Ah, this is an embarrassing story of when my middle school friends and I tried to be tough guys.
It was the late 90s and gang culture and violence were popular amongst young boys.
Teen boys from all over gravitated to gangster rap and movies, and the WWE. Their minds were intoxicated with this version of masculinity and they just wanted to be tough guys that were feared by other guys.
I was one of them.
I wanted all the fancy and flashy things of being a gangster and all of the physical strength and power of being a professional wrestler.
But I was none of those things.
In reality, I was a small goofy kid who just loved to play basketball and video games. And I also had a big imagination, which I often used to create my “tough guy” persona.
One day at school, one of my friends came up to me and our group of friends distraught.
We asked him what was wrong and he told us that a group of kids from another school was picking on him at a corner store nearby.
Immediately, all of us got mad. Remember, we were teenage boys who just hit puberty, like, the year before, so it was easy to get our testosterone boiling.
“What? When did this happen,” Kevin said.
“Yesterday afternoon,” Tim replied.
“Damn. Do you remember what they look like?” I asked.
“Yeah. They go to the school down there,” Tim said.
“We should find them and fight them,” Bobby said emphatically.
“Yeah,” everyone hollered without thinking of the consequences of fighting.
“Let’s do it tomorrow at lunch,” Kevin said, as everyone nodded in agreement.
Boy, was I amped.
I had never been in a real fight before and this would be my first one. I imagined all the wild moves I was going to do, like the powerbomb and this crazy flying kick I recently saw in a kung fu movie.
I even picked out an outfit for my first fight.
I wanted to look intimidating so I wore black jeans, a dark blue t-shirt, a black jacket, and my black boots.
The next day at school, we all met up by the gym to game plan before our first class.
We said we would skip eating lunch and go straight to the convenience store to look for those kids. We didn’t want to waste any time -we just wanted to fight them and go back to school.
So, when the bell before lunch rang, we all sprinted to the front door to meet up and head out.
As we were walking, Kevin pulled out a can of Red Bull, cracked it open, took a sip, looked at me and said, “I’m so pumped right now!”
“Yeah, I am too. But, uhh, what’s that taste like?” I asked.
“It’s okay. But this will get you super pumped.”
“Can I try some?” I asked.
“Sure,” he answered, as he passed the can over to me.
I took a sip and immediately gave it back to him.
“It’s not very good,” I winced.
Still to this day, I don’t like the taste of Red Bull. I don’t know how some people are able to drink so much of it daily.
Sorry for the tangent. Anyway, back to the story.
After about 5 minutes of walking, we got close to the store.
“Do you see him anywhere?” I asked.
“Yeah, I think that’s him,” Tim replied.
“Alright, let’s get this on!” Kevin yelled.
All fired up, we crossed the street to confront the kid. We were ready to fight him and all of his friends.
But as we got closer, we noticed that that kid was actually a kid.
We were all in grade 8 but this kid looked like he was only in grade 5.
“Are you sure that’s him?” Kevin asked.
“Yeah, that’s him. Let’s get him,” Tim said.
“No, dude. That’s a little kid. We’re not fighting a kid,” Kevin replied.
“But why? He picked on me,” Tim pleaded.
“Because he’s a little kid. We should start picking on you for getting picked on by an elementary kid,” I said.
“Ugh, fine,” Tim said.
“All this anger made me hungry,” Bobby said. “Let’s go get some food.”
So, we all went into the store -deflated- and got some lunch.
We walked back to school shortly after and the entire time, we were just quiet.
Not a single word was said. We got so into this “fight” that when it didn’t happen, all of our ego and adrenaline -and probably dopamine, too- drained.
We had nothing left in the tank.
We were all pretty embarrassed as well.
For a moment, we thought we were tough guys who were going to inflict immense fear on our enemies.
But what we didn’t know was that those little elementary kids were probably already scared of us -they just picked on Tim because he’s short and they thought he was in the same grade as them.
We didn’t talk about this event for about a week. It was brought up again when Tim tried to make fun of me for something I did at a recent basketball game.
I retaliated by saying, “Aren’t you the one that got all of us riled up for nothing because you got teased by a grade five-er?”
And after I unleashed that comment, the hold this event had on us uncuffed and we all started joking about it.
Ah, the good times of being a stupid, immature teenager.