And why it kicked more than my a$$ (like the family-friendly text trick there?). Yeah, that’s right. I was in high school. I think it was my senior year. I was in a band. To protect the innocent (and because the band name was TERRIBLE) I’ll change the names of the band and the people involved. And I’ll even change my name just for fun… I’ll call myself… Nate. Why? Because the first thing I saw said “Red Sox Nation…” That’s why.
Way back in the last post before this one… I talked about why I love Mondays and am indifferent about Fridays… yeah, that’s right. Like Mondays more than Fridays. It never used to be that way, although I’m pretty sure it was hidden in the back of my mind from my high school days and may have been knocked loose one afternoon in the hallway of my high school – like literally knocked loose. (Note: a comment from KC from GenXFinance reminded me about where it all started).
Ahhh… the memories. I was in a band – the drummer and lead vocalist because I had the closest thing to a singing voice out of the 4 of us. We wanted a lead vocalist to prance around and sing better than me but for some reason it never worked out… I also think there was a little bit of me that liked “singing” so if I remember correctly, I think I was a bit against it although I knew that my voice was certainly not going to get our names up in lights….
We had a bassist. Let’s call him Jim. Jim was a good bassist but unreliable. There were three core members of the band, John, Hank and me, “Nate.” We decided that Jim had to go. And because I went to high school and the other guys went to another school, I’m pretty sure I got to kick him out (this part of the story is a bit hazy).
I don’t remember the conversation, but I obviously didn’t take it personally and didn’t think he did because later that afternoon I saw Jim walking down the hall and didn’t think it was going to be confrontational. Turns out I was wrong… He was walking right at me and I remember saying “Hey Jim, what’s up” or something to that effect.
Apparently he didn’t want to tell me what was up, he wanted to show me what was up. The ceiling was up. (This part is clear as day) He walked over to me, said “hey” and then punched me right in the face.
I. WENT. FLYING.
I landed a good three or four feet right on my back. Of course, a crowd formed around us. The fight probably lasted a good two or three minutes and basically involved him knocking me on the ground and throwing me against the lockers every time I got halfway up. By the way, have you ever heard the sound of a high school kid bouncing off of a row of lockers?!?! I have. Up close. It’s loud. And it happened OVER and OVER and OVER again because stupid me kept getting up!
Apparently I got one good punch in and hit him in the “man parts” because they took both of us to the nurse’s office to check us out and he had a bloody nose and was a bit of pain… down there…. I on the other hand, looked pretty normal. My $3 necklace was ripped off and missing and caused a little red line on my neck. But other than that I looked as normal as I ever did. The weird thing was I don’t remember hitting him even once, however. A part of me thinks he hit himself, either by mistake (he threw a lot of punches and one of them could have missed and hit himself…) or to get less of a suspension by making it seem like the fight was somehow even.
Anyhow, an odd thing happened that day. There was something about the way I reacted that stuck with me a bit. There’s no question that I got my butt kicked that day. For a long time all you heard was BOOM…ooooohhhhh (the crowd’s reaction) BOOM…oooohhhh…BOOM…ooohhhh…..BOOM…ooohhhh…..BOOM…ooohhhh…..
But I kept getting back up. (For more?). I didn’t curl up and grab my head and hope the teachers would get there soon to break it up. I was being tossed around like a rag doll, given no time to prepare – just sucker punched in the hall and tossed around every time I got halfway off the floor. But I kept getting up. In the weeks that followed, I got more “props” for getting up than I ever did for playing in a band, having a nice car or doing any other “cool” things that high school kids admired.
I was definitely a relatively popular guy in high school if you measure by number of friends or appearances in the superlatives list in the yearbook for things like best hair and best personality, but the thing that got me the most props was just getting up.
When I realized how simple and effective just getting up was, something started burning in me. My confidence skyrocketed and I wasn’t intimidated by much. In my head, I kept thinking “what’s the worst that can happen? I was tossed around like a rag doll in front of about a hundred kids at my school and by just getting back up again I proved to myself and others that it’s ok to stumble – to be knocked down. But it’s not too difficult to get up. And it’s not OK to stay down. Since then, it’s been a hallmark of my personality. And they even wrote a cheesy song about it (but not about me… unless “Jim” turned out to be a pretty successful songwriter, which he hasn’t if you trust his Facebook page…). I got knocked down, but I got up again.
Enjoy having that song stuck in your head the rest of the week….
Until next time…. put your credit card down and slowly step away from the mall!
p.s. Thanks for the e-mails about my typos. I may fix them at some point. But a part of me likes the contrast between my “writing” here and with the day gig…. unless my writing sucks during my day gig too. I swear I proofread at work though!
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