In the common area of my cousin's condo there was a band of older
boys who would drive around on motor scooters and try and run the
little kids over. They had been doing this for a while but they
didn't know there were some seasoned fort-war veterans in town
visiting and defeating tyranny was our stock and trade. They were out
running kids down and we had collected some weapons and ropes and
organized the troupes. Our first plan was to have two kids stand
across a narrow alleyway with a rope and a bait kid, my fast running
cousin Brent, would get them to chase him and then after he came
passed my cousin Blake and I would pull the rope tight and executed
the classic clothesline maneuver. It worked really well and the
scooter villain was caught directly across the throat and went down
in a heap screaming as his scooter crashed into the wall. He was a
little put out by our exceptional use of a timeless piece of
anti-motorcycle gang technology for some reason. It was probably
because he wrecked his scooted after being clotheslined off of it but it is
impossible to know because he was so intent on giving us all a really
vicious beating after that so we never had the chance to ask. He ran
Brent down and was punching him but Brent just kept laughing harder
and harder the more he was punched. At that point many of the
neighborhood kids were emboldened by our attack on the scooter
bullies and they all started throwing rocks and sticks at all of the bullies as they tried to run us down in the courtyard. By brother Matt smoked
a rock right into the kid who was beating up on on Brent's face and it made
a delicious smack on his head. He let Brent up to attack whoever
threw the rock but there were too many missiles incoming at that point
and every time he decided on a target he would be pelted by all of
the non-target kids. It was truly a great moment in the history of bully
table turning days. It got dark and we all had to go in happy and
victorious with threats of death, mauling, and dismemberment echoing off of the walls. What did I
care about retribution? I didn't live there. That constant reader is what Douglas Adams termed the S.E.P. or someone else's problem. Not unlike the Kurds in 1991 those kids were left to fend for themselves.
