The Making of a Man-Pt. 5 — By Dean Boettcher
By now, I should have established the tone of a troubled and traumatic childhood. I do not attempt to imply that my experiences were any more severe, or of more importance, than anyone else’s. I am simply establishing a background for MY story.
From this point forward, at least for the span of several years of my life, I will move at a brisker pace since to recount every extra ordinary event would not only be impossible but would also take far too long and I would like to get to the heart of the major events which are the most responsible for creating the man I am today.
Last time we left off during my introduction to middle school and my first truly vicious and violent act. What followed was a growing fascination with violence and the effects it can cause. I would try to be present at every fight that happened during or after school, even if it meant that I had to come back onto school grounds after skipping school that day to attend it.
I would get such an adrenaline rush watching the two opponents square off, knowing that the talking was done, and it was time to let flesh meet flesh to settle the score. Unfortunately for me, most of the confrontations did not culminate in physical confrontations. These were just kids, after all, not animals. But it didn’t take long to narrow it down to the combatants who were most likely to brawl.
Usually, you would know it was going to result in at least a little bloodshed when the fight was kept very hush-hush. I soon learned that the people who were least willing to get physical were usually the ones who made the biggest spectacle of the disagreement. They would make sure that everyone heard the verbal altercation, thereby ensuring that a teacher would also overhear it or that a student, (or more like many students) would carry the information, posthaste, to the nearest teacher the first chance they got.
One thing you can always count on is that people love to gossip, and love to be a part of something without any direct effect upon themselves for doing so. By being the little bird that flew to the teacher’s ear, the person gained the good graces of the staff and received a pat on the back for being such a caring student who just wanted to make sure no one got hurt.
Although that was quite far from the actual truth because the very same students were also the ones who would want to get the first glimpses of the altercation or the injuries that occurred. They were just insulating themselves against any repercussions ahead of time. Smart move, in a manner of speaking. But this taught me a very valuable lesson on the nature of people. A lesson that served me quite well in the not-so-distant future.
As for me, although I wished I was able to be one of the tough kids, I just wasn’t physically up to the task. I was very small for my age. I’d say I was in the smallest third of all the students during middle school, and into the beginning of high school. I fought when I had to. Usually when I was backed into a situation where there was no other alternative. That’s when I learned that most kids had no idea how to fight, and most were just as scared, if not more scared than I was.
I became known for two things. First, it became apparent to the tough crowd that not only was I usually somehow involved in the mix, but that I also kept my wits about me under any circumstances. I could keep my cool, cover up evidence, misdirect information, and eventually I learned that I could set the stage however I chose with some very subtle leaks of information or faked alliances. Whatever served my purpose.
Second, if it did come to the point of a possible confrontation between me and another kid, I would almost always have a weapon on my person. I had learned how to use num-chucks (as we called them back then) from one of my mother’s boyfriends, and I practiced a lot. This normally discouraged any fight from proceeding past the “face to face” stage. I also acquired a switchblade and a butterfly knife, both of which I could flip around fast enough to make myself look dangerous if nothing else.
So, my exposure to actual confrontations were few for a while. Then came the incident with the big farm boy. I will call him Paul for reasons of privacy. Anyway, one fine morning at school I had one of my infrequent physical confrontations with some new kid who felt he had something to prove. He decided to pick on the kid in front of him in class. The kid had big, coke-bottle glasses and was a just a skinny little guy. Yes, that kid was me. It was art class, and we were using those metal compasses to draw circles.
The new kid would wait until the teacher turned toward the chalkboard then kick my chair or throw chunks of erasers at me. After some time, I turned and told him to knock it off. He said, “Or what…?”
I just turned back around and held my anger in. I had been in plenty enough trouble in school that year so far, so I was seriously trying not to draw any more attention to myself. The principle already had a meeting with my mother, the school police officer, and myself, and had been clear on the fact that I needed to knock off my crap.
After a couple of rather wet spit balls hit the side of my face I was at my limit of control. I was going to turn around and warn him one last time, but as I turned my face, I got hit in the glasses with a long metal ruler which was meant to hit me in the back of my head. It knocked my glasses halfway off my face and the pain from the nosepiece slamming against the bridge of my noise broke the last bit of restraint that I had.
Without even thinking, I gripped the compass I was holding so that the metal point was sticking out of the back end of my closed fist, and I leapt over the long table which separated each row. I grabbed the kid’s glasses (he had glasses too, just not as thick as mine) and I ripped them off his face and slammed them down on the ground, shattering both lenses. Then I jumped against him and the chair, the kid, and me, all went over backwards until I was kneeling on his chest on the ground, holding his shirt bunched up in my left fist against his throat. My right arm was high above me holding the compass, point downward, ready to jam it into his face.
I gritted my teeth and hissed, “ I…WILL…F#*KIN…KILL…YOU!”
About that time, I felt a strong pair of hands grabbing my arm and prying the compass out of my hand. I can’t really remember what the teacher was saying because I was in a state of mind that I later learned was like a blackout. I could remember much of what happened after the incident instead of knowing what was going on at the time it was happening. I would get a sort of tunnel vision where only sounds and movements which directly affected my safety, or my purpose, would register on my consciousness.
Anyway, the hands that wrenched the compass out of my hands belonged to the teacher. Rather than becoming sidetracked by the interruption, I was angered by it. As soon as the compass was pulled from my grip, I balled up my fist and smashed the kid in the nose as hard as I could. I didn’t know it at the time but That was when I acquired my first boxers’ fracture. I not only broke his nose but also my metacarpal bone that led to my pinky finger.
The teacher saw all the blood come spurting out of the other boy’s face and kind of tossed me aside by my shirt and attended to the wound as best he could. I made a hasty exit as the teacher began to dial the phone at his desk. I knew I was in deep shit now. I was already on thin ice at this school so this would not turn out well for yours truly.
Since it was near lunchtime, I hung around the school so I could eat before I planned on leaving for the day which turned out to be a mistake because the vice principal, accompanied by the hulk that was our gym teacher, ambushed me in the lunch line and literally dragged me to the principal’s office.
The principal wasn’t in that day, thankfully, but I was detained nonetheless until the school “liaison” officer was due back. As I waited, I was seen by the school nurse and given an ice pack for my hand. It was one of those gel filled ones they used to give out that began nice and hard and frozen, then within half an hour turned into blue jelly in a bag.
I was allowed to return to the lunchroom to eat on my word that I would return to the office to sit and wait for the officer to get back. That turned out to be a mistake. It must have been a full moon or something because I just could not avoid trouble that day no matter where I was or what I was doing. Or maybe it was that trouble couldn’t avoid me. Either way, my day was not over yet.
The lunchroom was emptying out and the last people in the cafeteria were the jocks and the Future Farmers of America club. The latter were the kids in school who lived on farms and commuted quite a distance to and from the school each day from the outlying farms, and they usually brought the smell of their stomping grounds with them. In short, many of them smelled like cow manure.
It just so happened that a group of these farm boys happened to be sitting within smelling distance of where I was eating. Most of them were good-sized boys so I was hesitant to say anything. That is until they started looking at me and making fun of my glasses and calling me names that had to do with my social class and my penchant for attracting trouble. The comment that broke my silence had something to do with my family although I can’t recall exactly what it was. I just remember telling the boy to take a bath and wash the smell of cow off his pecker.
He stood up, and if I’d have taken a moment to register his six-foot tall, 250 lb. frame, I may not have done what I did next. I stood up to my full 4’ 11”, drew back, and fired that bag of blue jelly I had gotten from the nurse directly at his head. It spun perfectly so that it hit his cheek flat-sided with a slap that was louder than I could’ve gotten with an open palm against a desktop. WHACK!
Before he could even pick it up to throw it back, (which I ducked anyway), his cheek was fire red. That big ol’ farm boy was MAD! However, after he missed me with his return throw, the lunchroom attendant had made it to me and snatched me up by my shirt and away I went to the office again.
Well, not long after I was back in the office, the liaison officer returned, and my mother was called and told that she had to come get me as I was suspended from school for the rest of that day. I was also given “in-school suspension’ for the following three days.
On my way out of school I happened to pass by the big farm boy I assaulted with the icepack. He was sitting in the nurse’s office himself now. I silently laughed as I pointed at him and he mouthed “your dead!”, back at me. I stopped right in the doorway and told him that if he had any balls, he would meet me in the park across the street after school. I figured it was a pretty safe bet because if he missed his bus there was no way for him to get the 15 or so miles back to his farm. Those kids NEVER missed their bus.
The word got around because there were obviously kids around during our little verbal exchange, so to be safe and make sure I held my reputation (and chalked up some tough guy points as well), I made sure to be in the park after school. Much to my dismay, so did he.
The fight that followed, and the event that landed a 14-year-old in the county jail, is what my next segment will be about.
