MY-NICHE: MY FIRST KNOCKOUT

https://steemit.com/contest/@awolesigideon/my-niche-contest-1-winners-my-niche-contest-2


I can’t remember much about the first grade, but I do remember my first day at a new school. It was morning recess, and I was standing on the blacktop. I had just transferred in more than halfway through the year. It was Pittsburg, Pennsylvania and it was colder than I was used to, and there was this kid I was talking to. He was a lot bigger than me. We had been playing basketball but now it was raining and we were just standing there arguing for some reason, I don’t know what about. It’s too long ago to remember. All I know is that this kid was getting real pushy with me, like he’s testing me - the new kid.

It didn’t really bother me as I remember it, not until he starts talking about his father’s gun, and that he was going to bring it to school the next day, you know, threatening me with what I realized even at that age was just some phony nonsense talk. I don’t remember being angry, just that I sort of knew you can’t let someone level threats like that at you. Somehow it even seemed worse that they were obviously hollow threats, and before I thought it through, I hit him.

I hit him the only place it really made sense to me to hit someone if you were going to hit them at all – right above the eye on the side of the head, that indent at the top of the skull. I hit him hard with the ridge of my knuckles. I put everything behind it. There was no fight really, no scrabbling around like you always saw with kids rolling on the ground, hair messed up and buttons missing. There was just delivery and impact. That kid went straight down. I remember that the asphalt smelled new and some of it was on his forehead when they carried him away. He wasn’t moving, and they said they were taking him to the nurse’s office. It was only then that I got scared.

That was the first time I ever threw a punch. I realized that I had discovered what I was really good at that day, and that I was going to have to find something else.

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