ZacaPublishing.com - Author David DeWitt

_ By David DeWitt

    I was about nine years old. My little brother, Bob, was two and a half years younger but he was stockier than me. I was a beanpole compared to him. We were playing with some new kids we were introduced to on a summer day in front of the house where our parents were visiting friends they’d recently met. The sidewalk was below a slanted grassy lawn divided by a set of cement steps that went up two flights to the porch of the house. It was a bright sunny day, and we were laughing and kidding around with our new friends. One of the kids was nearly my age, had a crew cut like mine, and his name was Mike.
    He had two younger sisters and they followed him around a lot, too much, he told me, and I laughed because Bob tended to follow me around a lot, too.
    This was in the late fifties, and the boys wore blue jeans and t-shirts and the girls wore dresses. We were hanging around the front stairs of the house because there was really no place to play except on the slanted lawn and it was steep, so we just stood around and decided to try to see who could hold their breath the longest without passing out, or who could be spun around enough times to get dizzy and then try to walk a straight line on the sidewalk. We had bubble gun to share with our new pals and were beginning to have a good time when the girls suddenly huddled close together and started staring at the ground. Mike moved closer to them, and seemed to freeze.
    I hadn’t heard them approaching.
    Four older kids, one of them a skinny shy-looking dark-haired girl, were standing behind me - and the tallest of them was big fat and mean looking. He stared at Mike, ignoring Bob and me, and pushed past Bob which made him give me a look that said, what the hell? In later years, I’d see that look again when he was huskier, and in those days you didn’t shove your way past him and get away with it. The girl’s faces were pressed together and Mike stared the fat kid’s chest. Before the fat kid could say anything, I said, “Watch who you are pushing around, kid...” and the bully turned his face toward me for the first time.
    I had nothing to back up what I’d said with, but I said it, anyway... who the fuck are you? said the fat kid. His eyes burned into mine. Now I felt shaky. He had back up with him and I was alone except for Bob who was standing between him, the girls and Mike who was looking at me like I was dead meat. “Mike blurted, “His Dad’s a cop..” and the bully said, “Bullshit...” still staring at me.
    I didn’t say anything. I was starting to freeze up, too.
    “Your Dad ain’t no cop, this punk is liar...” Mike’s face sank a little.
    “Mike,” I said, “...my Dad’s not a cop, you don’t have to say that...” and the fat kid shoved Mike in the face and he nearly fell onto the sidewalk. “Hey, knock it off!” I said. “Oh, yeah? And what if I don’t, pussy?” This caused his companions to laugh, even the girl. I felt it was coming, I was gonna take a beating, and for a few seconds I panicked but then I tried to bluff my way out of it.
    “I’ll use Karate on you, if I have to...” I said.
    Now they all laughed again. But I wasn’t laughing, I was dead serious-looking, I hoped. And the big kid turned back to me. He leaped forward, and stopped, which made me jump back, and there was more laughing. I had no idea how to do any karate, it was a lie, and all I had seen of it was what Kato did on TV in The Green Hornet. I knew what a karate chop looked liked, at least. Then the kid spit in my face. And shoved me hard against the cement embankment of the stairs. I backed off, and scrambled up onto the steep lawn and his friends egged him on, “Get ‘im, Will!” The fat kid stepped up onto the two bottom steps of the stairs and hauled himself up onto the lawn to come after me. “Leave me alone, I’m telling you,” I said. “I don’t want to fight nobody...”
    He heard me but he was having fun, and I felt he meant to really hurt me. He was on one knee getting up, and his round tummy was sticking out so I made my hand into a wedge like I had seen Kato do, and brought it up by the side of my ear, then slashed hard down into that soft belly and felt it close on both sides of my hand - in an instant the fat kid was stopped, his face turned red and he fell on his shoulder on the grass holding his big round stomach and couldn’t seem to get any air. He was gasping and then he puked his guts up and began to cry. His friends grabbed him and hauled him down off the grassy slope and he crumpled to the sidewalk holding his guts. One of the other kids looked at me and said, “You coulda killed him, you bastard... you fuckin’ bully!” And the girl with them stood back silently but with the tiniest smile on her lips.
    “Stay away from this street or I’ll come lookin’ for you,” I said.
    “I’m telling my Mom!” one of the boys said, but backed off when I stood up on the lawn over their heads.  My brother Bob looked at them, and said in his quiet way, “... Better beat it... and stared at them with cold eyes. Bob, even at his age, was afraid of nobody.
    I was. I was shaking inside, and stood watching them go off, dragging Will with them who was obviously hurt. I was thinking maybe the cops would come after me now, and sat down thinking about it. What kind of trouble was I in now?
    I better go tell my Dad, I thought.
    That’s when the girl’s crowded me laughing and hugged me. 
    Jeepers!
    Bob said, “We better go tell Dad about it...” I know, I told him.
    I went into the house with Bob and we approached Dad who was playing cards with the other adults. He looked at me and laid his cards down. He could tell I had done something and was gonna confess it. He left the table and walked me out of the room, and onto the porch. Bob was right with me but let me do the talking. Mike and the girls were below watching. I told Dad what had happened and said, “I guess the police will be coming...” I’m sorry I was fighting, I said, barely able to look at him.
    His face didn’t change expression the whole time I was talking and he was silent for what seemed like forever when I had finished telling him everything that had happened. Finally, he put his hand on my shoulder and looked right into my eyes. Then he said something I have never forgotten. “Did you kick him in the ass before he ran off?” And his eyes were sorta smiling at me. I couldn’t think of anything to say. Bob did, though... “Naw, he was runnin’ too fast...”
    And then I couldn’t help it. I tried to stifle it but Bob always cracked me up. I stopped quick though and looked at Dad for his reaction.
    He stood up, and said, Well, better luck next time, David...”
    And he turned and went back into the house.
    In the fifties, it was different. If you got into a fight, your mother was upset and if you lost your father had a talk with you. If you lied about it, it was much worse than whatever had happened. And bullies were everywhere. Tough guys who did what they wanted to because they enjoyed it, others encouraged them, or were victims themselves who enjoyed seeing someone else get it instead of them.
    It wasn’t just boys who were bullies. Girls could be the cruelest bullies amongst themselves, too. Girls were under a lot of pressure we guys weren’t aware of, trying to fit in with other girls was rough. If you weren’t one of the “in crowd,” you were left out and demeaned and picked on in ways guys hadn’t ever thought about.
    I’ve always faced bullies down since then, with mixed results. And I’ve seen a lot kids being bullied, in school, and later in life, too.
    Bullying still goes on, of course. It’s an unsightly side of human nature. Today, I am 62 years old, my brother Bob passed away in April of 2011 - and I still face down a bully once in awhile. I was on Facebook the other day and someone passed around a short paragraph that I want to share with you:

“I'm so sick of bullying! Think you're SO cool? The girl you just called fat?... She is overdosing on diet pills. The girl you just called ugly?... She spends hours putting makeup on hoping people will like her. The boy you just tripped?... He is abused enough at home. See that man with the ugly scars?... He fought for his country. That guy you just made fun of for crying?... His mother is dying. Put this as you're status if you're against bullying. I bet 95% of you won’t re-post, but I'm sure the people with heart and backbone will...”

    I hope you will repost or Re Tweet this entire story of mine. Share it with your friends and hopefully they will share it with lots of their friends. I’d like to hear from you if you do - no hard feelings if you don’t, we can still be friends!
    If you care to make a comment on my story because you received this blog and read it, I’d appreciate it...
    You can send this post to your friends by copy/pasting this link:
    http://bit.ly/vDhD6C

This came to me via email and I thought it important enough to share on all of my social media outlets and blogs! I hope you will do the same! Please watch the video and share with as many loved ones as you can - Tweet and Like via buttons below!

I'm now publishing a series of short stories of speculative and  science fiction. One of the stories "Project Bio-Armor" was first published in the anthology "Tales of the Marvelous Machine: 35 stories of Computing", edited by Robert Taylor and Berchenal Green (editor of Creative Computing Magazine). This anthology enjoyed a pre-sell to the subscribers of Creative Computing Magazine of 500,000 copies before it was published, and sold quite well. Frederick Pohl was among the contributors.

The stories in that collection (all with computer related themes) were written before computers were in homes, and before there was such a thing as the Internet. Yet, they resonate as cautionary tales today as finely as they did when they were first published. I counted myself fortunate to be published in this collection for two reasons: the story I wrote was the first I ever sold to a magazine (not dreaming it would be selected for inclusion in their anothology) and secondly, it was first short story, the fist story of any kind that I had ever written!

I thought, This is easy...

It was two years before I sold another piece of fiction!