When I was about 11 years old, we had a neighborhood dirt clod fight at Marycrest Park. The only rule in a dirt clod fight is you can’t throw rocks or clods with rocks sticking in them. This day was an epic battle which found me leading a group of four or five kids battling against a kid named Donald who was a year older than me and his group. As I remember, they started it and they had more kids, meaner kids and older kids. We were the underdogs. And we were losing. Already two of our kids had gone home crying’. Donald and his top chieftain, Kathy Whitsel, were closing in on our position behind the park maintenance building when I came up with a daring plan. By sending two of our kids out towards the swings, I guessed correctly that Donal and company would go after them allowing me and the other kid in my gang to close in behind them and trap Donald underneath the monkey bars.
By now we had resorted to punching when an enemy was in close range. Donald had hit a couple of my smaller kids and I was out for revenge so when he was down under the monkey bars, I swooped in and punched him hard.
Unfortunately, my dad happened to be outside in our backyard which adjoined the park and saw me do it. Of course, he hadn’t seen the previous parts of the battle. He shouted at me to come over to the fence and the war stopped.
As I walked over to him, Kathy Whitsel shouted “Ha-ha, Rear-End is in trouble.”
That was the enemy’s favorite taunt since my name was Riordan. I hated being called that.
My Dad, blue-collar factory worker that he was, always stood for fairness. “Jimmy, I saw you hit that kid when he was down! You’re in trouble…get in the house!”
“That’s not how it was, Dad,” I stammered. “Those kids…”
“In the house now!”
As I walked around the fence to the Park entrance I saw Kathy Whitsel heading for her house, still laughing and shouting, “Rear-End! Rear-End! Rear-End got in trouble!”
She was far away by then, but I took the one dirt clod I had left and lofted it at her. It was the perfect throw.
Five minutes later her father was at our front door telling my Dad that I had hit his little girl with a rock. She really wasn’t hurt, but now my dad was really mad. He turned on me and I said, “It wasn’t a rock, it was a dirt clod. And it was a perfect throw.”
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February 21, 2024
Categories: Uncategorized . . Author: A Well Thought Out Scream Edit
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