“Fight!” “Fight!” “Fight!” “Fight!” “Fight!”
Have you ever been punched in the mouth or socked in the eye so hard that you literally saw stars or fireworks exploding in your brain? If you are as old as I am (58 years old), you have probably heard a chant like the one above, right before someone laid hands on you. Nowadays, people don’t solve their problems and petty disputes with their fists; guns are now the go-to coping skill for many of our youth in America.
Well, for me, when I was a youngster, hearing a chant such as this was almost a daily occurrence on my way to and from school, in the schoolyard, at the swimming pool during the summer, at the bottom and sometimes at the top of the sliding board at the playground, in back alleys, outside the church on Sundays, and unfortunately almost daily in my home at the hands of my father.
“Fight!” “Fight!” “Fight!” “Fight!” “Fight!”
When you are born and forced to grow up in and under a patriarchy, aggression and fighting, genocide and violence are viewed as rights of passage or a birthright in environments where ignorance and selfishness are welcomed traits or seen as a necessity or a byproduct of an underprivileged and marginalized cultural imperative that most people of color have chosen to embrace since integration first began.
Before you start preaching to me about us all having a choice in life and that we choose to fight, that we choose to view ourselves as beasts or savages, let me say, you are correct. Of course, we all know that we choose to fight, we choose to stand in front of another human being and attempt to cause them bodily harm. Fighting is wrong on so many levels. But fighting with others and becoming physical in general is what we all do or want to do when we can’t articulate our feelings and emotions to the people that hurt us. We feel pain, and we react and respond in a way that gives us the most relief in that moment. Fighting is wrong. Period. Especially in today’s climate, where children can use prepaid debit cards to purchase ghost guns on the internet.
I believe that I used to fight as a child because I was never taught how to love. So, for me, when I got disrespected or picked on in any way by peers, the only viable option I was equipped with was my ability to harm other people. My father used to tell my brothers and I, “Boys are little men, and men sometimes fight. I ain’t raisin’ no chumps! If you live in this house, you betta not let me hear ‘bout you getting’ punked. I ain’t gonna be takin’ care of no bitch! If you run from a fight, you gonna have to deal wit me, and there ain’t no asswhoopin’ out in them streets worse than a Puncho asswhoopin’! Believe that!”
“Fight!” “Fight!” “Fight!” “Fight!” “Fight!”
Because of my miseducation as a youth, most of my formative years growing up in the slums of North Philadelphia were a series of three-round, bare-knuckle fistfights, boxing matches, wrestling, kickboxing, rock/stick/beer and soda bottle/M-80/brick-throwing, and sucker-punch matches. One might come to the conclusion that I actually liked to fight, but nothing could be further from the truth. I hated fighting as a child, and I hate even the idea of it now as an adult. Maybe it was fear, peer pressure, or self-preservation, but I can honestly say that 80% of the fights I got into as a youth were not my idea and I did not get any enjoyment out of hurting someone. I would cry and beat myself up about having to fight once I was all alone in my bedroom, mostly because I hated being in the pain associated with fighting, but also because I equated violence with my father, and I really hated the idea of being like my father.
“Fight!” “Fight!” “Fight!” “Fight!” “Fight!”
COWARDICE
Back in the day
my friends and family would say
“LET IT GO!”
“LET IT RIDE!”
“LET IT SLIDE!”
but I had too much pride
eventually I tried to fight the world
Indeed that was a lost cause
an ignorant plan
with many flaws
When all I had to do
was to bite my tongue
or turn and run
or I could have been the bigger man
and simply shook my enemy’s hand
turn
then slowly walk away
But I could never do any of these things
because I was ashamed and so very afraid
to show the world
that I too
was capable of
love.
“Fight!” “Fight!” “Fight!” “Fight!” “Fight!”
The life lessons I learned from my father more than fifty years ago, misguided as they were, have affected my moral compass, throwing my life into a tailspin that I have only in recent years begun to correct. For the record, I am the last born of twelve children, “The Baby,” as my parents and siblings affectionately called me. There were five boys and five girls in our brood. Born into a world of suffering, hunger, and bigotry, our existence was laced with aggression. We lived nothing at all like the Brady Bunch we watched on our floor-model black-and-white television console each week.
I was a shy, timid child, but I was not a coward. My father’s warped and heavy-handed brand of parenting ensured that I would eventually become his legacy. If approached with aggression, I had to fight. Puncho, my father, ain’t play that shit! He had always told my brothers and me, “If they bigger than you or if they jump you, you better pick up a brick, a stick, or a bottle and bust them in the head ‘til they bleed.” We were just children. We didn’t have to be so violent. But it was expected. These types of random acts of violence were normal occurrences in the ‘hood, something I saw other Black men in the ghetto do to one another on a daily basis while growing up in the slums of North Philadelphia. Even if I didn’t want to harm people, my father wasn’t having any of that nonsense: “Ain’t no son of mine gonna be no punk ass bitch…You gots to be a man if you want to survive,” Puncho would say.
One day after leaving school — I believe I was in the fourth or fifth grade — a group of five redheaded children from Fishtown, a one-time all-Caucasian section of North Philadelphia known for its Irish immigrant population, approached me on my way home from school and started throwing rocks at me and calling me the N-word. I tried to walk away, hoping to avoid a confrontation. But as they surrounded me, all I could hear in my head was my father’s voice and the slowly building hum of the rage and hate I felt for him. I don’t remember who attacked whom first. Hours later, sitting handcuffed in the principal’s office back at school, flanked by two police officer from the 24th District, I finally noticed blood on my clothing that wasn’t my own. I suddenly had a panic attack. I jumped up from my seat, pulling away from the police officers. My father was going to kill me. He had warned me the last time about his having to come up to the school because of my behavior. In that moment, I was so overcome with fear that I pissed myself.
“Fight!” “Fight!” “Fight!” “Fight!” “Fight!”
To my surprise, when Puncho did show up, he was nice to me and even gave me a hug. This type of affection was rarely shown in my household. Then my father scolded the police for putting handcuffs on me so tight and told the principal that I was “a great kid,” that I was ‘Very respectful” and “kind as can be.” Puncho totally took my side, placing the blame on the other children and their parents’ lack of parental control.
On the ride home, my father was beaming with pride. He even let me ride in the passenger seat next to him We were stopped at a red light when he reached over and placed his very large right hand on the back of my neck before proceeding to massage my shoulders. I almost pissed myself again. “My lil’ man,” he said, “you know that I love you, right?” I was in shock. I couldn’t think or speak. I stared at the windshield. Before that day, I had never heard my father say that he loved me. But these words came at a cost. I lost the last bit of innocence I had left in me, as three severely injured children had to be hospitalized, never knowing that the violence they had suffered was always meant for my father.
“Fight!” “Fight!” “Fight!” “Fight!” “Fight!”
I can remember my first “adult” fight when I was 13 years old. Me and this older kid who lived around the comer from me used to like the same girl. Her name was Brenda and she was my soulmate. I was young and stupid and full of hormones that I was unaware made me really insecure and aggressive. My archnemesis’s name was Larry. He was 16 years old, but three inches shorter and 20 pounds lighter than my 6’3” and 220 pounds.
We would always mean-hug one another in passing and hurl insults at each other whenever there was a crowd around, attempting to press the other to fight. Full disclosure: I was the aggressor in this situation. One day, things came to a head and we called each other out in front of Brenda. Honestly, I really didn’t want to fight, but I wasn’t opposed to throwing down because I was really puppy-loving on this girl, so I convinced myself that if I eliminated Larry from the picture, Brenda would surely choose me over him. All I had to do was beat his ass in front of her and all her friends, and then we could ride off into the sunset on my Huffy ten-speed.
The stage was set. We met on Bodine Street after leaving the swimming pool at 12th and Susquehanna one hot summer day. One of the kids in the crowd of onlookers retrieved a red clay brick from a semi-collapsed bando and handed it to me. I slammed the brick hard against the sidewalk, breaking it into dozens of pieces. Then, I used one of the pieces to nervously draw a crooked reddish-orange line down the center of the street. I took my place on one side of the line, placing my toe up against it, and Larry reluctantly did the same.
Gone were the chants to “FIGHT!” that I remembered from elementary school. My Flintstones lunchbox and cookies were now transformed into raging hormones and a crooked red-orange starting line across the middle of Bodine Street. I don’t remember who said it first, but I can still remember hearing the words, “CROSS THE LINE,” and it was on.
That is how it was back in the day. As soon as your adversary took a step over that line, he was trying to do harm to you, so you had to fight for your respect, fight to save your life. The fights usually continued until someone was unconscious or until a person was too injured or too overmatched for the fight to continue. Whoever was winning would ask, “You had enough?” and if he said he had, the fight was over. Then you wiped your blood (and often tears) away, fixed your clothes, and shook your opponent’s hand like a man. There were never any “get-backs” or retaliation involving weapons, like guns or knives. If the fight was fair, someone had to win, someone had to lose. Both parties knew the risks involved and mutually agreed to enter into battle with only their ignorance and fists. When the fight was over, they would walk away with their respect and pride, knowing that they both willingly agreed to engage in battle and someone had taken an “L.”
Unfortunately, I won the fight that day. The girl I had been crushing so hard on ran over to the boy I had just fought and comforted him. The look of disgust she gave me as she slung her long Janet Jackson-style micro-braids over her shoulder as she brushed past me to assist him made me wish I could have taken back every punch I had ever thrown in my entire life. How could she have chosen him over me? Why was she so pissed at me for winning a fight? In my prepubescent ignorance, I was oblivious to what empathy and compassion were. Those moral concepts would further elude me and many other young Black boys from my neighborhood, until years later when some of us unfortunately wound up in prison. Basically, I lost the fight that day because I won the fight but I lost the girl…so I lost the fight by winning. Damn!
My education continues…
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