A Very Special Episode of Weary Drum

I was watching Finding Nemo with Daughter today and I remembered something from when I was a kid. This was remarkable in two ways:

1. I hardly ever remember anything from my childhood. I really can only remember a handful of stuff before I was 17.

2. Pretty much anything I actually do remember is the kind of thing that, while I can make jokes about it, most people find pretty horrifying. This memory was Beaver Cleaver compared to everything else.

So, here's the actual memory. In the movie, two bully fish had stolen a young sea snail's shell and were playing keep away with it. Basically throwing it back and forth to each other over the head of the snail. Two kids did that to me one day.

Now before I get into details, lets do a little background on the situation. You're thinking, "Poor Mikey being bullied all through his young life." Well, not so much. I got some shit of course, but I was always tall for my age and I never really stayed in any one place long enough for the kids to work up any kind of bullying project-plan. So I didn't really have a big issue with that. Also, these kids were smaller than me...and I'm fairly sure they were younger. I'm positive I was smarter.

Anyway, they'd kind of randomly been pestering me. I'm fuzzy on details but I remember waiting in one line while they were waiting in another. One of them walked over behind me and pushed me, then ran laughing back to his place in line 20ft away. It took me a second to figure this out. Not the mystery of being shoved and oh the cruelty of man and all that fun stuff, but why the little dumbass decided to piss off someone bigger than him, then run away only to stop 20 damn feet away. Once I was able to assimilate the stupidity, I walked over to his line, smacked him in the head a couple times and walked back. Honestly, what the hell was he even thinking?

I also can't remember why they even want to to start up with me in the first place. I've never been the kind of person to pick on people and I can't remember pretty much anything about these guys. I'm really at a loss for their motivation, but their astonishing lack of skill and judgment is kind of funny in spite of that.

Ok, so back to the first memory. I was playing basketball I guess, or at least I had a basketball and somehow one of them got it. They started doing the keep away thing. After a couple half-hearted attempts to get the ball I ran at the guy holding the ball. He, all smiles, threw the ball over my head to his friend. His smile broke when he figured out that I wasn't going to change direction. I grabbed him before he had a chance to get away, pushed him into a fence and smacked him around. His friend ran away and dropped the ball. I'm not sure how they saw that little adventure ending, but I'm pretty sure that wasn't it. I guess they weren't really thinking that far ahead anyway.

I'm proud of that moment. Not because I smacked a kid or overcame some personal demons, but because I found what is probably the optimal solution to the 'keep-away' gambit.

Also, before anyone gets too upset about the graphic violence contained herein, please note that when I say 'smacking around' I mean that. These kids were smaller than me and just little idiots. I wasn't even using closed-fists. It was more of a physical form of punctuation on the backs of their heads.