As I spent more time thinking in the weeks after my 17th birthday, other memories came back. I always remembered this soccer war that started up at school, but I could never remember what started it. Now it was coming back to me.
One day I was playing foot hockey with four guys in my class. Foot hockey is like soccer with a tennis ball. We used our coats for goal posts spaced about as far apart as a hockey net, with the wall of the school being one post and a coat being the other. We were on the tarmac near the side of the school where the library was. Neve came running up to me in a panic, “M, I need your help. My brother is getting picked on.”
I followed her to the other side of the school. The guys I was playing foot hockey with overheard, grabbed their coats and came too. When we got to the other side of the school, three guys were pushing her brother around. I grabbed the guy that seemed like he was doing the most damage, threw him to the ground, pinned him on his back and started punching him.
As I was hitting him he starting whining, “Oh you’re such a tough guy. Why don’t you pick on someone your own size?”
The fact that I had size on this guy didn’t make me feel sympathetic. He was ganging up with two of his buddies on Neve’s brother. But when he said that, I heard this girl behind me say, “Umm. I hope you know you’re getting beat up by a grade 3.” (It may have been grade 4, but I’m pretty sure I was in grade 3 at the time)
When she said that, it didn’t register right away. I had adrenaline going through me. As I thought about what she said I realized she was referring to me. I stopped hitting this kid just then and I turned and asked. “What grade is this guy in?”
“Grade 5”
At this point it’s a school yard fight, so we were surrounded in a ring of people. When everyone heard that answer they burst out laughing. I was looking down at this kid thinking that’s impossible! He might have been in grade 2, but there was no way he was in grade 5.
As this kid kept whining for me to get off him, I decided just to embarrass him in front of everyone. I started patting him on the cheeks and pinching his nose and otherwise making a fool out of him. That’s when one of his two friends said something that made me furious.
“5 against 3, that’s not exactly fair! Why don’t you let us go get another 2 guys and come back? Then we’ll finish this.” He was referring to the four guys I was playing foot hockey with that were there with me.
More than anything, hearing that drove me nuts.
“5 against 3 is not fair, but 3 against 1 is fair? How does that work? And anyway, it’s not 5 against 3. It’s 1 against 1. It’s me and this punk!”
That’s when all my anger boiled over and I just began pounding this kid in the head. That’s also when the teacher just happened along. When the teacher showed up I was the only one throwing punches, so naturally I was the only one that got dragged to the office.
It was classic of the way things happened for me at school. I could be walking along minding my own business and a group of guys would be burning the school to the ground. One guy would ask me to hold his matches while he and his friends went to the washroom.
“Don’t go anywhere, we’ll be right back”
“Oh okay”
Then I’d be standing there with matches in my hand while the school burned to ashes and a teacher happened along. I’d be dragged to the office, trying to explain myself the whole way.
“These guys just asked me to hold their matches. They said they’d be right back. Honest!”
Now here I am on the way to the principle’s office again.
“Three guys were beating up one guy and I tried to help him. Honest!”
There was no need for introductions when I landed in the principle’s office. I spent more time with Mr. Brian than I did with my own father growing up. He was pissed.
Sure I got into trouble a lot in school, but my transgressions were minor. I didn’t pay attention in class. I cracked jokes. I made paper airplanes and picked the most inappropriate times to test them out. I spent many a recess in detention and I wore out a lot of pencils writing lines.
I was a handful for our teachers to deal with, but I was not like the kids of today. I never dealt drugs or brought guns to school to shoot up school kids. I was simply the class clown that got pleasure from cracking jokes and making my classmates laugh. For that Mr. Brian and I spent a lot of time together.
This time I was in his office for fighting. I had upped the ante. He was very angry. He screamed at me louder that day than any other. He chewed me out for quite a while, but I stood there listening to him in perfect calm. For once I knew I had done the right thing. It didn’t bother me in the least to hear him yell at me.
When he finished tearing a strip off me, he paused. “What do you have to say for yourself?”
I simply told him the story. The brother of a girl in my class was being picked on. I saw three guys ganging up on him, so I jumped in to help.
My explanation only made Mr. Brian more furious.
“You are so full of crap! You really expect me to believe you’re some martyr, jumping in to save someone from overwhelming odds?” He kept yelling at me, outright calling me a liar to my face. He told me the teacher saw what happened and I was the only one throwing punches.
To be fair, I could picture what the teacher saw having only showed up at the end, so I could imagine how it looked from her point of view. But, I was still perfectly calm, because I knew what happened. I knew I did the right thing.
When Mr. Brian paused again I was still very relaxed. I simply said, “If you don’t believe me, go talk to Neve.”
That’s when Mr. Brian leapt out of his chair and got right in my face screaming.
“I am going to look into your story! And you better hope it checks out or so help me God,” and he dished out a multitude of threats on what would happen if it didn’t.
Before he left his office he did something that scared me. He said, “I want you to sit down and I don’t want you to go ANYWHERE until I get back!” Then he started to walk out the door of his office.
One thing about being in Mr. Brian’s office was that it was a point of honor that you were never allowed to sit in one of his chairs. That would be too comfortable. You always had to stand at attention when he berated you. So when he told me to sit down, I figured he would scold me for taking a chair. I decided instead to sit on the floor. I thought that’s what he wanted, because that would be more uncomfortable.
He saw me out of the corner of his eye sitting down as he was walking out the door and he stopped. He spun around in the doorway of his office and unloaded on me.
“Why the hell are you sitting down? Who the hell do you think you are? Who told you that you could sit?”
That scared me. This man had been yelling at me so loud and for so long, he had lost his mind.
I said, “You did.”
When I said that his voice jumped an octave and he really unleashed a torrent. He called me a liar again and then he asked, “When did I tell you that you could do that?”
I said, “Just now.”
That answer just took his outrage to another new level. At that point he took a step back from the office doorway, so that now he was completely outside the office and I couldn’t see him because he was on the other side of a wall. I could however see the office secretary who was sitting at her desk.
That’s when he turned to the secretary and yelled, “Did I tell him he could sit down!?”
The secretary seemed startled that he would yell a question at her. She yelled back at him with a little anger of her own and answered, “Yes! You did!”
At that point there was complete silence. A few seconds later I heard the sound of Mr. Brian’s footsteps as he left the office.
I’m not sure at that point who he talked to when he left the office. I assume that he talked to Neve and/or Christian. He was gone for a while.
When he came back to his office he was a changed man.
He told me I could stand up and take a seat in one of his chairs! All of a sudden I felt like a dignitary. Nobody ever got to sit in Mr. Brian’s chairs. He told me that he looked into my story and it turns out that it did happen exactly as I said. He apologized for calling me a liar.
I don’t think he apologized for the sitting down thing. In fact, I don’t think he mentioned that at all. But you could tell he had his tail between his legs over that, because he embarrassed himself.
This moment marked the TSN turning point in my relationship with Mr. Brian. It was the first time he talked to me as a person without yelling. It was the first time he reasoned with me. After all the times I had been in his office, it was the first time I felt he actually had respect for me. From that day on, whenever I landed in his office, he was always very reasonable.
He explained that he could not tolerate fighting on the school grounds and he had to lay down the law to ensure that didn’t happen anymore. Then he did something that blew me away. He let me go back to class without being punished! Considering I beat on that kid pretty good, I was amazed to be getting off scot-free.
When I got back to class, Neve was concerned that she had gotten me into trouble. I was happy to tell her that I got into no trouble at all. The bigger concern now was what to do about her brother. I knew a little something about the minds of bullies. When someone’s sister runs for help, it’s like an invitation for more of the same. I knew those guys would want to get her brother back.
A group of us were in class talking about what we could do. I’m not sure who came up with this idea, but I think it was Remi Kaiserman. The idea was to challenge those three guys, plus whoever they could get from their class, to a game of soccer. Sure there would be a soccer ball on the field. And yeah, I supposed we would be kicking it around and trying to score. In reality though, it was just an excuse to fight those three guys. When any of those three guys went for the ball, we planned to take the body. I think it was Kaiserman’s idea, because he was the one who brought the ball.
They went for the idea and the soccer wars began.
On the first day we played, some scuffles broke out. Whenever any of those three guys went for the ball, we lined them up and threw body checks. We had some big guys in our class too. There was Robert Dykeman, Remi Kaiserman, Gerard Real, and myself. This was war. It didn’t take long before the guys on the other team realized the soccer ball was only a distraction. The teachers broke it all up that first day.
The second day, those three guys were eager to play again. They found a few friends that had a little more size and we went at it once more. The shoving started and it wasn’t long before the teachers broke it up again.
The afternoon after the second day of the soccer war, I had an idea. This soccer war couldn’t go on forever, so I had manipulative scheme for how to end it. The idea was that the next time we played and fights started to break out, Neve’s brother would jump in on behalf of those guys that were giving him grief and stick up for them. I figured if he did that, these guys might have some sympathy for him and leave him alone. We all agreed to try that the next time we played soccer.
On the third day, Kaiserman rolled out the soccer ball and the fun began. I saw one of those three kids go for the ball and I lined him up. It was that little punk I had pinned to the ground and beat on earlier in the week. Considering we all knew this was war and not soccer, I’m surprised that kid had his head down as he went for the ball. He didn’t see me at all. I lined him up from a mile away and at full tilt I drove him on his ass.
When I did that, Neve’s brother came running over to defend him.
“Hey M, let him go. There’s no need for that. Come on.”
But it was not to be. The kid looked up and said “Shut up. I don’t need your help.”
Then the little punk got up and came at me. I was sick to my stomach for a few reasons. He obviously saw through that chivalry crap and I worried that I was only making matters worse for Neve’s brother. Worse still, now I have this punk, about half my size thinking he has some kind of moral authority to fight me back because I picked a fight with him.
Growing up I never started fights. Often I stuck up for people that were picked on. Often people misjudged me and thought I was wimpier than I looked and picked fights with me, but I never started fights. Especially with gimps half my size. Now I had done both and I didn’t feel good about that.
That little punk came at me like a moth to the flame. Instantly I had the upper hand and was beating on him. One of the guys from his team tried to jump in and save him, but Kaiserman grabbed that guy and made short work of him. The teachers broke up the fighting again and this being the third time, the teachers had enough. Four of us ended up at the principle’s office. Kaiserman and I stood outside in the hall while the two kids from the other team talked to the principle first.
When those two kids left the office, Kaiserman and I went in. Mr. Brian was very calm and reasonable as we entered.
“M, are you here again? That’s interesting. It seems you were just in here a few days ago. Why was it that you were here? Oh, I remember. It was for fighting. I think we had a talk about that and I told you I would not tolerate fighting. So what brings you by today?”
“Fighting”
Thank God I went to grade school in the 70s. If I was a grade school student in this day and age I would have been diagnosed with ADHD and pumped full of pills. I would be so drugged up in class I’d spend my days slobbering all over myself.
In spite of it all, Mr. Brian kept his cool. He politely explained that Kaiserman and I were getting one week of detention. In addition, Kaiserman was told he was not allowed to bring his soccer ball to school anymore. The principle went over the PA system and announced that playing soccer on the school grounds was banned permanently. And he topped that off by giving me the most dreaded punishment of all.
He phoned home.
The belt was waiting for me when I got home.
Even though it hurt to sit for many days after, much good came of that experience. It was gratifying to see all the guys in our class band together around a girl we all adored. Even Kaiserman and I, who were at odds because of the Steven Pearson thing, buried the hatchet for a time. For me personally, I was glad Mr. Brian was no longer screaming at me when I was sent to his office. There was always respect between us from that point on.
Another thing this experience did was make me remember. And even though I didn’t remember it the night Christian called me, I remember it now. Neve did have a brother. I did stick up for him at school. I pulled the list out of my pocket and moved that one into the column of why I think it was not a dream. I really felt like crap.
One day I was playing foot hockey with four guys in my class. Foot hockey is like soccer with a tennis ball. We used our coats for goal posts spaced about as far apart as a hockey net, with the wall of the school being one post and a coat being the other. We were on the tarmac near the side of the school where the library was. Neve came running up to me in a panic, “M, I need your help. My brother is getting picked on.”
I followed her to the other side of the school. The guys I was playing foot hockey with overheard, grabbed their coats and came too. When we got to the other side of the school, three guys were pushing her brother around. I grabbed the guy that seemed like he was doing the most damage, threw him to the ground, pinned him on his back and started punching him.
As I was hitting him he starting whining, “Oh you’re such a tough guy. Why don’t you pick on someone your own size?”
The fact that I had size on this guy didn’t make me feel sympathetic. He was ganging up with two of his buddies on Neve’s brother. But when he said that, I heard this girl behind me say, “Umm. I hope you know you’re getting beat up by a grade 3.” (It may have been grade 4, but I’m pretty sure I was in grade 3 at the time)
When she said that, it didn’t register right away. I had adrenaline going through me. As I thought about what she said I realized she was referring to me. I stopped hitting this kid just then and I turned and asked. “What grade is this guy in?”
“Grade 5”
At this point it’s a school yard fight, so we were surrounded in a ring of people. When everyone heard that answer they burst out laughing. I was looking down at this kid thinking that’s impossible! He might have been in grade 2, but there was no way he was in grade 5.
As this kid kept whining for me to get off him, I decided just to embarrass him in front of everyone. I started patting him on the cheeks and pinching his nose and otherwise making a fool out of him. That’s when one of his two friends said something that made me furious.
“5 against 3, that’s not exactly fair! Why don’t you let us go get another 2 guys and come back? Then we’ll finish this.” He was referring to the four guys I was playing foot hockey with that were there with me.
More than anything, hearing that drove me nuts.
“5 against 3 is not fair, but 3 against 1 is fair? How does that work? And anyway, it’s not 5 against 3. It’s 1 against 1. It’s me and this punk!”
That’s when all my anger boiled over and I just began pounding this kid in the head. That’s also when the teacher just happened along. When the teacher showed up I was the only one throwing punches, so naturally I was the only one that got dragged to the office.
It was classic of the way things happened for me at school. I could be walking along minding my own business and a group of guys would be burning the school to the ground. One guy would ask me to hold his matches while he and his friends went to the washroom.
“Don’t go anywhere, we’ll be right back”
“Oh okay”
Then I’d be standing there with matches in my hand while the school burned to ashes and a teacher happened along. I’d be dragged to the office, trying to explain myself the whole way.
“These guys just asked me to hold their matches. They said they’d be right back. Honest!”
Now here I am on the way to the principle’s office again.
“Three guys were beating up one guy and I tried to help him. Honest!”
There was no need for introductions when I landed in the principle’s office. I spent more time with Mr. Brian than I did with my own father growing up. He was pissed.
Sure I got into trouble a lot in school, but my transgressions were minor. I didn’t pay attention in class. I cracked jokes. I made paper airplanes and picked the most inappropriate times to test them out. I spent many a recess in detention and I wore out a lot of pencils writing lines.
I was a handful for our teachers to deal with, but I was not like the kids of today. I never dealt drugs or brought guns to school to shoot up school kids. I was simply the class clown that got pleasure from cracking jokes and making my classmates laugh. For that Mr. Brian and I spent a lot of time together.
This time I was in his office for fighting. I had upped the ante. He was very angry. He screamed at me louder that day than any other. He chewed me out for quite a while, but I stood there listening to him in perfect calm. For once I knew I had done the right thing. It didn’t bother me in the least to hear him yell at me.
When he finished tearing a strip off me, he paused. “What do you have to say for yourself?”
I simply told him the story. The brother of a girl in my class was being picked on. I saw three guys ganging up on him, so I jumped in to help.
My explanation only made Mr. Brian more furious.
“You are so full of crap! You really expect me to believe you’re some martyr, jumping in to save someone from overwhelming odds?” He kept yelling at me, outright calling me a liar to my face. He told me the teacher saw what happened and I was the only one throwing punches.
To be fair, I could picture what the teacher saw having only showed up at the end, so I could imagine how it looked from her point of view. But, I was still perfectly calm, because I knew what happened. I knew I did the right thing.
When Mr. Brian paused again I was still very relaxed. I simply said, “If you don’t believe me, go talk to Neve.”
That’s when Mr. Brian leapt out of his chair and got right in my face screaming.
“I am going to look into your story! And you better hope it checks out or so help me God,” and he dished out a multitude of threats on what would happen if it didn’t.
Before he left his office he did something that scared me. He said, “I want you to sit down and I don’t want you to go ANYWHERE until I get back!” Then he started to walk out the door of his office.
One thing about being in Mr. Brian’s office was that it was a point of honor that you were never allowed to sit in one of his chairs. That would be too comfortable. You always had to stand at attention when he berated you. So when he told me to sit down, I figured he would scold me for taking a chair. I decided instead to sit on the floor. I thought that’s what he wanted, because that would be more uncomfortable.
He saw me out of the corner of his eye sitting down as he was walking out the door and he stopped. He spun around in the doorway of his office and unloaded on me.
“Why the hell are you sitting down? Who the hell do you think you are? Who told you that you could sit?”
That scared me. This man had been yelling at me so loud and for so long, he had lost his mind.
I said, “You did.”
When I said that his voice jumped an octave and he really unleashed a torrent. He called me a liar again and then he asked, “When did I tell you that you could do that?”
I said, “Just now.”
That answer just took his outrage to another new level. At that point he took a step back from the office doorway, so that now he was completely outside the office and I couldn’t see him because he was on the other side of a wall. I could however see the office secretary who was sitting at her desk.
That’s when he turned to the secretary and yelled, “Did I tell him he could sit down!?”
The secretary seemed startled that he would yell a question at her. She yelled back at him with a little anger of her own and answered, “Yes! You did!”
At that point there was complete silence. A few seconds later I heard the sound of Mr. Brian’s footsteps as he left the office.
I’m not sure at that point who he talked to when he left the office. I assume that he talked to Neve and/or Christian. He was gone for a while.
When he came back to his office he was a changed man.
He told me I could stand up and take a seat in one of his chairs! All of a sudden I felt like a dignitary. Nobody ever got to sit in Mr. Brian’s chairs. He told me that he looked into my story and it turns out that it did happen exactly as I said. He apologized for calling me a liar.
I don’t think he apologized for the sitting down thing. In fact, I don’t think he mentioned that at all. But you could tell he had his tail between his legs over that, because he embarrassed himself.
This moment marked the TSN turning point in my relationship with Mr. Brian. It was the first time he talked to me as a person without yelling. It was the first time he reasoned with me. After all the times I had been in his office, it was the first time I felt he actually had respect for me. From that day on, whenever I landed in his office, he was always very reasonable.
He explained that he could not tolerate fighting on the school grounds and he had to lay down the law to ensure that didn’t happen anymore. Then he did something that blew me away. He let me go back to class without being punished! Considering I beat on that kid pretty good, I was amazed to be getting off scot-free.
When I got back to class, Neve was concerned that she had gotten me into trouble. I was happy to tell her that I got into no trouble at all. The bigger concern now was what to do about her brother. I knew a little something about the minds of bullies. When someone’s sister runs for help, it’s like an invitation for more of the same. I knew those guys would want to get her brother back.
A group of us were in class talking about what we could do. I’m not sure who came up with this idea, but I think it was Remi Kaiserman. The idea was to challenge those three guys, plus whoever they could get from their class, to a game of soccer. Sure there would be a soccer ball on the field. And yeah, I supposed we would be kicking it around and trying to score. In reality though, it was just an excuse to fight those three guys. When any of those three guys went for the ball, we planned to take the body. I think it was Kaiserman’s idea, because he was the one who brought the ball.
They went for the idea and the soccer wars began.
On the first day we played, some scuffles broke out. Whenever any of those three guys went for the ball, we lined them up and threw body checks. We had some big guys in our class too. There was Robert Dykeman, Remi Kaiserman, Gerard Real, and myself. This was war. It didn’t take long before the guys on the other team realized the soccer ball was only a distraction. The teachers broke it all up that first day.
The second day, those three guys were eager to play again. They found a few friends that had a little more size and we went at it once more. The shoving started and it wasn’t long before the teachers broke it up again.
The afternoon after the second day of the soccer war, I had an idea. This soccer war couldn’t go on forever, so I had manipulative scheme for how to end it. The idea was that the next time we played and fights started to break out, Neve’s brother would jump in on behalf of those guys that were giving him grief and stick up for them. I figured if he did that, these guys might have some sympathy for him and leave him alone. We all agreed to try that the next time we played soccer.
On the third day, Kaiserman rolled out the soccer ball and the fun began. I saw one of those three kids go for the ball and I lined him up. It was that little punk I had pinned to the ground and beat on earlier in the week. Considering we all knew this was war and not soccer, I’m surprised that kid had his head down as he went for the ball. He didn’t see me at all. I lined him up from a mile away and at full tilt I drove him on his ass.
When I did that, Neve’s brother came running over to defend him.
“Hey M, let him go. There’s no need for that. Come on.”
But it was not to be. The kid looked up and said “Shut up. I don’t need your help.”
Then the little punk got up and came at me. I was sick to my stomach for a few reasons. He obviously saw through that chivalry crap and I worried that I was only making matters worse for Neve’s brother. Worse still, now I have this punk, about half my size thinking he has some kind of moral authority to fight me back because I picked a fight with him.
Growing up I never started fights. Often I stuck up for people that were picked on. Often people misjudged me and thought I was wimpier than I looked and picked fights with me, but I never started fights. Especially with gimps half my size. Now I had done both and I didn’t feel good about that.
That little punk came at me like a moth to the flame. Instantly I had the upper hand and was beating on him. One of the guys from his team tried to jump in and save him, but Kaiserman grabbed that guy and made short work of him. The teachers broke up the fighting again and this being the third time, the teachers had enough. Four of us ended up at the principle’s office. Kaiserman and I stood outside in the hall while the two kids from the other team talked to the principle first.
When those two kids left the office, Kaiserman and I went in. Mr. Brian was very calm and reasonable as we entered.
“M, are you here again? That’s interesting. It seems you were just in here a few days ago. Why was it that you were here? Oh, I remember. It was for fighting. I think we had a talk about that and I told you I would not tolerate fighting. So what brings you by today?”
“Fighting”
Thank God I went to grade school in the 70s. If I was a grade school student in this day and age I would have been diagnosed with ADHD and pumped full of pills. I would be so drugged up in class I’d spend my days slobbering all over myself.
In spite of it all, Mr. Brian kept his cool. He politely explained that Kaiserman and I were getting one week of detention. In addition, Kaiserman was told he was not allowed to bring his soccer ball to school anymore. The principle went over the PA system and announced that playing soccer on the school grounds was banned permanently. And he topped that off by giving me the most dreaded punishment of all.
He phoned home.
The belt was waiting for me when I got home.
Even though it hurt to sit for many days after, much good came of that experience. It was gratifying to see all the guys in our class band together around a girl we all adored. Even Kaiserman and I, who were at odds because of the Steven Pearson thing, buried the hatchet for a time. For me personally, I was glad Mr. Brian was no longer screaming at me when I was sent to his office. There was always respect between us from that point on.
Another thing this experience did was make me remember. And even though I didn’t remember it the night Christian called me, I remember it now. Neve did have a brother. I did stick up for him at school. I pulled the list out of my pocket and moved that one into the column of why I think it was not a dream. I really felt like crap.
