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1/31/2022 0 Comments Pullups
Plus, my head was like a weird alien head – a too-big-for-my-body topper that tapered rapidly down to nothing where my chin was supposed to be. I wouldn’t have picked myself for a sports team either. What a spaz! This misalignment between how I looked and how I played could be frustrating as hell. For instance: Even if I proved myself by doing really well during a game, I’d always be right back at the bottom of the barrel the next time team captains were picking their players. There was just no getting ahead. But my peon status in the reindeer games wasn’t the worst of it. Those very same physical features that inspired team captains to pass me over made bullies stop dead in their tracks to take special notice. I take it that most of the bullies I ran into figured I deserved a good pummeling on account of me looking the way I did. A skinny kid with and alien head? That’s pretty much a no-brainer for a bully type. Chances were so good that I couldn’t or wouldn’t fight back that pure instinct would take over, and they’d sock it to me for the sake of keeping the natural order intact. * * * Donny McNulty is the bully I remember the most. That’s really saying something because there were a bunch of them over the years. Donny gets the special mention mainly due to his sheer persistence. That kid was relentless, let me tell you. He’s also a stand-out bully for me because I really let him have it one time. I knocked him to his knees with a bloody nose. True story. Donny was a little shorter than me, but he was way thicker and way tougher. His hair was railroad tar black and it sat spikey atop his square, squinty-eyed head, terminating in a rat tail in the back. A goddam rat tail. I never met anyone with a rat tail that was up to any kind of good, and Donny was no exception. The same goes for ripped-up, faded blue jean jackets with skull patches, too – standard issue for freaks and bullies in those days. Preps wore jean jackets too, but theirs were crisp and patch-free and new-jean blue. Donny’s skuzzy jacket was a constant – I never, ever saw him not wearing it – and it was a real sight too, worse off than most you’d see. And it stunk. The damned thing smelled like cigarettes and human suffering, I swear to god. One good thing about that: That distinctive smell made him sneaking up on you next-to-impossible, because you’d get a good whiff of the bastard before you ever saw him. Lucky me: In 7th grade Donny’s locker was right next to mine. We were next-door neighbors. As you might imagine, this provided endless opportunities for him to torment me. He was pretty much the worst neighbor of all time. “Hey Eeth-ee-ope,” he’d say between classes, “think fast!” After which I could expect any number of tortures: a quick jab to the right kidney; a leg-buckling kick to the back of the knee; a loud, metallic punch that’d slam my locker door closed; a quick swipe to rip my books out of my hand; a two-for-flinching lunge. You know, the usual tricks. He liked to call me “Ethiope” on account of my diminutive build. He thought I looked like one of those starving kids from Ethiopia that you’d see in the TV commercials. They had alien heads and protruding ribs too, so he wasn’t wrong. The punched locker door trick was Donny’s favorite, I’d say. If he got started in on it, he’d just keep on repeating it, again and again, until he got bored – which usually took a while. To him it must’ve been like being a key player in the funniest Abbott and Costello skit of all time. To me it was like watching an endless rerun of Barney Miller, the most depressing show ever, with my eyes taped open, Clockwork Orange style. Anyhow, good old Donny would punch my locker shut, I’d open it back up, he’d punch it shut again, I’d open it back up, he’d punch it shut again, and … well, you get the idea. Each time Donny punched the door shut he’d say, “Think fast!” and he’d laugh and laugh. * * * Believe you me, I cooked up all sorts of clever ways to avoid running into Donny. That was true in general, of course, but in my 7th grade year that meant avoiding going to my locker as much as possible. I’d load up on books and notebooks so I could go two or three classes without a pit stop, or I’d ask to go to the bathroom during class so I could visit my locker while the halls were unthreateningly empty, or I’d stash my books in a friend’s locker. One unfortunate day, when I was pulling the old go-to-the-bathroom ploy, I was confidently walking down A-hall on my way to B-hall, which was where my locker was, and I caught a whiff of something. What was that? A cigarette? Well, before I could connect the dots and put the old brakes on, I came around the corner and there stood Donny McNulty at my locker, or maybe his, grinning ear-to-ear. His black eyes and black hair were diabolical. The hallway was a ghost town. He had me, dead to rights. “Lookie here at Eeeth-ee-ope,” he announced mockingly, “trying to sneak a visit to his locker before the bell rings.” He laughed his crooked, raspy laugh. I tried to pretend he wasn’t there and kept walking straight toward my locker. I wasn’t being brave, per se. I was in some kind of robotic automaton mode. But there was more to it than that. I was feeling a smidge of determination swelling up inside me. I was feeling like I was going to stand up for myself somehow. I didn’t have a clue as to how, mind you. I got to my locker and started to turn the combination. I couldn’t think of what else to do. I was shaking a little, like a rabbit in the sights. Donny stood there in my periphery, simmering. Then he took a step closer to me, getting right up into my personal space. Geez, did he ever reek. He was waiting for me to pull my locker door open. If I opened it, I knew what would happen next. I knew it and Donny knew it too. We’d played this out many times before. Nevertheless, I went ahead and pulled up the latch to open my locker, and then I saw him make his move. “Think f…,” he began to say as his clenched hand drew up into position to slam my locker door shut. But before he could make his move, I turned, took a step back for balance, planting my heel against the lockers’ kick plate for leverage, closed my eyes, and threw my fragile fist at Donny's face as hard as I could. I remember yelling, “No, you think fast, Mc-NUT-ly!” but I’ll admit that could have just been the voice inside my head trying to be all Hollywood. I sure hoped I’d said it out loud, though. I sure hoped he’d heard me say that as he went down. * * * When I opened my eyes, Donny was on his knees down on the floor of B-hall, with two bloody hands holding his nose. I went ahead and got my books. Then I slammed my own locker door shut for a change. It was a statement. Then I left the scene, started walking away, with Donny still on the floor. Neither of us said a word. But then, just as I was rounding the corner back to A-hall, I heard Donny say, quietly, menacingly, “You’re dead now. You’re so dead.” * * * When I got back to social studies class after my “bathroom break,” I hung my hall pass on the hook by the door and went straight to my seat. While I was gone Ms. Custer had passed out some worksheets, and everyone in class was already quietly working on theirs. So I grabbed my pencil and tried to focus on the task at hand. My right knuckles were really red, starting to swell. My hand didn’t really hurt that bad – not yet anyway (it would hurt like hell later on) – but it was shaking so much that I couldn’t grip my pencil properly, much less write anything. No matter. There was nothing to write. My brain was totally shot. What are the three branches of government? What’s a branch? What’s a government? I was going to get suspended from school. I just knew it. Donny McNulty was going to hunt me down and beat me to a pulp. I knew that too. It turned out I was only right about the second thing. * * * When times are tough it’s sure nice to have a guy like Ronald Reagan on your side. I don’t mean the actual person so much as I mean his POTUS character from TV and/or his cowboy character from the movies. We used to have this activity in gym class every year called the “Presidential Physical Fitness Awards,” the PPFAs. I don’t know if they do it anymore. It was a set of seven specific events to test your overall athletic ability. It wasn’t a team thing. Everyone got an individual score based on what they could do in the events compared to some target based on age and size (rather than grade). Getting through all the events usually soaked up a couple of weeks of gym class time. These were the seven PPFA events when I was in 7th grade: (1) pullups (for boys) or flexed-arm hang (for girls); (2) sit-ups; (3) shuttle run – this was a running back-and-forth thing where you’d place chalkboard erasers between tape marks on the gym floor; (4) standing long jump; (5) 50-yard dash; (6) softball throw for distance; and (7) 600-yard distance run. If you hit the target scores in all seven events, at the end of the school year you’d get a cool patch and a certificate signed by President Reagan himself. Reagan must’ve had one of his guys in Washington keeping close track of things, too, because if you’d ever won a patch previously, the next time you won one it would be numbered up from the last one. So, if you had a number “4” on your patch, say, that meant you’d won the Presidential Physical Fitness Award four times to date, though not necessarily four times in a row. I eventually got up to a three patch back in school, but I never made it to four. I really liked the PPFAs. I liked the fact that it consumed several weeks of gym class time. I liked the idea of scoring that was totally individual. Both of these things meant I didn’t have to deal with the dreaded last-guy-picked-for-the-team situation. There was no proving myself to anyone except me and Ronald Reagan. My cup of tea. My only real bone to pick with the PPFA setup was that there were a few events where the rest of the class would end up standing around gawking at you while you did your thing. That I could’ve done without. I remember it was the softball throw, the standing long jump, and the friggin’ pullups that invited the most unwelcome rubberneckers. Of all the PPFA events, pullups was the one I liked the least. Pullups cost me a few PPFA patches over the years. I was totally hit or miss on pullups. No consistency, no way to predict how I’d do. Sometimes I could make my number, which for my age/size was usually about five. But other days I would struggle to hoist myself up even once. Dangling there on the pullup bar, in front of everyone, on a bad day when I couldn’t pull myself up, had to be the worst. I’d just hang there like a girl doing a flexed-arm hang, while my stick arms twitched and fought against themselves and my alien head got all red. Kids would laugh and jeer. On the flip-side, on the random days where I could easily get three or more pullups, I got to feel like a goddam Olympic gold-medalist. * * * PPFA pullup day in gym class came two days after I’d punched Donny McNulty in an empty B-hall, two days after I’d given him a bloody nose, and two days after he’d declared me dead. I had only seen him from a distance since I’d socked him, and I’d had zero sightings of him anywhere near my locker. This was worrisome. I figured he was sticking to the shadows, plotting a sneak attack or something. I wasn’t wrong. Donny hadn’t ratted (rat-tailed?) me out to the principal’s office, so at least that part was good. Say what you would about him, he was no pigeon. But the overriding feeling for me was one of concern. Thankfully, my little voice was on my side, keeping me stable. My little voice was whispering confident things to me like, “Maybe Donny’s afraid of me now. Maybe he’ll leave me alone now.” When our gym instructor, Coach Hudson, called me up to the bar for my turn at pullups, I must’ve been right in the middle of getting an earful from my little voice. I was, strangely, unexpectedly full of confidence. I jumped right up, grabbed that bar, and started ripping out pullups like nobody’s business. My stick appendages were titanium robot arms dialed up to eleven. I hit five pullups like it was nothing, and then I just kept right on going. Six, seven, and eight were there and gone before I knew it. Then there was nine and ten. I could have continued. I had more in me. A bunch more. But I had to take a pause and let the idea of ten soak in. It felt so damn good. Ten was a magical number to me then, as it is to this day. Ten pullups. I hung there on the bar with Coach Hudson and my classmates looking at me slack-jawed, knowing full-well that I could easily do another ten pullups right then and there, and I … let go of the bar. My feet hit the mat proudly, squarely. I had just won a gold medal. Ronald Reagan was going to shake my hand. Donny McNulty was going to kiss my ass. * * * A couple weeks back I put up a pullup bar inside the house for my son. My son’s in 7th grade this year. The bar’s just off the kitchen in a corner nook next to a little closet that tucks in underneath the stairs. I made it from some plumbing pipe so it would have that coffee-shop, neo-industrial look to it. That’s what earned it the green light from my wife. It turned out pretty good, I must say. It looks like it belongs there. The boy loves it. I’ll see him pop over there randomly throughout the day and do a couple quick pullups, just for the pure joy of it. He says his goal is to be able to do ten. Ten’s his magic number too. My son’s not doing pullups for a patch or for personal glory or for the President of the United States. He’s doing it because he has something athletic ticking away inside him. He really does. He’s a man of action. It’s a sight to behold. My son’s a little sporto – it’s true! – and get this: Unlike his old man, he actually looks the part. I love watching him grow into a strong young man. I love it for it’s own sake, of course, as a part of the Joy of Fatherhood. But I’ll confess something too: I’m happy that he looks strong. He doesn’t look like somebody who’d be an easy target for some random bully. I figure this’ll give him a leg up out there in the world. My son’s life will be different than mine. * * * My ten-pullup high lasted for just a shave over a day, for about twenty-six hours. Then old Donny McNulty let me have it, and boy how. I got to savor my pullup accomplishment for the remainder of the school day in which it occurred. And then I got to go home and tell my parents about my great accomplishment at dinner that night. Then I had a good night's sleep and a good school day to match. After that the good times came to an end. At dinner that night I said to my dad, “Hey dad, I did ten pullups today in gym class. It’s my PB.” “PB?” he asked, shoveling some mashed potatoes onto his plate. “PB means Personal Best,” I answered. “Ten pullups is his personal best, dear. He’s never done that many before. Isn’t it something?” my mom added. “We used to do a lot of pullups in the Army,” my dad said. “The best guy in our unit was Mango. He could do twenty pullups without even breaking a sweat.” “I bet I could have done twenty today, dad. I really mean it. But my goal’s always been ten, so I was happy to stop there.” “Old Mango…,” my dad continued, “…what a character. You know what else he was famous for, besides pullups?” “Why are you talking about old Army stories?” my mom blurted out. My mom still had some fight remaining in her back when I was in 7th grade. “Old Mango used to bet the guys they couldn’t do one single sit-up while blindfolded and holding a Queen of Hearts with both hands in front of their own heart.” My dad was on a roll now, his eyes were getting that far-away look. He was fondling the salt shaker, rotating it back and forth on the table, letting his potatoes go ahead and get cold. “And then when they got into position, he’d squat bare-assed right over their face. So, when they tried to sit up, their nose would jam right up into Mango’s ass.” My dad started laughing hysterically like a jackal. “That’s awful, just awful,” my mom chimed in. “And at the dinner table. I mean really.” She snatched the salt away from my dad and sprinkled some on her plate for good measure. “I’m just telling it like it is,” my dad chortled. “Old Mango was a real character. A real character.” * * * The next day, after school, Donny McNulty and two of his buddies jumped me as I was walking out the door at C-extension. The door at C-extension was the shortcut at the end of C-hall where we could catch the buses.
I’ll spare you the gory details. It was mostly me in the dirt receiving body blows, since they were smart like that. I mean, they knew enough not to cause too much visible damage, the kind that might draw the attention of a teacher or a vice-principal or a principal. But I did catch one rogue kick to the nose. It was the second time I’d had my nose broken. The first was during a night game in baseball. I missed a warm-up throw from first to third, caught a ball right where it counts. I’m pretty sure my beating cracked a rib because I threw up later on that evening and my chest was all black and blue and sore as hell for about a week. I never told my parents about it. I compression-taped my own ribs with gauze from my hypochondriac mother’s medical supply cabinet. I’d tie one end of the gauze to the bathroom doorknob and roll my way towards it from across the room, mummy style. I lied about my broken nose and the resulting two black eyes. I told my parents that I got elbowed accidently in gym class while playing dodgeball. They were unable to connect the dots. I mean, they never questioned how there could possibly be a dodgeball game in gym class while the PPFAs were going on. – O.M. Kelsey
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