Fight Club

A humorous account of my membership in 1st grade fight club after school and its downfall.

Fight Club

A long time ago, back when we were a great country, it was 1990. I was in my second year of first grade at Wood Roads Elementary School in upstate New York. I don't think I knew it yet, but we would move away from Ballston Spa when my father had completed prototype for the navy. I recall it had been cold of course, but my memory seems to shift now more towards what must have been the early spring, with little to no snow on some of these particular bus rides home. I was sort of frenemies with the hall assistant principal's son T____. I could have the name wrong, since it has been over thirty years now, but I do remember certainly that Mr. ____ was the assistant principal in question. My memory includes the notion that T____ lived in the trailer park across the main road from mine. You pulled out of Country Manor Trailer Park, turned left, crossed a creek by bridge, and then his trailer park was to the right just after the creek on a road down a grade. I never remember going to T____'s trailer park itself more than once.

My dual first grade career was mostly due to the fact that back in the 80's and 90's it had become normal for strapped rural school districts to hold kids who had been born in early fall months even years past from moving up into the higher grades after kindergarten because they would have just turned the age they should be for any given grade. For example, I would have just turned five for kindergarten when it started, whereas a lot of the other kids would have had their birthdays before me. Same for the first year of first grade, which seemed fine to the teachers at that time, but to move to second grade seemed not plausible to them for whatever reason. The solution to this problem back then was to just hold 'em back another year of first grade, a very boring solution for us "held back" kids.

Early spring, after a boring repeat day in first grade 2.0, I boarded Ms. J's bus and spent a lot of the ride stealthily moving from the front of the bus where the smaller kids in lower grades were usually forced to sit, further and further to the back of the bus, which emptied out as the bigger kids got off at their stops. Also stealthily moving to the back rows of the bus was T____. We would eventually be in the same bench seat at the very back of the bus for the last fifteen or so minutes home. Back in the late 80's and early 90's most kids in northern climes wore very puffy brightly colored winter coats and puffy insolated snow pants with suspenders. These outdoor coverall outfits were worn over our regular clothes which for boys were stiff blue jeans, long sleeve polos with collars and two or three collar buttons, full-length socks, sneakers, yarn mittens, and knit cap, also often made of thick fuzzy yarn. All of this extra padding probably weighed another few pounds besides our own weight. It also made you ... invincible ... for membership to fight club.

Yes ladies and gentlemen, while Ms. J rolled us onward to our single-wide and double-wide trailer park estates, blissfully unaware that at the back of the bus, all bets were off on who the winner of the great first grade fight club would be, as we little first grade hold backs would literally pummel each other in painless abandon in our puffy snow suits, coats, and mittens, until we were flushed beat red and snot was pouring out of our noses. There was no kicking, but you could throw as many punches as you wanted as hard as your flabby over padded little kid arms could swing. Bam! Pow! Boom! The bus lurches at each stop throwing us forward since we weren't sitting like we were supposed to be. We both slammed into the back of the bench seat in front of us still pummeling each other for the win. The only other rule was DON"T GET CAUGHT! After all ..."What happens in fight club stays in fight club." Right?

Eventually though ... I did get caught. The end of fight club probably happened after just two weeks of its existence. It occurred because of "show and tell" which was the only non-boring non repeat portion of first grade left to me since I could determine what to bring and therefore it could be different from anything I had brought last year. On this particular show and tell day, I decided to bring some small light-up and siren sound-making police car toys I had recently received from my parents. Looking back, they weren't really anything all that special when compared to what kids have today. I think I took them because they were the first of that kind of thing I had ever gotten, since those kinds of toys were just then becoming widely available and in higher demand: that being: toys which made sounds like the real thing and had other stimulus similar to the real thing they represented or signified, i.e. light up emergency vehicles, engine start sounds and so on. These cars in particular were the first of such a kind of toy I had ever had, but upon thinking back over the spans of time, it was actually very silly to have brought them to show and tell. Not only that but, oddly enough, they proved to be the bane of fight club for good.

I cannot really remember how show and tell went, or really anything else that happened in first grade 2.0 that day, but I do remember that fight club occurred as usual in the back of the bus with Mr. ____'s son. At some point, while pummeling each other with our mittened fists of little flabby kid fury, I believe I had fallen backwards on top of the bookbag wherein the toy cars were stashed. I do not recall hearing their siren call, or feeling the sharpness of their metal edges through my thick padded 90's era snow coat and snow pants overalls, but when fight club was over and the bus stopped to let me off, the second to last kid before T____, I grabbed my purple Wood Roads backpack and flew down the bus exit steps to meet my mother at the entry to Country Manor Trailer Park where we lived. As soon as she took my mittened hand a strange and rather loud wail went up from the backpack.

"Wooo wooo woooooo wooooooooo woooo ooo ooooo oooo ooooo o oo o ooo o"

It slowly and forlornly died off decreasing in volume to a final plaintive and broken wail. My mom looked at me stink eye and asked "if that was one of the toy police cars they had given me last weekend." I admitted it was.

It was time. There was no avoiding it. I would have to break the number one rule of fight club. I would have to spill the beans about it, and about T____'s involvement in order for the broken toy police cars to make any sense and not produce more trouble than was absolutely necessary. It was the end forever of fight club. I also never saw T____ again, but this may simply be because I no longer surreptitiously sneaked to the back of the bus anymore ever again either. There was no longer any need to.