been watching over 7th graders that day.
To this day, I don't know just how it happened, but the point of that pen got Terry right through the throat. All I knew was that the blows of his fists stopped suddenly, and he was staggering back against the other side of the hall while holding his throat and gasping, and blood was oozing out between his fingers. In the silent coridor, his gasping was loud and erie.
Then teachers were there, and I was holding a Cross pen smeared with streaks of blood and a thumb was red with some stickly stuff. A weird collidiscope of images are my memories of that morning, like a slide show projected by a maniac. Then my mom and dad were there, and I was trying to explain. Dad told me to keep quiet, and then he got pretty offensive to the school personel. Yelled alot that this is what happens when they let a over grown hoodlum go to school with decent kids, he's holding them responcible for anything that happens to me.
He shut them up and we walked out of there. Just as we were leaving, with the police standing right there, he looks over on the princibles desk at my blood smeared pen, and reaches over and picks it up saying to the crowd of school officials and cops, "Thats my son's pen, he'll be having it back now!"
Later that night he took some poleroid photos of my face, two shots from each angle, and enclosed one photo each from each angle in a letter to the school board, advising them that since I have been assaulted, he's instructing me to defend myself in any mannor I need to. He kept the original letter and sent them the carbon.
Terry Sprague was expelled from school on the grounds of long term repeated violence to other students.
Dad gave me the pen back, and gave me a little talk.
"Son, life is not like hollywood, and you're not the lone ranger. When all things are equel, sometimes the good guy is going to loose. You have to make sure it isn't equel. You have to do whatever it is, use whatever you have to, to win. if that means driving something right through your enemys throat, then you do it."
He turned to leave my room, paused, and then tossed something bright on the bed besides me. It was a small little Christy knife.
"Let your hand know the feel of it over the next few days," he said, "Then when you know it, I'll show you what to do with it if the need arises."
A few days later, we went down the basement where dad had hung up an old pair of jeans stuffed with rags. I looked at my dad with a little different light after that. He had seemed so ordinary. A compact man, no more that 5'7", he was so inconspicous in his grey suit that he seemed more like someone who would be lecturing on the beauty of the logic of algerbra than somebody who knows the location of major motor tendons and nerve centers.
Now more than 50 years later, I still have that pen and Christy knife around. The pen has most of the chrome worn off, showing alot of dented and scarred up brass. The Christy knife has been through a couple blade replacements, and is worn out like the cross pen. Both have been retired for reasons of sentiment, and a new Cross was purchased some years ago. A Buck Hartsook replaced the Christy.
It was an amazing lesson for a 13 year old, to learn just how thin skinned and delicate a human being is.
