In My ‘Hood…

Mark Lyons was the neighborhood bully when I was growing up. He was one grade higher than the rest of us and was always ordering someone around. He wasn’t exactly a ring leader but he would bully the younger kids until they finally gave up and let him call the shots. He’d grab one of the smaller kids, sit on them, and punch them in the sides until finally; the kid would get up and announce that we were going to do whatever Mark wanted. It was always under the threat that someone else was going to “get it” if we didn’t.

He would beat on the girls just as much as the boys but never, ever beat on me. He tried it once; just once. He didn’t pick on me so much because I was the quarterback for our football team. I could throw the ball farther and with better accuracy than any of the boys. In fact, there were many times when ol’ Mark Lyons was relegated to the task of knocking on our door to ask if I could come out and play football. My dad always got a kick out of that.

I can clearly remember the fateful day when Mark Lyons tried to bully me. It was a Sunday and I was up early, messy-haired, and excited to ride my bike in the quiet of the day before we all went to church. By the end of the day, Marks’ dad would be knocking on our door to speak with my father. By the end of the day, Mark Lyons would never, ever have the same power over anyone in the neighborhood again. Oh, sure, he was still a bully but he never held the same fear over anyone’s head again.

In my neighborhood, it was always the boys against the girls. The boys built a three level fort that had trap doors, secret rooms, and, one particularly enchanting room that was filled with crystals from a chandelier they’d stolen from two blocks over. It was sparkly and magical and where they had all of their secret meetings.  I saw it once because they invited me into their fort after one of our football games. Inviting me into the fort was a very controversial act and caused a rift within the ranks of the boys. That was when they determined that girls were never allowed. Also, the girls wouldn’t play with me for weeks because of it. I didn’t care because I was so enthralled with the boys’ fort-making prowess that I immediately got to work building my own.

My friend, Lori Avilar, helped me build the frame. Well, she helped in the only way I would let her which was to fetch stuff for me. She was a great fetcher except she talked the entire time I was putting together my plans. The other good thing about Lori was that she didn’t expect me to answer or actually converse with her; she just liked to talk. So, she’d be jabbering away and I’d occasionally say, “Uh-huh” while measuring 2×4’s, cutting planks, and nailing posts together.

Once built, I found that the frame was too heavy for the both of us to lift so Lori enlisted her dorky brother to help with all of the heavy lifting. He was fourteen years old and loved to play marbles. He was a total dork who had no friends but was still mortified to be “playing” with his little sister and her best friend. However, once he saw my materials and design, he was hooked. He even claimed that he thought I was a pretty good architect; for a girl. Yeah, well, he was a pretty good laborer; man-boobs, humungo-bag-o-marbles, and all.

Our backyard was set-up into three distinctive yards. The first part, the one closest to the house, was a cement patio with a large planter box and a small plot of grass next to it. I used to play with my green army men in that planter box and remember the time when some drunken dude, at my aunt’s wedding reception, passed out in the stinky evergreen plants.

The second part was a big grassy field that had a lemon tree, an almond tree, and a small plum tree, in three of the corners. There were blackberry bushes filling the side of the house in the fourth corner of the yard. We used to play football in this large, grassy area but actually preferred playing in the street because we had to dodge all of the dog poop piles and, inevitably, someone got smeared with poop. Of course, it never occurred to us to pick up the poop because, I mean, man, that was a chore and we were set on playing!

The back lot was comprised of an open, green, wavy fiberglass-covered shed; a rock garden; a tiled area with a built-in, brick BBQ, and another small patch of grass that had a mature fig tree planted smack-dab in the middle of it. The old brick BBQ was my original fort until I no longer fit inside it. We never used that old BBQ, by the way, and to this day I can still remember fitting into it and watching the spiders weave webs in and out of the crumbled mortar. I loved the rock garden and used to make some wicked-sharp, “Indian” tools with the shards. There was a huge, smooth, green and red, bloodstone rock that was my favorite. I would sit and rub its smooth, cool surface for luck and dream of the day when this rock would be revealed to be worth millions of dollars.

After we’d put together the frame, we decided to test the sturdiness of our labors. First we had to get it off the grass and onto a more even surface. The three of us, struggling with the weight of the thing, shimmied across the grass and plopped it onto the tiled area. I then, with the help of Lori, her brother, and a step-stool, stood on the frame and began walking around the rectangular structure; gymnastics-style. It held beautifully! We jumped around and hooted and hollered and, after I jumped down gracefully, patted each other on the back and told ourselves that our fort was almost better than our houses. It was certainly better than any other fort we’d ever seen. We then began our plans to put in the flooring (yes, flooring) and would then begin work on the siding.

And then Lori’s brother got in trouble and her parents decided they would be going on a trip to visit relatives to straighten her brother out while giving them all a mini-vacation. There was something said about matches, lighter fluid, and a garbage can but I don’t really know what happened. I was bummed because my free, enthusiastic, and totally obedient laborers would be gone for the rest of the summer. I asked the girls if they wanted to help me but this was during the time when they were mad at me and they quickly told me that they could care less about my fort or playing with me for the rest of the summer. After all, I was a traitor and, well, I never played “dollies” with them (yuck!) and I might as well just go play with the boys.

No way was I going to let the boys in on helping me with my fort. The whole point of it was to make something way cooler, way sturdier, and way better than theirs! I put in the flooring and siding very quickly. I’d been walking around the neighborhood picking up scrap wood wherever I could find it. The nails, latches, screws, and hinges I stole from my dad’s garage. I did this with such undetected frequency that I began to treat going to the garage like a trip to the hardware store. My dad was never home and he had so much junk in the garage that I figured he’d never miss it.

One day, I found a set of pearl handled opera glasses. That was a real score. I also found some tiny bottles of metallic paint and decided I’d use them to paint the interior. I began stashing a bottle at a time until I’d amassed about 30-40 bottles. No one ever seemed to notice and, certainly, no one ever said a thing about what I was doing in the backyard. Of course, I was busy, somewhat quiet, eating all of my dinner, and went straight to bed when told. I was pooped!

By the time I finished my fort, I’d put in wall-to-wall carpeting (that had previously been in our bathroom and my mom threw it out), a hinged door, complete with a combination lock, shelving that held all of my special rocks and my stash of metallic paints, and a mirror. I did make one critical error in that I put the roof on last. I had run out of scraps of wood and was at a loss for what to do. Then I remembered that, the previous summer, I’d been walking on top of the fiberglass roofed shed, picking ripe cherries from our neighbors’ tree, when my sister demanded that I give her some. I told her, if she wanted some so bad, she would have to come up and get them herself. She then climbed up the fence, into the tree, and onto the roof. However, I didn’t tell her to walk on the roofs’ frame and when she stepped out onto the green, wavy fiberglass; she fell through like a bowling ball on thin ice. I think she may even have broken her arm but, I wasn’t thinking about that now; I was thinking about that chunk of fiberglass that had been ripped down off the roof. It had been set aside and was leaning against the back fence. I carefully screwed in the hinges and then attached it to the frame and; voila! Instant-sun roof!

I did everything in that fort. I slept outside, with my dog, Zak, and fell asleep to the sound of frogs croaking and crickets singing. I would open the sun roof and read in the late afternoon sun. I’d take flower petals, a bowl, and a rock and would smash the petals to make dye. My mothers’ sheets were never the same after that. I had a great time and loved my fort but I wanted to tell someone about it and really wished Lori hadn’t gone away for the summer.

So, I started to brag about it to the boys. Then I began talking to my sisters about it and, while I wouldn’t let them play with me in it, I knew they would tell the girls. Soon everyone wanted to see my fort and hang out and play with me. Stevie MacGinnis, one of the younger and sweeter of the boys, was the first to see it. All of the houses on our street had those old milk doors on the side of the houses. The milkman used to put bottles of milk in there and you would pay for it with tokens purchased from the dairy. Stevie had gone to all of the houses, slipped his tiny hand into the boxes and found old tokens tucked into the nooks and crannies. He was willing to trade them for a peek at my fort.

I gave him a tour of my fort and, of course, he went straight to the boys and told them how great it was and how much better it was and that it had wall-to-wall, green shag carpet! The boys teased him, made fun of him, and said he was lying. Well, Stevie was a sweetie and it just wasn’t his nature to lie so, some of the boys, began to hatch a plan.

It was the very next day that I had gotten up early in order to be able to ride my bike before we went to church. It had been chilly for the entire week so I bundled up for my ride. I tied my tennis shoes, grabbed my favorite hat, a sailor’s hat given to me by my Uncle Skeeter, and jumped on my bike. As I rode down the street, I noticed Mark and a few other boys, hanging around, jumping over the fire hydrant on the corner of the block. I buttoned-up my coat, adjusted my hat, and rode slowly toward them.

As I drew near, Mark motioned me over and told me that he wanted to show me something. I wondered what he was up to but was excited that the boys seemed to want me to hang out with them. I was thinking about Stevie and wondered if my little secret had reached the boys and if they were intrigued. I pedaled faster then hit my brakes landing a nice, long, squealing skid. I looked at the boys and smiled.

Mark walked over to me and held out what looked like a piece of paper. He handed it to me, told me to check it out, and then stood back and crossed his arms over his chest. I looked at the paper but it wasn’t a paper at all; it was a Polaroid photo. I looked at it and couldn’t quite figure out what it was until I saw my sisters’ coat lying in a mud puddle next to the structure. I kept wondering what my sisters coat was doing there and then it hit me; this was my fort, completely turned upside down and covered in mud. Somehow, all of the boys had gone into my yard, picked up the fort, turned it over, and then, because it had been raining, covered it in mud.

I felt my face get very hot and my hands began to shake. I calmly smiled at the boys, all except Mark Lyons, who were now leaning on the fire hydrant waiting for my reaction. I swung my leg over the bike and slowly put the kickstand down. I walked around the bike and held out the photo to give it back to Mark. As soon as he extended his hand to take it back from me, I reeled back and cold-cocked him, almost knocking him out. He fell to the ground and began crying and yelling at me.

“I THINK YOU JUST BROKE MY NOSE!” he said as blood trickled down into his mouth. “I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU JUST HIT ME LIKE THAT!! I’M TELLING ON YOU!!”

I told him to go ahead but, if he ever came near me again, I would do the same; and, if he, or any of the other boys ever dared to touch my fort again, they’d be looking at bloody noses and fat lips for the rest of the summer. I said all of this with an amazing calm. I got back on my bike and rode home. My first and only concern was for my fort.

I looked over the fence and, sure enough, there was my fort, upside down and all muddied. I ran to it and immediately began to try to flip it back over. It wasn’t hard to flip it but I was afraid I would damage it in the process. It simply bounced back into its original position and the frame stayed intact. However, when the boys tipped it over, the roof was badly damaged. I knew I would have to fix that as soon as possible.

The rest of the day was fairly normal. We went to church and later had breakfast with my Grandma at I-HOP. My dad watched some football while my mom cleaned and began cooking dinner. Then the doorbell rang…

There was Mark Lyons and his dad on our porch and I felt a huge lump start to form in the pit of my stomach. I opened the door and Mr. Lyons said, “Young lady, I need to speak with your father!” I’m sure my face went white as I ran to get my dad. My dad stood and listened to Mr. Lyons tell him how I “beat up” his son. He stood there, shifting from one foot to the other, listening while occasionally looking at me and then at Mr. Lyons. He had a quizzical look on his face and I couldn’t tell if he was mad, upset, or worried. Then, just as he began to speak to Mr. Lyons, he started to laugh. In fact, he was laughing so hard that he didn’t seem to hear Mr. Lyons say he was going to sue, but, I’m guessing he did because here’s what my dad said to him:

“Listen, that kid of yours has been the biggest bully on the block with all of the kids. He’s beat up the little kids and now he’s getting his. I can understand (snicker…snicker…) that you are upset that my daughter gave him what he probably deserved but maybe you should just talk to your son about not being a bully ’cause then, you know, some other girl, won’t have to put him in his place…”

Mr. Lyons was really, really mad. He looked like he wanted to hit my dad but, instead, hit Mark on the back of the head and said, “C’mon.” I poked my head out the door and watched as they walked back to their house. The entire way back, Mr. Lyons was smacking Mark on the back of the head and suddenly, I got it. I began to feel sorry for Mark and realized that his dad was a big bully and was going to beat his ass when they got home. All of this happened because a girl had kicked his ass and all because Mark hadn’t been “man enough” to stand up to me. I may have been young but you could see this weighing on Mark a mile away.

After that, I was a little nicer to Mark, unless, of course, he was being a bully. Then I’d give him a look that warned him to knock it off. Subtle as it was, it worked most of the time. Eventually, Mark stopped hanging out with us neighborhood kids because he went on to Junior High School. I don’t know whatever happened to him but I have the sense that it couldn’t have been good.

For me, that was an enlightening moment and one that still makes me roar. It also makes me wonder about all of the bullies in the world, big or small, young or old, armed or unarmed. I wonder what the world would be like if dads or moms simply listened more or gave positive direction or were aware of the pain within or all of those other things that we all suffer through in our childhood/adolescence. Now, when I see more shootings, killings, and the brutalities in our schools, I wonder whether the perpetrators are or were bullies or, are or were bullied. And then I remember my fort, growing up in a seemingly simpler time, and wonder about the consequences of bully behavior…