Boxing Ring

jelewis8 — Fri, 06 Oct 2006 01:01:47 +0000

I always feel like I’ve been in a boxing match after finishing a big project. Not that I’ve ever boxed. The closest I’ve ever come to boxing was sixth grade, when I called out Michael T. for whining on the basketball court about not being on the same team as Jesse K., who was arguably the best player out there. Michael wasn’t much good, but he and Jesse, for some reason, seemed to find a way to be on each other’s team EVERY SINGLE DAY of recess. Anybody on Jesse’s team usually stood around and watched whilst Jesse dribbled and dribbled and shot and dribbled and shot–he was a one man team. For sixth grade, he was pretty good, but I didn’t like being on his team for the simple fact that no one but Jesse ever touched the ball.
But if you were on the other team. Boy, you had to work together. And one day, after playing and watching how Jesse worked his mojo, I realized something the other kids hadn’t figured out yet…I caught his tell. Anyone in poker can tell you players all have tells. It’s the sign they give when they’re bluffing or holding a royal flush. It’s how you can tell when to bet big against them and when to fold ‘em.
Well, poker’s not the only game that’s got a tell. Basketball’s got them, and it’s probably the easiest sport to tell a tell, since your whole body’s out in the open, practically. Football, you’ve got the padding and the helmet, maybe with a visor, so you don’t exhibit much in terms of physical giveaways. Baseball–who needs tells in baseball? Hockey, same thing as football. Too many pads. When you do figure out a hockey tell, fists start flying.
But basketball. It’s hard to hide a tell.
And Jesse had his. Once you spotted it, it showed big. Like marquee big. Like Jumbo-Tron big. So I made it my mission to guard against him. Not only did I shut him down, I made him look silly in his one-man quest to best the entire sixth grade boys’ squad during recess. I stole the ball from him almost every time he came down the court. He started shooting from outside instead of taking it in. He wasn’t a bad shot from outside, but with me in his face now, he wasn’t able to put them down like usual. In short, I broke his game.
One thing Michael was famous for, aside from somehow wrangling his way onto Jesse’s team every game, was being a big fat whiny crybaby. The slightest bump or shove was a foul, and God forbid you accidentally stumble into him or step on his toe.
One Friday, it was November or early December, but not too cold, and we were out for ten minutes before heading home. We had the ball and we started picking teams. And here’s when it happened. I ended up on Jesse’s team. I think he might have even picked me. But that’s not the remarkable thing. What was remarkable was that he didn’t pick Michael. And Michael got pissed.
I thought he was a whiner before. The game hadn’t even started and he was complaining. I thought it was rich. But as the game wore on, he wouldn’t shut up. And I was a cynical kid, even back then. And I wasn’t a big fan of bullcrap. So I started speaking up, taunting him, making fun of him for whining. Might have called him a nancy boy. I think I had a lot of bollocks for not having hit puberty yet.
Things escalated, and eventually the game became a ring, round rather than square, but Michael and I were in the center, circling. And then, before I even knew what was coming, before I even knew that fists were part of the game, he’d swung and connected squarely underneath my left eye. It surprised me, didn’t hurt. Surprised me so much I just stood there.
I heard taunts and laughs. And the teacher came over and broke things up before anything else happened. And the bell rang, and I rode home on the bus in the back, still stunned. Still wondering what happened. I heard the kids, but they were a distant echo inside my head, but what was louder was the ringing of the bell and the connection of fist to face.
Dumbfounded.
But it’s kind of like that whenever I finish a project. Which is why my posting schedule has been erratic lately.
The next Monday I went into school. I saw Michael, kind of dreading what he would say. What the kids would say. I had a pretty nasty shiner. I couldn’t cover it up. He came over to me, grinned sheepishly, kind of nodded at my black eye, and then I grinned too. We were friends thereafter.

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Boxing Ring