Roughhousing

Boys will be boys. You remember. You don’t even have to remember. All you have to do is observe your kids, your grandchildren, the kids in playgrounds, or at the mall as you go about your day. It doesn’t take much to set boys off, to try to take each other down, or test one another’s strength. It’s all an alpha male thing, jostling for position, each one trying to rise to the top of the heap. It’s a sex thing, showing off, inviting girls to notice ME. Should girls be present, it can escalate pretty quickly. It can become a fight in the blink of an eye. Worse still if one of those boys likes the girl present; and it can become a desperate bid to save face if circumstances turn for the worse. Of course, girls needn’t be present, either. I wasn’t immune.

One day, back in Grade 8, Garry Martin and I were sent on an errand. Classes were in session, the halls empty. As we were about it, we began to joke around, and began to push and shove, never actually meaning to hurt one another. If anything, we were just having fun, giggling the whole time, muffling our laughter so as not to get in trouble for disturbing the classes in session, or the hallowed peace of the halls. We started to throw shadow punches and Kung-Fu kicks, always sure to be wide of the mark. Mind you, some of those came pretty close as we ducked and weaved in and out of range. Then I closed in, just as Garry began to thrust out a leg, his body becoming somewhat horizontal. Committed, I could not, for the life of me, check myself. But I tried. I skid to a stop, piked my body. I felt the psychic thrust of the foot approaching me. And then I felt a tap. In a slightly sensitive spot. Not even a tap. Let’s just say there was enough contact to say there was the hint of contact. And my entire world contracted with that touch, into that moment. I don’t think I’d ever experienced that much pain in my entire life, and I’d experienced some pain by then, riding into parked cars, falling off fences, that time I fell off my bike and landed in the hospital with a concussion. It exploded, rushing out from that central spot and cutting off all sensation everywhere else. Already piked, I crumbled. It must have seemed a seamless flow of motion when observed from without; you’d have to ask Garry. Garry was instantly horrified, seeing me down on the floor, clutching at my crotch. He rushed forward and whispered a panicked, “Are you okay?” when it must have been obvious that I wasn’t. I think we both thought that unless I got up pretty quickly, we’d be in shit, first for fighting, then for breaking the rules for roughhousing, and for not going about our chore like little automatons. Thankfully, that all-encompassing pain left me as quickly as it came, but I was tender for some time, certainly unable to do more than shuffle for a few minutes. Needless to say, whenever I see someone get kicked in the nuts in a film and continue to fight, I call bullshit.