My Last Punch

I’m a pacifist, a peaceful protester. My male heroes include Mr. Gandhi, Mr. Christ, Mr. King, Jr., Mr. Mandela, and of course Mr. Rogers: truly gentle men, with spines of steel. My female heroes include pretty much all of them, because I can’t think of many females, contemporary or otherwise, who believe or indulge in violent acts.

But there was a time when I played around the edges of violence.

I was ten, in the fifth grade, when recess play with a classmate started morphing into mild fighting. There was no thought involved. We weren’t angry at each other: it was simply a recess activity. We’d punch each other, wrestle, pin each other down, just mano a mano stuff. Kinda weird, thinking back, and amazing that there was no adult supervision on the schoolyard, but hey. And when the recess whistle blew, we’d go inside and forget all about it until the next day.

Each day, though, we’d up the stakes a little, as people do. Then one day we crossed a line. Well, he did. He had pinned me down and he started choking me. I don’t remember feeling like I was in danger, but it didn’t feel great. I couldn’t get away so I writhed from side to side until the whistle finally saved me. When we went inside, our teacher took a look at me and went white. She sent me to the nurse. I had my classmate’s fingermarks all over my skinny neck. We both got in trouble, and we never fought or wrestled again. It was on to flipping cards.

Another boy became a rival during this same era. I don’t remember growing up with him, but at some point we started walking a similar route home, about a mile from the school to our neighborhood. He was a year older and and several inches taller. I remember being afraid of him. He was very pale, with jet black hair, a frosting of freckles across his nose, and he wore an army-green winter parka. Why does violence start in the first place? A dirty look? An unkind word? Sheer boredom? There was something different about him, and I wonder now, in retrospect, if that difference is what scared me about him more than his attitude towards me. I can’t remember how we became antagonistic. Then a rumor started circulating that he was actually bald. There was something abnormal about his hair. I decided to find out. The next time we crossed paths on the way home, I lunged at him and grabbed hold of his moptop. Sure enough, it moved in my hands, twisting unnaturally sideways. We locked eyes. Neither of us could believe what I’d done, it was so perfectly cruel and off-bounds. Then I turned and ran like I’d never run before, and he chased me, and he was going to beat the living daylights out of me, and we both knew that I deserved it, but my adrenaline and fear were just powerful enough to keep me ahead of him, and he never got me. We never came into close contact again. And it wasn’t until college that I learned about congenital hypotrichosis and alopecia areata. By then, I could only regret being such a little shit to a kid who already had enough worries on his plate.

But the one I remember most was this kid Jimmy O’Malley, a round-headed Irish imp, untamable, rust-red hair, freckles, practically translucent amphibious-clammy skin, and a dirty mouth in both ways. He lived a block over, with his mother. One minute we were messing around near my house one winter afternoon, a few inches of fresh-fallen snow beneath us; the next we were angry with each other and dukes were put up. My first punch was a perfect wallop to the face. Jimmy’s hands went to his nose. When they came away, there was blood, a steady flow. It dyed the snow in drips and twig-like lines as he staggered. I’m ashamed to report my first emotion: pride that I was such a champion fighter. What a slug!

The bleeding continued. Jimmy turned and made his way towards home down a pathway between two houses on my block, defeated. I took a last look at the crimson-sliced proof of my victory, and his retreating footprints, then went home, elated.

I learned later that night that Jimmy’s mother had taken him to the hospital. He was a hemophiliac. He wasn’t bleeding from my strength, but from his weakness. I remember how a gulp of shame instantaneously smashed against and replaced the pride I’d been indulging. Jimmy O’Malley, wherever you are, you were my last punch.

So violence, personal violence, never had a happy ending for me. Even my classmate who choked me met a sad fate: he died in a car crash the summer after high school. Maybe it’s a good thing I learned that lesson so young, because when I went on to read about nonviolent resistance by its great promoters, I was primed for the message. It seemed absolutely congruous with the world I wanted to inhabit.

There was a time when I played around the edges of violence.