A friend’s comment about Tom Petty’s “Won’t Back Down” came at an interesting time for me. A few weeks ago, I was describing to some acquaintances how roughly 60-years ago I had decided to quit being a punching bag for every bully in western Kansas who’d flunked one of my father’s math classes. Petty’s song came up in that discussion.
I am a high school math teacher’s oldest kid. Every half-wit who failed one of my father’s tests and classes went hunting for someone to pay back for that insult and I was usually that someone. By the time I was 12 I’d learned how to straighten my own broken nose after some high school bastard had bent it for me. In my 40s, living in Colorado, breathing through my mouth became a problem due to the dry air and I signed up for nasal reconstruction surgery. After the surgery was done, my doc dropped in to the recovery room to see how I was doing and she said, “If I’d known how many times you nose had been broken, I’d have booked the surgical theater for a couple more hours.” I wish she had, too, because a few days later one of her patches hemorrhaged and a lot of her work was ruined by the inflatable Foley catheter that was inserted to stop the bleeding.
When I was somewhere between 16 and 17, I made the personal decision to never be in another “fight.” If I was forced to fight, it would be a war. And the war wouldn’t be over until one of us was dead or completely incapacitated to the point the fight could not ever be restarted. I had been picked on and pounded so many times that I was at the point that I no longer cared if I lived or died during the next assault. I just wanted to know that fight would never occur again and to make it clear that I wouldn’t quit until either I or the other guy was incapacitated. I didn’t mean at that moment, either. I planned on going back repeatedly until there was a final resolution. Picture the Monty Python Black Knight from The Holy Grail as an example of my 60-years-ago decision.
Almost immediately after coming to that decision, I was assaulted by some asshole railroad worker on my way home from work. I had to cross Dodge’s railroad tracks on my way from school or work to where I lived at the time, a trailer in south Dodge. Pretty much every day, I had to put up with some redneck asshole shouting “Is that a boy or a girl?” or worse. This time, I was out of patience and in a bad mood and I shouted back, “Why don’t you find out, asshole?”
An oversized human beach ball dropped down from one of the flat cars and started waddling toward me. He was probably 40-something, about my height and about wide as he was tall. Due to his weight and character, the man stomped toward me as bow-legged as a real cowboy. When he got within punting range, I drop kicked his nuts most of the way to his throat. I left him squealing and writhing on the tracks between north and south Dodge. I never saw him again and never again heard the usual catcalls when I walked home. For the next 30 years, every squabble I was ever in ended without fists or dropkicks. Some were close to violence, but none went that far. But I’m old now and don’t have whatever it was that created that kind of resolve to win or die. Today, I’d likely back down and/or look for an escape route.
In a similar story, my friend Scott Jarrett has been “a musician” his whole life, from 15 to now, when he is 70. His life-long commitment to be a musician at all costs is no longer something he can manage. For some years, he’s complained that his ex-students were getting the gigs he used to almost automatically get. Now, they aren’t even asking him to try out and that is partially because he is no longer all-in-competing for every paying job. It’s not that he doesn’t need the income, he just can’t find whatever motivation that is required to go balls-out trying to win those gigs/fights. Life is competitive and most of the competition is won by the young, simply because they have less to lose and way more resources to commit to winning.
That “Won’t Back Down” thing is only credible as a young man’s declaration. First, as an old fart the odds that I will survive any sort of physical confrontation vanishes rapidly into my ancient history. Which is why it is so funny to watch all of the decrepit Trumpers thump their chubby chests in faux-defiance of “the system” from which they are so dependent. Most of those lilly-white entitled toddlers are as far from being fighters as they are from being intellectuals. Take away their Social Security or disability checks and they are homeless and begging for spare change. But they won’t know who they are until they pass the moment-of-truth when it is too late to turn back.
