Off the seat of a bicycle
Chapter 4        rock throwers and bayonet boy
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My memories of school are like everyone else’s, some good, some bad, and most forgotten. My earliest memory is my father catching me with office supplies I stole from my 1st grade teacher in Scott City Kansas. I guess deviance starts early, and most parents hope it won’t last. He made me return the items and apologize … and that’s what Americans expect.

Later that year, when we moved away, my father took the cat with us as far as the highway, then put it out of the car. I was too young to know, but the cat and I locked eyes as we drove away. I wish to god I had stood up and told him we were not going to do that. It stll bothers me today. That cat was part of our little family.

My next memory was second grade walking home from a new school. Somehow I became the target for a group of ‘mean’ boys waiting for me to cower down the sidewalk so they could throw rocks from across the street. I was new, and came from a rural Kansas town, and I wasn’t the city-smart cowboy like my new Wichita socializers.

The rock-throwing probably only happened three times, and my Mom intervened and put a stop to it, but the effects were felt all my life.

I didn’t like being bullied. It made me mad and provoked the promise I wouldn’t take it again … but there was a social simplicity that I missed.

Why did I continue walking the same route after the first rock throwing? Why didn’t I go up to the boys and made friends?

How could I mistakenly live in such a rigid hallway filled with all those closed doors? Except I wanted to be who I wanted to be … and that is the determinate factor in my life … and in America, I have a right to do that.

My next recollection was caused by a neighbor boy’s new bayonet.

Articles of war remained in high esteem to the offspring of the men who fought the Big One, and this boy was no different. I was 12 and he was several years older when I randomly encountered him and his friend and the new bayonet at the edge of the woods. I don’t recall any provocation, but I always had a big mouth. For whatever reason, this fellow chased me with his knife.

I was half over the fence when the chase started but wore rubber boots and couldn’t run fast so he caught me, knocked me down, and held the bayonet to my throat in a piercing stance.

A moment later he let me up but I wasn’t afraid. I was mad. Not so much at him but at myself for being unable to defend myself. For being caught with heavy boots rather than running shoes.

All men and women want to be zen masters of physical strength and guile, but truth is, few of us are prepared to defend ourselves in the fleetful moments of human attack that occur out of the blue.

That day I learned the indelible lesson of the street: violent encounters have to be expected, and you must be ready to run or able to defend.
Chapter 5) America's road rules: might makes right
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