Pre-Palms Gang

Arthur Shuey

It never occurred to me as a child or adolescent to ponder the ramifications of the differences between myself and others my age. Had I been asked, I would have said that we were different because we were different. I got to eighth grade before finding out that "difference" was considered a sin to some.

You see, I carried my books to school in a knapsack. I really don't know whether other kids had done so in Shreveport or Memphis, but they didn't do it in Virginia Beach. I didn't notice it there either, through seventh grade, but sure as hell had it pointed out to me in eighth.

At that time and in that place, elementary school ran through seventh grade and high school included grades eight through twelve. Eighth graders ... "pre-freshmen" ... were targets for every switchblade carrying thug out for lunch money and every testosterone drunk junior or senior athlete. We were all terrorized, and, as the hopelessly oppressed have done throughout history, the Princess Anne High School Class of 1975 searched through early September, 1970 for someone that they, too, could oppress. Nineteenth-century Russian peasants had Jews, clay eating Southern poor white trash has African Americans, and the Class of '75 had one guy, not too large, not contributing to the mainstream, carrying a knapsack.
They picked on me, and they pointed me out to upper classmen to get them to target me. One day, near the end of lunch period, a large hoodlum then enjoying his last year outside of criminal institutions found me thumbing through a textbook outside of the portable classroom where my math course would soon begin. "So, you want to play Army," he sneered. "Well then, stand up, soldier boy, and MARCH!" He bullied me into marching up and down that walkway until the bell rang for class. The next day, I skipped school, hid in bushes at his bus stop with a CO2 pellet rifle, and peppered him pretty thoroughly. Well, I had to. While I could have easily remained hidden and hurt him just as much, it would have been pointless to do so. On the other hand, to expose myself and then just shoot him a couple of times would just make him beat the hell out of me when he next caught me unarmed. Therefore, I had to come out of the bushes after shooting him twice and continue to torture him until he was cringing and crying against a car, so that he would never again be in a mental state to bother me. While he was in pain, I had to empty the gun's 14 pellets at him, timing everything perfectly to break him completely on the last pellet, then fire once more, nothing but a blast of air from the barrel, directly into his face to honorably show him that I was unarmed and he could come for me if he wanted to. What an odd code of justice we adhered to, translated by juvenile delinquents from poorly written television westerns.

There were other bullies. One got his German shepherd to attack me on the street one day. I jumped his fence that night and shoved a floundering harpoon down the dog's throat. I was frightened; height and weight differences are great and greatly abused among boys that age. Those guys wouldn't have bothered me if they hadn't been bigger than I was, and the only way to get them to leave me alone was to do things so extreme that they wouldn't ever want to come near me again.

Terror can take care of individual bullies, but it can't make friends, and even the low level of social activity I was content with was denied me by the ostracism of my classmates. I pondered the issue over the summer and, as ninth grade began, looked for people I thought might be suitable friends. I largely discounted the few who still spoke to me after eighth grade, for they seemed flawed in one way or another. I chose Jim Cannon, Kevin Krest and Wally Simmons. We were all in Superior English, Jim and I took Latin together, and Wally was in my (alphabetically arranged) home room and had a locker next to mine.

Jim was an easy sell, having moved to Tidewater from Florida and not shared the eighth grade experience, and Kevin was his neighbor. Not only were these friendships fairly easy to bring about, but another of Kevin's friends, John Dean, had a best friend, Steve Arnold, who seemed the least flawed of those who would still speak to me after eighth grade. Wally Simmons was another story.

Now that there was at least one rung beneath us in the society of our high school, we were able to relax a bit. Everyone was a bit more tolerant of differences and, to tell the truth, I never bothered to replace the knapsack after it was stolen during the last week of eighth grade. By early October of ninth grade, I was known to a growing circle of people as a guy who could make people laugh. The "Joke For The Day" period, which lasted almost to the middle of senior year with careful rationing(the last months were technically a separate period, that of the "Half Joke For The Day") began. Little did I know that the fellow with the locker next to mine was going through a horrible time at home and was not in the mood for jokes.
While I tried to figure out why he slammed his locker door into my shoulder or head whenever he could, other irritations developed. Wally and I lived in the same apartment complex, the Palms, shared a school bus stop, and had amazingly similar addresses. I hung my hat at 3676 Malibu Palm Drive, #203, while Wally watched his father drink cheap bourbon and clean his .45 automatic at 3676 Virginia Beach Boulevard, #203. You'd be surprised at how long, stupid and bitter arguments between two adolescent boys can be. Ours could only end with blood.

By late November, I reluctantly faced the fact that Wally would have to be given satisfaction. He wanted to fight, and I finally gave him a time and place, a corner courtyard in the apartment complex, five o'clock sharp next Wednesday afternoon. At 4:35, he knocked on my door and said he was ready to begin. I went with him to the chosen site and promptly sat down against a brick wall. "It isn't time, yet," I said, putting my hat down over my eyes and pretending to doze.
When he saw that I couldn't be talked into starting the fight early, he had no choice but to talk to me until the church bells down the road began "Westminster Chimes." Bom dom, dom bom, bom dom, dom bom, beem dom bom dom, deem dem dom bem, and then the hour's tolling ... boom, boom, boom, boom, boom ... and then I stood up, dusted the grass from my trousers and went to the courtyard center. I aimed a wide swing at Wally without much enthusiasm, he blocked and bore under it, hitting me once in the midsection, without hurting anything but my balance. I sat back down, looked up at him, and announced, "You win."

"What! Get up and fight! I'm not even started beating your ass yet," yelled Wally, adrenaline and frustration flooding together within him.

"I give up," I said. "The fight's over, and you win. I'll see you in the morning." I stood, brushed the grass off of my trousers again, and went home. At about seven that evening, there was a knock on my apartment door. Wally said, "I'm walking up to 7-11 for a soda. You want to come along?"

I went along. He had figured out that I had outsmarted him and taught him a valuable lesson about what anger would and would not accomplish, mentioned that he'd noticed some of the books I read on the bus and that his mother and I had parallel literary preferences, and that we could be great friends from that point forward. I was best man at Wally's wedding, and we just had a nice, long phone conversation a couple of weeks ago.

One of the few things I feel guilty about in life is that I've never admitted to Wally that I didn't outsmart him or intentionally teach him any lessons at all. I could simply tell by the ease with which he landed the first blow that I was going to lose the fight, and was honestly conceding that realization at 5:01 sharp that Wednesday afternoon. Well, that guilt has been a small burden to bear in light of the rewards that misrepresentation has brought me.

Oh, the adventures we had. We spent a lot of time at Kevin's house, where there was a pool table. There was also Patty, Kevin's older sister, retarded and epileptic. Patty wore a hockey helmet at all times to prevent injuries from fits or falls, and her sole and favorite toy was a jigsaw puzzle. Every time she got that damn thing almost finished, the ol' neurons would misfire and she'd start flipping and jerking and yanking those puzzle pieces apart, turning the table over and flinging everything from hell to breakfast. Kevin and his parents would wince at having to go through the routine again and start looking for the tongue depressers.

Patty worked a few hours each day, putting plastic knives, forks and spoons together in plastic bags for some organization that sold these picnic sets to raise money for handicapped assistance or something, and often brought home samples of her work. "See what I do today," she'd insist at the pool room door, and we'd always compliment her. "That's great, Patty," I'd say in my most soothing, dulcet tones, "those two spoons and one fork you've got there will be much more useful than the three knives you showed us yesterday." Embarrassed by all the attention, she'd blush, chase her brother around the house pounding on his head, and repeat, "Kebin doink!" After awhile, we agreed, and Kevin doesn't figure heavily into any other stories.