Eat Your Words

Being a kid during the 1970s was often rough and tough. We met new people, made friends, and learned about life via innocent play in the pursuit to have fun. Sometimes, we became too serious.

All summer we played Frisbee football with bare feet on the asphalt parking lot of the church across the street. Vaughn and Gene were brothers against Alex, my friend and neighbor, and me.

“Hike. One thousand one, one thousand two, one thousand three.” Upon hike, the action began. The quarterback had three seconds before he could be rushed. Then he would throw the Frisbee to his teammate while the opposition tried to intercept.

That summer we played every afternoon for hours. And then we would go home at night for dinner, a shower, and we would deal with our badly blistered feet - sometimes so bad it caused a game cancellation.

It became very competitive that late summer. We expanded teams from two on two to three on three. That is when the problems began. Alex had an older brother and a younger brother, both of age to play Frisbee football. Consequently, they became a team and that meant I had to play for Gene and Vaughn.

Alex’s older brother was a year older than Vaughn, both older than the rest of us. The competition led to some very rough body checks, name calling, accusations of rules violations, and general bad feelings. Gene and Vaughn expected me to be as vehement as they were being about the competitors.

As summer waned and we returned to high school, I would meet Gene at his house, and we would walk one mile to the school and we would talk about life. But one day, a discussion started that led to the fight. As I recall, it started when Gene started calling my friend Alex and his brothers names. And when I defended Alex, Gene began calling me names and pushed me.

“Gene it would be stupid for us to fight now. Let’s meet at 4PM in the churchyard,” I reasoned. He agreed. “You’re going to eat your words,” I said!

At 4PM that day Alex and I went to the churchyard and stood in front of Gene’s house. Gene came out and taunted me to action. I walked into his yard, and we squared off. The fight was a flurry of landed punches combined with some wrestling. After a few minutes it was over.

My nose was bleeding. My tee shirt was torn.

“Did I win or lose,” I wondered?

Alex stood there trying to describe what he saw but my adrenaline prevented me from hearing him. We stood in the yard next to Gene’s house and after a minute Vaughn walks outside and directly over to me.

I just stood there frozen because I thought Vaughn was about to take vengeance. He walked right up to me and took my chin in his left hand.

“Oh my god, I am about to really get it,” I feared.

Vaughn then said, “This is all Gene did to you?” And then Vaughn turned around and walked inside.

It was over. Alex and I walked home.

The next morning, about 6:30AM the phone rang. It woke me up but I laid in bed. A few minutes later, Dad came to my bedroom and said, “Ricky, wake up. You may have the police come and take you out of school this morning. If they do, they will charge you with assault and battery. Don’t worry about it. I will make sure you don’t go to jail.”

“Holy crap! Why is Dad talking to me about police and jail?”

Dad took me to school that morning. The police never came.

Days later, Dad returned from a Tampico deployment and he explained to me that Gene’s mother had called that morning. Gene had to be taken to the hospital for six stitches over his right eye, a fractured jaw, and a blood clot on his face. Because I entered his yard, Gene’s mother threatened the assault & battery charge. Because Dad agreed to pay the hospital bills, Gene’s mom did not make the charges.

I walked to school by myself after that, although some days Gene would be walking to school at the same time, but we stayed on opposite sides of the road.

We never played Frisbee football again. We never went to the churchyard again. The high school friends Gene and I held in common had to pick sides. We had taken 5 years of friendship and wiped it out in an instance.

Gene, if you are reading this, I am truly sorry!