I’m not a fighter. I’m not a lover, either.
At least not in the romantic, conquering the female gender sort of way. My family is so relieved hearing this admission, I’m sure. If I attached a photograph of myself, you’d immediately understand.
I’ve thrown a few punches in my day, though. But not enough to earn a title belt or even know how to lace up a pair of gloves. Seriously, do fighters get help putting those things on?
In a high school friend’s basement a pair of boxing gloves sat on a random shelf. Apparently her father sparred in the gym and danced around the ring in his younger days. Us guys would sneak beers into that basement and occasionally don the mitts. One guy got a left glove and one guy got a right one. Nothing was quite as entertaining as drunken, unskilled, one-handed boxing from a right-handed teenager wearing a left-handed glove. Hold my Schaefer and watch this.
My brother, Bill, shadowboxed me on a regular basis.
He threw punches that landed fractions of an inch from my face. l felt the air push past my nose and eyes, leaving me slightly unnerved. He even accompanied the punches with sound effects in case I was unaware of what knuckles sounded like when crashing into cheekbones, noses, and teeth.
I had no defense for his truncated attacks. He never hit me in the face, but he came close enough for me to feel genuine fear and concern of a potentially, fatal fraternal blow if he miscalculated his punching distance. At eleven years my senior he possessed far more masculine physicality than my sixth grade self could muster. However, I still oddly enjoyed the brotherly attention and thought this may also be a learning opportunity.
I convinced him to teach me some basic self defense techniques, since I clearly had no answers to his audible, fake fisticuffs. He agreed to help his little brother, who was visibly no physical threat to him at this point in our lives. Besides, our dad was out of the picture, and teaching a kid how to fight did not fall into the realm of motherhood. In my house that was more like learning how to cook cornbread, pork chops, and okra in cast iron skillet. Ah, Georgia women.
I learned how to hold my fists. He showed me how to throw a punch. I learned how to stand. He showed me how use combos. I learned how to fake one move and counter with another. He showed how to prepare for that moment of confrontation. I absorbed it all.
This involved no sparring. After all, I didn’t have a death wish to battle my older brother so he could pound me into oblivion. That would have been negative reinforcement and I’d likely have become a pacifist raising baby Red Pandas in the Nepalese mountains far away from wilds of American suburbia. I just did what he did. I practiced the moves by shadowboxing. Not against him or even my mirrored reflection. Just exchanging blows with an imaginary adversary, wondering when I would employ my new found skills in an actual fight.
Bill was an athletic guy. He did many things well besides his boxing antics. He swam and he dived. He could throw a ball with both hands and bat right or left handed. He taught me how to throw a football and actually gave me my first basketball for Christmas one year. I didn’t see a lot of it, but he was a solid ice skater, too.
One icy winter night he strapped on a pair ice-skates with his friends. They also polished off a fair amount of alcohol and I’m sure smoked their share of weed. This was a typical weekend occurrence. The ice skating was their next logical step in furthering the entertainment.
With liquid courage on board and floating on a cloud of marijuana confidence, Bill wowed his friends with his skating prowess. He could go slow or whip around the other skaters. He easily rotated on the ice and moved forward and backwards with grace and agility. The crescendo for the evening was him skating backwards on one leg, bent over at the waist with his arms stretched out like a pair of wings. Pretty damn impressive.
Until he fell. On his face.
More specifically, his upper front row of teeth. High as a kite in reverse mode, bent over a single set of toes, and arms as useful as T-Rex’s upper appendages. Once again, hold my Schaefer and watch this.
All that natural athleticism probably looked damn fine, until it didn’t. His figure skating Olympic dreams abruptly ended with a dental consult for emergency bridgework. On the bright side, the replacement teeth looked better than the originals.
But I digress. Back to my new found, raw, pugilistic skills.
I didn’t dance like a butterfly or sting like a bee, but I most certainly made progress. I particularly liked the counter move – fake a jab with the left and strike with the right. I keenly recognized the benefit of faking out an opponent. Lord knows, I’d been on the receiving end on the basketball court and the football field. Now I could be the one busting a move.
Months went by and I kept practicing my new skill. I felt eager to show Bill my progress. Then one day on the staircase heading up to the second floor bedrooms, he threw a couple of punches my way as I was about to pass him. Instinctively, I faked with the left and gave him my signature right jab.
I’m not sure if it was the unevenness of the staircase or my lack of game time experience, but my right went a bit farther than intended.
As a matter of fact, I punched Bill square in the mouth. There I stood, staring down my imminent demise. I just punched my older brother about as hard as possible. A panicked flow of apologies erupted from my mouth, hoping to abate the inevitable volley of return punches.
We never really worked on defense. I was inadequately prepared for a retaliatory response. We stood on a staircase. With limited maneuverability I possessed few good options. Encapsulated in fear and dread, I immediately knew my only recourse – the fetal position. Ironic, as a fetus represents new life and I was about to die.
But he didn’t even get mad. He just slowly turned around and walked upstairs without making a sound, let alone a counter move. Elated at the reprieve, I did not follow him to find out why. I have no memory of how the ensuing hours unfolded. I did later learn that I knocked out his newly installed dental bridgework. Not bad for an 11 year-old with one move.
Interestingly, Bill never shadowboxed me again. I kinda missed it. We never spoke of the “incident”. Probably for the best, as I’m still surprised by his restraint, even decades later. I shouldn’t be, though. Bill was born in Norfolk, VA. As the state slogan goes, “Virginia Is For Lovers”. Fighting is not mentioned. By birthright, perhaps I am a lover, too. And for at least one miscalculated moment, a fighter.
