Bully for Me: The Fourth-Grade Recess Showdown

Bullies. Harry Potter had Dudley Dursley... Ralphie Parker had Scut Farcas… And in terms of these epic battles of Good versus Evil, fought and lost on the Great Playground of Life-- why, me, I had Tanya “Teeny” DeLuca.

Teeny was, in fact, really small. But what she lacked in size, she more than made up for with a troublemaker’s finesse.

Her procedure was like that of a barracuda. This thin fish with razor-sharp choppers slowly, carefully sidles up to its potential meat and then-- BANG!-- shoots in for the kill. Atypical behavior for your average grade-schooler, okay. But this Wild Kingdom episode played itself out over and over again, for myself and every other member of the fourth grade.

Oh yes, no one was truly immune from the torment, the fists, the cornering after class. But it wasn't long before she'd honed in on Yours Truly as one of her extra-special targets.

In retrospect, I can hardly blame her. With braces, glasses, good grades and a chronic case of politeness, I see now that it was just another well-worn scene in this, our natural world. Cheetahs pick off the injured gazelle... Bullies trounce the gangly nerd-girl in the brown plaid and loafers.

It’s the circle of life.

Her first move in class was, as I think back on it, a exercise in Bully Genius. Not surprising, really, because she'd been honing her skills for about two years now on the mean streets of suburban Jersey.

It's good to have a hobby.

This particular day, she'd bided her time until our teacher was out of the room, and then reached across the aisle from her desk to mine, and seized my hand. In a second, she'd dug her fingernail into its surface, deeply enough to make it bleed.

Holding on with the power of a constrictor, she worked feverishly to rub her pencil point neatly into the wound while I struggled.

"There!" she hissed, smile peeling back over glistening white predator teeth. "I put lead in there! You have lead poisoning now! You're going to die."

"Oh no! Lead poisoning!" I cried, cradling my arm as she released it. I recall wondering whether the school nurse had an antidote for that... Or for the death thing. I could see the silvery graphite there in the wound, imagining particle by particle seeping into my blood. I cried and mourned my untimely demise. I'd had such big plans. And now they were gone, snuffed out at age 8 by lead poisoning.

"And if you tell, you'll really get it," she warned.

Worse than death by lead poisoning? Oh good gravy, did the tortures ever end?

I spent the rest of the day not feeling very well, convincing myself it was the poison seeping into my system, and too afraid to tell anyone what happened. By evening, my mom had set me straight about that whole pencil graphite not actually being lead issue. And my world seemed a brighter, cheerier place once more. In the world of Kiddom, trauma could wash away like chalk paintings in summer rain.

But Teeny, oh, she wasn't done with me yet. Later that week she cornered me on the playground with a couple of hulking sixth graders at her side, pummeling me with foul words I’d never heard before. Every couple of days thereafter brought brand new perils.

Then the tide turned in one single day.

Recess had never actually been much fun, even when it wasn't Bully Season. Because the school was afraid of some kid getting injured on the playground and being sued, they ripped out all the swing sets and jungle gyms so we wouldn't hurt ourselves. We also weren't allowed to run, use balls, bats, or other sports equipment, play hopscotch, jump rope or climb the trees...

They considered wrapping us all in bubble wrap, but were concerned about heat rashes.

Cards were forbidden because it was gambling. An out-of-control set of jacks could poke out an eye.

This left us wandering around the macadam like a bunch of laid-off union workers-- bored, surly, and looking for anything to liven things up a little.

Josette and I would pretend we were characters from Star Wars or The Dukes of Hazzard-- pretty much anyone less likely than we were to have their lunch money stolen-- and hope we were invisible.

But Teeny's keen graphite-colored eyes could see.

I don't know what it was exactly that set her off this day. The offending glint off my bottle lenses in the sun? The haughty snap of my elastic argyle knee socks? The overconfident rattle of the metal lunchbox in my hand?

But Teeny DeLuca was ready to rumble.

She cornered me at the flagpole, pushing, and spitting out filthy names like tobacco juice, which I was convinced she chewed in her off-hours. And as I looked down at her contorted little mug sneering up at me, suddenly I realized...

This wasn't fair. I didn't deserve this.

Just because I got good grades, and wore thrift store clothes, and couldn't see, and had crooked teeth, and stringy hair and maybe wasn't exactly the social butterfly of Classroom 18, it didn't mean I had no right to exist...

Just because I didn't have dock worker epithets... or fists of fury... or a bunch of sixth graders with anger management issues ready to back me up, didn't mean I had to take this...

I mean, what did I have?

I had a durable, metal "Dukes of Hazzard" lunchbox.

Ah, that wonderful, wonderful sound! The glorious clatter of lunchbox on outstretched fist. The contact made her cold, marble-like eyes fly open wide with shock and renewed rage. She tried again, knuckles flying, but for every punch—wham! The Dukes struck again.

This battle-- Teeny versus the Dukes went on and on-- possibly until our fourth grade moving-up ceremony. By this point, a crowd had formed around us and Teeny was beginning to realize their overall sentiments were not exactly on her side.

"You put down that lunchbox and fight fair!" she spat, anger and now fear creeping into her voice.

But I’d put up my Dukes for the first time in my life, and I wasn't stopping now.

Then suddenly my fourth grade teacher, Mr. Ciccetti was there, guiding me away. Someone else had a hold of Teeny, who was kicking and struggling, still ready to finish the round.

The bell rang and we were officially sent to our corners.

I heard words like "suspension" soar over the crowd like a paper airplane. And that's when I started to cry. Not only would I have suspension for fighting in school, but my lunchbox was dented. My parents were not going to take kindly to this. First lead poisoning, and then public execution. All before I was ten.

And to think I’d shown such promise.

That's what ran through my head as Mr. Ciccetti escorted me into the school. He held the door for me, as I walked through the threshold to certain doom, tears streaming down my face and speckling my steamed-up glasses.

I remember how he smelled warmly of cologne as he leaned down and asked me just one single question:

"Did you really hit her?"

"Yeah," I breathed in-between hitching sobs.

His mustache rippled a bit, finally turning up at the ends. "Good."


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1980s Rewind: The Lost, the Grody and the Totally Awesome

Come with me back in time...

To the era when MTV was new, Michael Jackson still had a nose, and a t-shirt reading, "Where's the Beef?" evoked high fashion and big laughs.

There are some excellent lists of "What it Was Like to Grow Up in the 80s" out there, but I figured today we'd tackle some of those details left unmentioned-- Cabbages style. So grab your jeans jacket and hold onto your slouch socks, my babies, because we're about to drive our muscle car up over that hidden ramp...

Can I get a "yeeeee-haw"?

• Shoelaces so funky, tying them was taboo. What was it about the 80s that had us so focused on our footwear? Even though Velcro had just been invented, the boys preferred these enormous fat shoelaces in their high-top sneakers. Sometimes two sets in two different colors, like red and black. But in spite of spending all that time lacing up those shoes, you never TIED them. Oh, no. You tucked them inside your shoe with no knot, no bow. That way, when you went to play kickball, your shoe would also soar up, up, up... giving an all-new meaning to those “Air Jordans.” Many a recess created one-shoed boys. Also the clomping and scuffing noise in the hallways was astounding. Note: Girls often had rainbows or hearts or smiley faces or unicorns printed on their shoelaces. We tied our shoes.
  

• Hair with its own zipcode. A girl in my junior high class said she used an entire can of hairspray on her hair each day, proving there really was something stronger than the Law of Gravity—80s Aquanet. I myself wasn’t quite that zealous, but I did experiment one year with bangs (for my British friends, “fringe”) which curled up high enough to tune in the aerial television set. If you wanted to wear a ponytail, you wore it in a banana comb, thus creating a sort of hair-covered mohawk look. You still teased your bangs.
  

• Murder, mayhem and mustaches. Every night there was at least one detective program on television. Hart to Hart…. Moonlighting… Magnum, P.I.… Simon and Simon…. Matt Houston… Remington Steele… Probe… Riptide… The list went on and on. And there was an 80% Chance of Mustache on at least one detective per program. One noticeable exception would be on Remington Steele, though I think Stephanie Zimbalist might have waxed.

• Paranoid Playlists. "Who Can It Be Now?"... "I Always Feel Like Somebody’s Watching Me"… "Eye in the Sky"… "They're Coming to Take Me Away..." Pink Floyd's entire "Wall" album... Kids in the 80s grew up in a time so paranoid, even our pop music was nervous.

• Safety pins plus beads equaled awesomeness. I recall spending amazing amounts of time putting small colored beads onto tiny safety pins and giving my chums these personalized works of, er, art. These went on our sneakers. If you were a girl who didn’t have any friendship pins, you were a girl without any friends. (Yeah, yeah, you could just make a bunch for yourself, but that was cheating. Also, don't forget-- each of us tried to have our own signature beads and beading style!)

• Made-for-TV horror movies that still cause nightmares. The 80s were great for cheesy, original, made-for-TV movies that scared the Kool-aid out of us kids. Like Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark, where those little monsters lived in the fireplace. Or the Trilogy of Terror with Karen Black. Or Don't Go To Sleep with Valerie Harper. Or From the Dead of Night with Lindsay Wagner. Bad choices had ramifications. Even kid characters faced danger and possible death. No one was spared. And for some reason we, as kids, were allowed to watch ‘em.

• You started each school year with a new Trapper Keeper. This school binder had a place for everything, and everything in its place. Also, you could get it in cool rainbow, unicorn, tiger, denim or heavy metal looks. What they never told you was that in order for it to organize you, you actually had to be organized. So my Trapper never quite held up to its hype. I was a scholastic slob. Even the Mead Corporation could not save me.
  

• Blindingly fluorescent was cool beans. Girls -- and even guys-- willingly sported sweatshirts, tiny jogging shorts and socks in retina-burning, day-glo colors normally reserved for hunting season. During eighth grade band, the entire flute section seemed to pulse with color conflict, as Suzy, Kelly and the gang sat side-by-side in a vibrating rainbow of fluorescent shades. No wonder our band director got cranky.
  

• No one ever got hurt in ten car pile-ups. On television shows like the A-Team, CHiPs and the Dukes of Hazzard, cars would jump, flip, roll and even blow up from 37 different camera angles, but the passengers were never hurt. We know this because they would have a voice-over discussion about it, where even cold-hearted bank robbers asked their steely-eyed partners if they were all right. This made it non-violent. Also, Stephen J. Cannell seemed to think we wouldn't notice if both Hunter and the guys from Riptide used the catchphrase, "It works for me."
  

• Underwear went outer. Socks were pulled up over our pantlegs, belts went over our sweaters and boustiers went with skirts. I recall parents lamenting that, "Next, kids would be wearing their boxers and tightie whiteys over their jeans." Then Marky Mark showed up with his drooping drawers and visible undies. Yet, somehow we never quite saw that coming.

• The Rules about Rots and Rulez. At least in my school, things were broken into two categories. They either rotted, or they ruled. Decomposition, while a natural process, apparently had negative connotations for teenagers. Probably due to a bad experience in Earth Science classes. But since we were high school kids and, thus, optimists at heart, most things ruled. And honestly, ANYTHING could rule. You could get an "A" on your essay, find your misplaced Velcro KISS wallet, or get the new Yngwie Malmsteen album on sale, and it would all rule equally. Whereas Doug Sherman who sits behind you in homeroom and snaps your bra each morning... well, he rots.
  

So what springs to mind when YOU think the 80s? Drop me a comment-- I'd love to hear about your totally rad memories.

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Supermarket's Top 50 Countdown

It's finally happened...

I'm officially old enough to be actually digging the Muzak I'm hearing in the stores.

Like the Goodwill playing, "Angel is the Centerfold"...

Radio Shack piping in The Cars' "You Might Think"...

And at the Giant Eagle grocery store... Gosh, every time I run there to pick up my lunch, it's like an 80s hit parade. I step through the door and I'm treated to the Cure's "Lovesong..." I grab a couple of necessities and they're playing, "Land Down Under."

I love it.

And just the other day, I was at the salad bar (and yes, for those who care, it is STILL reversed and WRONG), and I found myself singing along with "Karma Chameleon."

It instantly reminded me of hanging out with one of my friends ("Joe" of the scary red clown bathroom, in fact) and getting to see Boy George for the first time.

You see, I was one of the only kids in my school who didn't have cable TV.

This basically made me Amish.

But unlike the Amish, I KNEW there was this whole MTV thing going on. Only my exposure to it included:

• Vague references from other people-- during which I would fake understanding so as not to do anything that would get me beat up on the school playground. (Because, trust me, they would still beat up the Amish.) I would piece this information together later....

• Coveted reruns of Friday Night Videos and...

• Occasional visits with friends WITH cable

This worked out okay, with the exception of the "Frankie Say Relax" t-shirts the girls wore, which had me baffled for YEARS. ("Who is this Frankie and why does he or she endorse typos on clothing?")

So through watching MTV at Joe's house, that's when I first saw Boy George.

It was also the moment I cleverly observed, "Wow, that girl sure has a low singing voice!"

Joe and his sister-- who understood my level of Amishness and somehow liked me anyway-- patiently explained to me that Boy George was, in fact, a man. After which, I agreed the name "Boy George" probably should have been my tip-off.

Anyway, I spent 18 years in an academic-oriented, non-cable-television-having, pop culture isolation... And then the next 18 trying to make up for it. Which brings me back to the grocery store.

I've decided, I'm going to just really savor being a member of the generation sellers are currently sucking up to, soundtrack-wise. I'm gonna happily make my salads to "Everybody Wants to Rule the World." I'm going to bag my groceries with enthusiasm to "The Safety Dance."

Because in 20 years, you KNOW it'll be "Panic at the Disco" and "Fall Out Boy." And I just can't sing along with those girls-- their stuff is WAY too low for my range. :)

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The Muzak over at Humor-blogs is totally tubular.