We were talking about things we did together as a dad and son when he was a kid, twenty-five to thirty years ago. We talked about fishing, pitching and catching lessons (he became a starting varsity catcher in his junior year), batting practice (who among you can say that you've seen your kid hit 4 legit home runs?), and, of all things, boxing.
That was when I learned something about him I didn't know before.
When he was about 8 I got him a small pair of Everlast gloves, headgear, and a bell. His little sister rang the bell (she was also the referee, so the bell rang when she thought it was getting out of hand, which I thought was really sweet, and disobeying the bell was forbidden). When we sparred, I would be upright but standing on my knees, so to speak. At that level I was his height.
I showed him how to stand properly, head positions, how to switch up to create confusion, the five basic head punches and four body punches (my school), fists at rest, the best locations for your hands on defense, and the most effective use of the arms, many exercises (he actually did them and got himself a pretty good sixpack) and most importantly, how to keep your eyes open.
That last one wasn't so much mechanical like the others; it was a brain exercise (it was also what made him a good catcher later on).
We started out just shadow boxing together, with me teaching him to dance, move laterally, backup, the use of the ropes (a clothesline pulled and clamped between two double-hung windows); and and how to react.
When we got face to face and I began tapping him lightly, he was comfortable enough with me doing that because he trusted me implicitly. It was a beautiful thing, and that trust allowed him to keep his eyes open as I ducked and weaved playfully, taking whatever shots he might deliver or blocking them if they looked too menacing - and pointing out his most obvious defensive mistakes with a very temperate head shot or body blow. He got real good at ducking and weaving.
Well about 1.5 years later, we took him to a pee wee boxing club and we were going to sign him up the next night, so we had an honorary boxing match (by this time he was taller than me on my knees) to celebrate the next step. We were in the dining room (good acoustics) where we normally sparred, and his sister rang the bell. Zack came out of his corner with a very cocky look in his eye, walked straight up to me and gave me a head feint to the left with a simultaneous right uppercut to the back edge of my unguarded chin. It was a very awkward move on his part, requiring him to lift his right leg behind his punch to keep from falling over from the head fake and arm trajectory, but it was nonetheless very effective (my jaw helped with the trajectory problem). It sounded like a firehouse with his sis' bell ringing off the proverbial hook. His stepmom said: "Ok, that's the last of that kind of thing in this house." At least that's what Zack tells me she said.
Our conversation the other night, me in HI and him in MT, revolved around that topic for some time, and he eventually got to telling me something he'd never told me before, a story that happened after me and his stepmom left for the East Coast in his senior year (the second or third hardest decision of my life) when he was a star fullback on the football team. His success at that position was quite an accomplishment being that he only weighed about 175 (@ 6'1") and the league had 10 AAA schools in it. He made second string All City and had several 200+ yard games, with even some option passing involved. I am not making this up, by the way.
Anyway, along with those accomplishments, he also made some enemies.
Note: from here on out, if you are excessively PC oriented, you might want to go to a pootie diary or something.
And don't worry, I'm gonna tie this all together pretty soon.
Zack attended an inner-city school that had a large (not that large really, but compared to the rest of the district) population of AA kids, and it had been an unspoken tradition that a black kid get the Fullback spot. It was a Western, very white city overall, but that school resembled a recial mix you might find in an East Coast metropolis - therefore it seemed like an enclave. And a portion of the AA contingent in the student body was gang-oriented, and they carried guns and knives. It was these folks who took it upon themselves to (in their minds) uphold the pride of the black community.
It didn't come to a head till after his senior football season was over, but he had been recieving insults, taunts, and demands that he stay off the baseball team from the beginning of the school year. He never told us anything about it at the time, though his birth mother knew about it.
Then a crisis occurred during Basketball Season. During a game he was watching (ironically, he never got into playing basketball, my own personal-favorite sport), a group of those kids began harassing him. He walked away. They followed him to a friend's house, outside of which one of the kids began accosting him physically. He made to tackle Zack, with his head down and running hard, and Z just came up underneath him at the right second with (as he remembers it now) a perfect uppercut that "connected like a triple into the gap." He didn't even hurt his hand, he says.
He punched kid into an upright position (he was not small), upon which the kid ripped his shirt off, snarled, started to go into a wrestling stance, and then passed out cold.
Zack got lots of adulation (including from his coaches), but he didn't feel comfortable basking in it. It wasn't the type of reputation he was seeking, especially with the gang still intact.
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If you think that was a great story, imagine hearing it for the first time from your 30-something son. It made me proud that he had used those lessons well, and in a defensive, effective way. The kids stopped harassing him (though he did decide to forgo his starting spot at catcher that year as he ventured into hippiedom).
Now for the last couple days, I've been thinking about how Zack's experience is like Barack's at this time (you suspected this would devolve into a political analogy eventually, didn't you?). Both were harassed by mean-spirited folks who wished to dismiss their accomplishments, and both took it pretty easily for a while - till the critical, opportune moment - and then all barrels were let loose to much effect, surprise, and awe.
The differing racial components between Zack's diary and the current Presidential race just point out how this is a human problem that folks like Barack (and all of us) are charged with alleviating.
It also points out, like OPOL has, that being agressively defensive is a strong liberal trait: my son was never "scarred" by his encounter with racial prejudice (being in the racial majority makes that much easier, of course), just as Barack seems to hold no grudges and exact no revenge as a result of his (our) battles.
Paul Wellstone, that thoroughly aggressive and peace-loving liberal, sadly comes to mind. So does Molly Ivins.
Thank god the Obama team has appropriated some of their political grappling moves.
UPDATE: In Obama's own words:
"The fact [is] that I don't go out of my way to call people names, or try to take cheap shots, and that I try not to throw the first punch. But, to see if I can find a way to work together with people, sometimes leads people to underestimate what I've got," Obama said. "I think it's fair to say that if I couldn't not only take a punch, but occasionally throw one, I wouldn't be sittin' here."
Poll note...the question isn't limited to physical aggression, naturally: