Recess rolled around at 12:45, as it did every school day at Randall P. Fennington Elementary and Middle School. (The school was named after Mr. Fennington in recognition of his many years of fine service to the community, in the sense of his having many excess millions of dollars that he was willing to donate as long as his name was displayed prominently enough.) At one end of the caged-in playground, a kickball game was getting underway - the same kickball which was organized every single recess by the athletic kids and the cool kids who could usually kick doubles or maybe even triples, and powerhouses like Brian O'Neil and Jeff O'Neal (no relation) could sometimes even kick homers over the gated perimeter of their painted macadam playground, forcing a member of the fielding team to seek sheepish permission from the teacher on recess duty to reclaim the ball.
Samuel - who now and forever would be Sam to his friends, because if that's what Marisa Henson called him, then that's what he wanted to be called - had never kicked a ball over the gate, and he never would. He usually didn't play with them anyway, although he could. Of the nine times he had actually participated in the game in the hundreds of times he'd seen it played (since 4th grade, when the new recess playground had officially opened), three of those times he had needed to enlist the assistance of the recess teacher to remind the boys (and it was only boys) playing that anyone who wanted to participate could.
Most days, Samuel - rather, Sam - spent in the little round gazebo that completed an invisible triangle of the Cool Kids Kickball Diamond in one corner and the bright orange and blue slide and jungle gym combo with a side order of woodchips in the other. This third corner of the gated playground was where Sam liked to hang out with his buddies Ryan Groom, Jimmy Sanders, and Ben Meyer of broken Lego helicopter fame. Sometimes, they'd play catch, sometimes they'd play tag, sometimes they'd just talk about whatever was on their minds. The four boys were often together, usually paired off into permutated couplings of the group at each other's houses over the weekend, but a solid foursome at school.
Today, they were looking at a small Styrofoam airplane that Ryan had brought from home, testing it out and seeing how well it could fly. They talked while they tested, though Sam made no mention of his exploding love for Marisa - that wasn't something he was prepared to discuss with anyone. Especially not Marisa herself, who was with a giggle of other girls jumping rope maybe thirty yards away. Sam knew - was highly aware of, in fact - that Marisa and her friends happened to be facing the gazebo where he stood with Ryan and Jimmy. He didn't think much of it; chances were they wanted to keep the sun out of their eyes, or maybe they just had ended up facing that direction. He knew for sure that they weren't just staring at him on purpose.
But they were certainly looking near him. And so every time it was his turn to try the airplane, to see how far and straight and long he could make it fly, he would pray that the plane's flight path was impressive.
If Marisa was watching him, or rather, if Sam was lucky enough to be falling within her field of vision, she might as well see some of his abilities. And making Ryan Groom's Styrofoam airplane fly successfully was one of them.
And so it was all the more potentially awful, horrifically awful, when Vance Hogan pointed his rotten self towards the gazebo.
"Look who's comin over here, guys," said Jimmy.
"Oh, man! Not this asshole," Ryan replied. Swearing is pretty cool for sixth graders, once you can figure out how to do it, and Ryan Groom knew his shit.
The three friends picked up the Styrofoam airplane from its latest landing spot (on the bench in the gazebo, Sam's skillful toss, though in truth landing on the bench wasn't his true intent - which, of course, he categorically denied). They formed a wall of solidarity and prepared for Vance.
Vance Hogan was a bit short for a sixth grader, but what he lacked in tall he made up in mean. His hair was usually messy and he wore only black jeans. He had a wide, flat nose and a fresh scar on his cheek from a recent bicycle accident.
Vance didn't think he had to wear a helmet.
Vance was mean for the sake of being mean. But his meanness had a history, a starting point.
Back in first grade, some child prodigy had coined a catchy rhyme:
Vancee-Vance,
Vancee-Vance,
He made poopie
In his underpants.
In first grade - actually, in any stage of life past babyhood - it is rarely a thing of honor or magnificence to have made poopie in your underpants. The song had no rooting in truth (save for the truth that "Vancee-Vance" and "underpants" displayed successful end rhyme), but it stuck nonetheless... like poopie to underpants.
The rhyme made Vancee-Vance an instant pariah, which wasn't good enough. In first grade, children show both remarkable purity and shocking evil - and the children in Vance's class weren't content to let him be merely an unliked outsider when they were letting that evil shine through. They sang the song to him constantly, though usually quietly, so when Vancee-Vance would get angry and yell back, "Nah-uh, you made poopie in your underpants, poop-head," he'd usually be the one to get in trouble.
Over time, the song had run its course, with a brief sequel about peepee and another about - in what was essentially just a specification from the song's first incarnation - diarrhea. Vancey-Vance Hogan was effectively and swifty ostracized by his young classmates, thanks (or no thanks) to an unfortunate rhyme and a budding songwriter. Vance sat squarely on the lowest of all rungs on the social ladder at Randall P. Fennington Elementary and Middle School because of that rhyme, and it made him mad.
When you're a loser, especially when you're a friendless loser, especially when you're a shorter-than-average friendless loser in elementary school, your psychological arsenal of how to deal with your problems is fairly limited.
And if you're Vance Hogan - which, presumably, just about none of you are - you dealt with your problems by becoming a bully.
Bullies are losers with intimidation power. They are downcast outcasts who want to put you in a cast. The best and brightest of the bully crowd never pick on the same kid for too long a stretch of time; the longer you spend with any one kid, the more likely that kid is to become a whiny tattle-tale. No loser-turned-bully's intimidation powers hold water in the principal's office.
It had been several months since Vance Hogan had bothered anyone in the Sam, Ryan, Jimmy, and Ben quartet. Having apparently bullied his way through the rest of the sixth grade, he was back for someone from their now mildly fearful (though stoic on the surface) foursome.
"What's up, Samuel?" He pronounced each syllable of the name carefully, exaggeratingly: Sam-yoo-ul.
"It's Sam," Sam replied.
"Is that so?" Vance asked. "And here, I thought it was 'Pussy.'"
Vance Hogan knew how to swear, too. And when he did it, it sounded a lot meaner.
Sighing, hoping his three buddies didn't actually think he was a pussy, not that Sam thought it was so bad to be a cat, he stuck his hands in the pockets of his (blue) jeans and said, "What do you want, Vance?" He noted that Vance had effectively positioned himself between Ms. Dory, the teacher on duty, and the gazebo. Not that it mattered anyway - she was facing away, watching the kickball game. She probably has the hots for Brian O'Neil, Sam thought to himself suddenly, then shook his head, wondering where that had come from. Vance spoke again, banishing thoughts of the math teacher from Sam's mind.
"Well, Pussy, I want your shitting lunch money."
Jimmy Sanders laughed. Three days later, at a sleepover at Jimmy's house where the boys painstakingly recreated every moment of this conversation, Jimmy would explain his sudden guffaw outburst. He thought Vance's use of "shitting" sounded funny, and he had gotten an instantaneous, goofy mental image of a big ol' green dollar bill straining on a toilet seat, crapping out a few nickles. Jimmy looked down and sucked in his lip, trying to keep the laugh in, but everyone heard it. Ryan, Ben, Sam.
And Vance.
"Somethin funny, asswipe?"
"N-no," Jimmy said. "I was just... coughing."
"Damn right you were."
At this point in the exchange, Sam noticed that Marisa and her friends were watching, all of them holding their jumpropes and observing the conversation with interest. They were too far away to hear, and that was good. Sam didn't need Marisa thinking he was some kind of baby cat.
Vance had a sweaty paw, palm-up, extended towards him. Sam thought about spitting into it, but then decided he liked his jugular vein too much to pursue that avenue. He murmered something to Vance.
"What was that? I didn't hear you, Pussy."
He really liked saying "Pussy" like that, again and again. Ryan's older brother Danny would say that Vance was "getting off" on saying it (and probably find additional, late-adolescent humor in the notion of a sixth grader getting off on "pussy").
"I said that I packed my lunch."
Vance laughed. Loudly. Sam knew that Marisa heard.
"You packed your lunch, Pussy-boy? Mommy packed you a widdle lunch with a widdle bitty note inside?"
Sam Humphrey did not need Vance to point out how uncool it was for your Mommy to pack your widdle lunch.
"Yeah, I packed," Sam said. "So I don't have any money."
A calm, rational bully might have focused his attentions on one of the other three boys flanking Sam. But since Vance was no such oxy-moronical bully, he didn't. (Vance was, in fact, more of a moron who would be in need of many bottles of Oxy just a year down the road.) "Fine," Vance said. "Meet me behind the building after school. We'll settle this like men."
"Fine," Sam said. "Whatever."
Vance pointed a thick finger at Sam and poked him above the right breast. Hard.
"Be there," he said, and walked away.
Sam hoped Marisa saw Vance walking away, hoped that she figured Sam had been tough and intimidating and that's why Vance was backing off. Sam took a step back towards the gazebo, sat down on the bench, and looked up at his three expectant friends.
"What's a pussy?"
posted by Lex Friedman 8:10 PM