Running concurrently with my experiences in the 3rd grade classroom, I had a rich life within the trailer park and on the playground. I was a fighter. I was one of a handful of children in my elementary school and in the park who was known as such. I started fights, I would fight particular people every time I got a chance. I made enemies. Oftentimes, only because I had a bad feeling about someone; with no concrete reasoning. Other times, friends of mine would relay stories to me of a particular person’s uncouth personality or bad action. In the latter case, I was like some type of vigilante. At least, I would have been, If I had a strict set of values I was enforcing. I’m not sure what I was enforcing.
Because of the circumstances at school, fights would be pretty quickly broken up. However, within the park, oftentimes we were only surrounded by other children. So a fight’s existence or length was only determined by the bigger(and usually older) children’s discretion. This obviously depended on a lot of factors. Younger brothers were bad news, because as soon as you started winning, the older brother would step in. Blood, or a person failing to fight back, would typically stop it. It was an unusually good system, now that I consider it; not much different from the queensberry rules.
These fights had some unusual results. First and foremost, it furthered my growing anti-authoritarianism. Being in a comfy office chair in an air conditioned room, talking to a smug principle about “who started it” as a punishment; it was plain to see that adults have no idea what they’re doing. Surprisingly, these fights made me friends. For those who were already friends with me, I would take it upon myself to fight “for them”. It was some sort of perverse way to show affection to one another, in the form of beating on what they hate.
In one particular case I made friends with someone I fought. He was an African immigrant of some type, and talked with a thick accent. He talked really highly of himself, which irritated me to no end, and to my surprise he immediately jumped at the opportunity to fight. We managed to do so, for a while, until we were broken up. While walking to the office he said “good fight” and smiled. It was so endearing that we became friends immediately.
One day in the ensuing months he mentioned that his dad beats him with a belt almost every night. He said it so plainly, as if everyone’s dad does that. I remember where I was, outside of the front of his home, with his dad yelling at him from the inside. My brain wrestled with the idea of violence on the spot, and still does to this day. 2 kids throwing blows on a playground is basically goofing off, but an adult man beating his 8 year old son is a different matter. Although I was aware that such one-sided violence occurs, I had never been close to it before that. To think that I wanted to beat the snot out of a kid, who gets beat when he goes home, is sickening now. Of course I didn’t know, but I didn’t know the lives of any other child I hit either(for the most part).
I can’t really explain my compulsion to fight, but at the time it was my identity; my vocation. Everyone knew that’s just what I do.
Then came the move, and 4th grade...
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