Author: Chris Souther

Chris joined the Air Force out of high school. After four years of supporting communications for the Department of Defense, the White House, and stations around the world, he left the military and moved to Atlanta. For the next six years, Chris continued working in the telecom field, eventually traveling around the country teaching companies like MCI, Nortel Networks, and Cabletron, how to do what he did. When the dot.com crash happened, upon recommendation from his wife, Chris re-enrolled in school and earned his B.S. in Communications (PR & Marketing). Since then, he was worked in network security, banking and finance (and FinTech), and most recently, application development fields. Now, with more than 15 years of both Marketing and Communications under his belt, he helps organizations grow their business through the proper application of marketing, communications, and content. And he blogs on the side. It keeps him sane.

Side Hustles and Morality in the 80s

On By Chris SoutherIn A Boy's Life, Dad Blogs, Life in these United States, SocietyLeave a comment

Back in the 80s, it was a little lean around my house. I didn’t realize it then, but I’m pretty sure my father was out of work a good bit of the decade. He’d never gotten a degree, but he was very smart and had a knack for working with machines and electrical things so he’d been fairly successful just based on prior experience. My new stepmom had not yet started working, so we were solely reliant on my father’s salary–and maybe a little “state support” if you know what I mean.

I’m not certain where all of our money came from that decade, but I vividly remember my stepmother collecting green stamps and pasting them in a booklet and using them for groceries. I assumed they were a local store promotion, but in retrospect, maybe that’s what food-stamps looked like in Alabama during Carter’s presidency.

To make ends meet, my parents tried a lot of different side hustles, some more successful than others. For instance, my father installed–and sold–a hot-water-heater timer that automatically turned the water heater off during non-peak hours. This little doo-dad was mechanical and I remember that, as a seven-year-old, it was extremely difficult to “flip the switch” on it when you needed to turn it on out-of-hours. I can remember coming home late of a night from being out of town and needing hot water. I’d have to go through the garage, climb up on a table and trip the switch. And every time I did it, for some reason I expected to get shocked. I don’t know why…

My father tried to get into dog-breeding once, as well. We had a beautiful Doberman female. After successfully breeding her, she had a litter of 9 pups and promptly developed mastitis, which quickly put an end to any future breeding endeavors.

But perhaps my folks’ most enduring moneymaker was a plastic sign-making business. Plastic was a fairly novel thing then. And being able to make signs out of plastic, versus metal or some other material, was much less expensive. ‘

There were two sides to the hustle; one involved engraving those plastic nameplates that go on office doors or that sit in attractive brass stands on desks. It involved taking a piece of plastic that looked like wood of whatever color the customer wanted, and engraving names and titles on them. It was a fascinating process involving a long tracing and engraving mechanism. I was too young to work this machine, but my brother sometimes did. For my part, once the signs were engraved, I used the bevelor to smooth out the edges. It was about as difficult as using a knife sharpener, so even a 10-year-old could do it.

Our other “business” consisted of a giant vacuum molding machine and a hundred thin sheets of different colored plastic, each approximately 4′ x 4′. With this, you could create just about any kind of sign as long as you had the mold or template. Whomever we purchased the equipment from also provided a large catalog of rubber molds you could purchase for use.

The actual sign-making process was fascinating to me, even then. Once you selected your rubber sign mold, you put it on the bottom of the machine. Above that, you placed your sheet of plastic–usually white. Once you closed the lid and flipped a switch, the plastic would begin heating up. And this is where it got tricky..and hot! Everything was manual then; there were no electronic dials or automation, so you’d have to squat down and watch the plastic slowly heat, breathing in hot plastic fumes all the while. When it got to the point where the plastic was so hot that it was started to droop down in the middle due to gravity, you had to very quickly do the following: shut off the heater, flip on the vacuum, and then push the handle that lowered the plastic onto the rubber mold. The drama was palpable and the noise from the vacuum was like a Harley Davidson thundering through the garage and every time we did it, my heart would thump in my chest and I felt like I was having a mini panic attack! But if you did everything correctly, almost as soon as you lowered the shelf onto the plastic, the vacuum sucked the hot plastic over the mold, and voila! You had your sign. You then reversed all your switches and louvers and you were done.

Though my brother was old enough to help make the engraved signs for doors and desks, I was too young to do much of anything. Still, I used to love watching my parents work. Crouched down on my heels waiting for the plastic to heat to the point where it sagged almost to the breaking point was more fun than watching date trainwrecks on social media. And then that moment when the plastic was sufficiently heated and they flipped the vacuum switch and lowered the plastic onto the rubber mold and the big WOOOSHING sound filled the room….ah, it was exhilarating!

Of course, once you had the mold you needed for you signs you could then turn around and create as many of that type of sign as you wanted. Most of the templates were for things you might attach to your vehicle using magnetic tape, such as “For Sale” signs, or other common things like “Plumber” or “Electrician.” My brother and I used to love to play with the rubber molds. There was something really cool about a floppy, soft, rubbery thing that you could bend and twist. For us, it was something new and interesting, and therefore, something our parents didn’t want us messing with.

Not long after my parents took possession of all of the equipment, my brother and I snuck into the garage to look through the catalog. I remember thumbing through it and coming on a section of, what was then, very racy sign mold templates. I don’t know why, but one, in particular, struck me and it has stuck with me all these years. It was a nut and bolt, each with human characteristics–a face, arms, and legs–and the bolt was behind the nut, presumably about to screw itself into the nut and the caption on it read, “Not without a washer!”

I think my brother had to explain it to me at first, but once I understood what the sign inferred, I was dumbfounded that my parents would be involved in a business where they might make such a sign. I mean, we weren’t terribly religious then, but there was certainly never any sexual innuendo bantered around the house. Looking back, I still can’t imagine what business scenario might require such a sign. Maybe at a strip-club, or as a joke in a mechanic’s shop?

I searched for this design and found several versions of it in random places, like this one on Etsy:

The one we could order wasn’t quite like this, but the gist is the same. Scandalous, no?

Considering what all happened in the 70s, this was probably pretty tame for most adults; but for a kid, pure magic!

I don’t think I ever looked at my parents the same after that. Not that they ever made a sign like this, to my knowledge, but the idea that they were involved in something where this was even a consideration, changed how I viewed them.

As I got older, my parents became more involved in church and got more “religious.” Our involvement in the church waxed and waned for various reasons, but it struck me that despite whatever we choose to practice in our personal lives, just existing in this world sometimes requires a certain “moral flexibility” to steal a phrase from “Grosse Point Blank.” I guess the alternative is to draw a line in the sand and say, “This is not something I’m willing to bend on,” but then, we’ve seen how well that has worked out for many, especially of late.

A Dust Pan for Dad – A Fish Out of Water Story

On By Chris SoutherIn Dad Blogs, Family, Fatherhood, Life in these United States, MarriageLeave a comment

The other day I was picking up a few items at the grocery store, walking through the produce aisle, selecting some bell peppers here, a few (overly) expensive mangos there. Coming towards me was a middle-aged man and what appeared to be his two children–a boy and a girl. Nothing unusual in that. If anything, it’s always good to see the continued debunking of the media myth that men don’t contribute in the home.

As I selected a few lemons, I couldn’t help but notice the father. Slumped over his cart as he was, it was clear he wasn’t entirely comfortable in whatever “this” role was, probably a new one for him. Seeing that, I started paying a bit closer attention to the situation surrounding him and his children.

I caught one of the kids talking about the apples and I heard the man say something like, “But do we really need them?”

I didn’t catch the rest; probably because I was immediately swept away into a memory from my childhood. One that included another middle-aged man–my father–also with his child–me–and also clearly not entirely in his element.

I was probably 13. After 11 years of what seemed to be a stable, if perhaps uneventful, marriage, my stepmom announced she wanted to separate from my father for a while. As usual, my father seemed caught completely unaware, a trend that he appeared to have ignored much of his life. But, it being the 80s and divorce trends on a steep trajectory upwards, while I wasn’t unfamiliar with divorce, I didn’t know what a “separation” meant and I found myself at a complete loss as to how we were going to make it without her at home.

Even at that young age, I recognized that it was very selfish of me to immediately jump to concerns of self when my parents were clearly having problems. But the last time my father had to care for me (and my brother at the time) by himself, he was not good at it and it only last about a year because he quickly met someone who stepped in and took over everyday home-making.

At 13, I needed little supervision. I got myself up in the mornings; made my own breakfast and got myself out the door with no intervention from my parents. Dad was gone to work long before I even got up and my step-mother stayed in her room getting ready for work until after I left.

My father was not a “household chore” kind of guy. He was a builder. Tell him something needed fixing and he was on it. Tell him he needed to cook dinner, however, and he was at a total loss unless it meant cutting up and boiling some vegetables.

I very clearly remember our first trip to the grocery store. It had probably been two weeks since my stepmother had packed up her things and moved out. She had rented, and furnished, a nice apartment about 30 minutes away. Any hopes I had that her moving out was just a temporary thing were dashed the first weekend I spent at her place. I remember looking around thinking, “She has every piece of furniture someone who is single would have.” It didn’t occur to me then that she had clearly been planning this, if not actively setting it in motion without anyone knowing it, for quite some time and was planning on it lasting more than a few days. I also saw a pack of cigarettes sticking out of her purse. So far as I knew, both she and my father had quit smoking years ago, so this was (also) a new development.

But, “visiting” your parent is awkward. There I was, a pre-teen and a middle-aged step-parent stuck inside a nondescript apartment for two days. No money. Nothing to do really. And frankly, if we were at home, we wouldn’t have much day-to-day interaction anyway, so suddenly being forced to interact just because it’s “your weekend” made for some awkward moments. I couldn’t wait for the weekend to end.

Back at home; after a couple of weeks of my having to come up with meal ideas for my father and me, not to mention that I’d not had anything to pack for my school lunch in days, a grocery-run was unavoidable and so I broached the subject with my father one Saturday morning. He was not enthused.

Now, I had no idea of my parents’ financial situation; not really. We had a comfortable house, but there were little things that led me to believe we weren’t doing all that well. So, I was very cognizant of money. Much like the children of the Great Depression, still today I’m a saver “just in case” and I’m confident much of my tendencies stem from the lean times of my youth when I spent my school lunch period pretending to study in the library so I didn’t have to explain to my friends that I wasn’t eating because my parents always “forgot” to give me any lunch money. And other small financial crises.

We drove to the store together. I’d shopped with my stepmother enough to know the drill. I grabbed a cart and headed right. In truth, I don’t remember much about the actual grocery store, but one particular selection impressed itself in my memories, again further cementing the fact that money was tight and this whole “on our own” thing was not going to be easy.

With “mom” gone, I had picked up the bulk of the housekeeping duties. I lightly cooked and cleaned up the kitchen. I dry-mopped the downstairs floors and vacuumed the carpets in all but my parents’ room. I did our laundry. In short, I did most of the housework.

I remember that the dustpan we had, had seen better days. The edge was chipped and dulled and it was difficult to get fine dirt and debris into it and so as we passed the aisle with household cleaning supplies, I told my father we needed a new dustpan. Of all the things we needed, why a dustpan? It’s one of those things. One of those battles upon whose hill you know you will die on while defending. But it needed to be done.

The dustpan selection ran the gamut from a super-cheap aluminum pan, similar to the crap-tastic plastic one we currently had, to a more expensive glossy white plastic unit with a small brush attachment. I picked up the latter and my father immediately said, “Why do we need that one? This other one (the cheaper alternative) is just fine.”

l remember making the argument that the cheap one is just going to get brittle and break like the one we already had, so we should buy the more expensive, but durable, one. I remember the look on my father’s face before he put the dustpan in our cart. For a brief moment, a pained expression passed over his eyes. I remember seeing him about to argue and then immediately change his mind. And I remember the resignation that fixed itself on his expression as he placed the shiny, white dustpan with the attachable broom into the cart.

That day, upon that hill, I’d won and he’d given up. Maybe that was why my step-mom left. Maybe at some point, he got tired of fighting and just stopped trying, or caring. And I guess she did too.

Like the dad in my recent shopping experience, my father was just as uncomfortable playing the homemaker. Back in the present, while watching the dad at the grocery, I experienced a momentary pang of empathy for what he was having to deal with. Whatever situation led to him being there, he was doing what he needed to do despite his inexperience and discomfort. For that, I gave him credit. Maybe, like my father from long ago, he too was going through something in his relationship. Or maybe his wife just had other plans that day and asked him to do this thing he didn’t normally do. I hope for his kids’ sake that’s what it was.

I don’t know what all happened between my father and stepmother back then. She did eventually come home, but it was six months or more later. When I graduated from high school and joined the Air Force, less than a year later my step-mother divorced my father, and once again, he claimed complete ignorance of any issues and was completely taken by surprise by the whole thing.

She will tell you she divorced because he ignored her despite her trying everything to get him to pay attention to her. If the never-opened bottle of Jack Daniels that sat in the back of their closet my entire teen years, or the nearly-pristine, lone Playboy I found in the back of my father’s dresser drawer, which surely my step-mother knew about, are any indication of the lengths she went to, none of it worked.

My dad was many things. And he was NOT many things. But of this about him I will admit, he was loyal. Perhaps too loyal. Once he committed to something, it was a done deal, for better or for worse. At 40, he adopted two young boys–one with documented mental issues–and when he and his young wife, who was 11 years his junior, divorced a few years later, he took us with him and did the best he knew how.

But my father’s Achilles’ was women. So far as I can tell, he never told a woman in need, “No.” The bigger the hard-luck story, the harder he pursued them. Lord knows I wish he hadn’t. I’ll never stop regretting the last time he couldn’t stop himself from getting involved, and never walking away, even as the relationship cost him quite literally everything. But he was loyal.

Not too long after his death, we found out something that turned everything we thought we knew about my father on its ear. And the more I think about it, perhaps that is the reason he turned out to be so loyal later in life.

Maybe that’s all any of us can or should ever try to be. Even when life goes sideways and things aren’t ideal, maybe the best you can be remembered for is having always being there for the people who needed you most. Even if it ends up costing you your own happiness.

Finding Your Calling

On By Chris SoutherIn Dad Blogs, DIY, Family, Life in these United States2 Comments

Growing up, my dad never sat still. Or if he did, it was only because he needed to be sitting down so he could finish sketching out the dimensions of his latest obsession. When we were building our house in Semmes, even before the house foundation was started, he’d built a shed for his tools. Later, that shed would become more of a storage unit than a shop, but I believe he would have spent more hours there than in the house if he knew he wouldn’t catch hell for ignoring the family.

When my dad got sick back in 2018, we all put on a brave face and told ourselves that he could get better. He had a great bunch of doctors and nurses and for a man in his early 80s, he was amazingly spry and active. But, deep down, I think we all knew the odds were against him.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve become more like him. Despite my being adopted, his “always stay busy” attitude, coupled with an innate need to create, are alive and well in me. If nothing else, of that I think he’d be proud. And I too have my own shop-slash-storage unit, but unlike his, mine is in the basement of my house and habitable throughout the year, impervious as it is to the heat of summer and the frigidity of the winter months. There are also a lot fewer cockroaches, which is nice.

Forty years later, I can tell you almost exactly how many steps it was from the door of my dad’s shed to his toolbox; I made the trip enough times. I can also tell you which drawer of my dad’s old toolbox he kept the screwdrivers in. It was the first drawer. Beneath that, his pliers. Beneath that, his electrical tools, such as his meters and soldering iron. I know because I organized my own toolbox the same way. If it works, and you remember what’s where because you had to “go fetch” tools from it a thousand times while working with your dad, why change it? Most of the memories I have of my dad involve some kind of work–either us working together, or me doing something he’d tasked me with. So, to say that I have a more than passing interest in preserving those memories, is a fair statement.

As dad got sicker–and my relationship with his girlfriend followed suit–I realized that unless I took preemptive action, when he passed, I wasn’t going to get any of these things. I even told him once that I would be surprised if she even let me in the house after he was gone, to which he agreed. Most of his “things” I couldn’t have cared less about; but, his tools were something else entirely. I grew up using those tools. I watched my father build our house and two dog houses with them. I can still remember trying to anticipate where he needed the flashlight or which screwdriver or pair of plyers he’d need next. I can still remember how dark it got on us the night he helped me rig up my car stereo amp (that was the days before they had prebuilt harnesses). And I can still feel the smooth surety of the hickory handle of that old ax I swung a million times while clearing out the back-five acres behind the house (btw – If you haven’t read that story, here you go). I have a million memories of those times working with him and I couldn’t stand the thought of losing it all to his girlfriend’s early-onset dementia and her paranoid belief that I was trying to take my father away from her.

And to be fair, my father had told me that he wanted me to come up and take some things back home. I think he too realized the truth about his partner, but was just too sick to care to do anything about it. So one Saturday morning, I drove up to his home in Mills River, NC and we went through some of his old tools. I didn’t take much really, just some odds and ends hand tools and some fishing poles. In truth, I left 10x as much as I took home with me. He’d become a bit of a packrat in his old age; finally able to afford the tools he’d longed for in his youth. And so, of a weekend, he would visit garage sales and pick up random tools, even if he had two or three of the same thing at home already.

I think we both understood the finality of my coming up to go through his tools. Up to that point, I would never have even broached the idea of him sharing some of his handyman largess with me. It would have been like asking to drive another man’s motorcycle–you just don’t do it. But as he so bluntly put it that warm Saturday morning, “I can’t keep up this place like I used to. I don’t have any need for most of this stuff now. I want you to have it.”

I made the trip in one day. I refused to stay in the house with his partner and, while her northern upbringing wouldn’t allow her to say it out loud, it was clear I wasn’t welcome anyway. He would pass about two and a half months later. It was a messy death–misunderstood and incomprehensible–like much of his life was to those around him.

His tools now reside in my own matching red and black Craftsman toolbox. His old claw hammer with the dark brown wooden handle, made nigh impermeable from decades of sweat and heat, now hangs from a nail inside my shop over the door. It watches over me with a critical eye, a reminder of a legacy of an insatiable desire to tear down and build anew, and a need to create from nothing. Every time I see it I’m reminded of how short my own accomplishments have fallen compared to his.

At 48, I still have a lot of good years ahead of me; though maybe not as many as I like to think. My manual labor Saturdays end earlier and my joints ache more every year. All of these tools and memories I have will one day be someone else’s to make decisions about. And as it stands now, none of my own kids seem headed in my “handy” direction, so it will probably be the Estate Sale for most of my stuff; a headache for my wife and children. They will disperse it to someone else, never understanding how much I loved the ache and bone-tiredness resulting from many a Saturday and weeknight’s work.

All of this busy-ness is fleeting. Those projects I skipped soccer matches to finish, which seemed so important then, will be nothing more than part of an aggregate dollar amount on a real-estate sales contract when I’m gone–if I’m lucky I’ll be gone.

But the work made my dad happy, and when I’m busily working on a project, particularly one that will improve our house or the yard, I’m at my happiest. Maybe that’s all any of us can really ask for once we’ve had children of our own and our reason for existence changes from satisfying self, to providing for others. In many ways, my little projects offer a bit of both.

Towards the end, my dad expressed regrets. Regrets about the way he raised me, the things he said and did, or didn’t. He never talked specifics, but I always figured he knew how hard on me he was. There was only ever one way to do something–his way. There was no “down time” and had it not been for my step-mom, there would have never been anything but school and work, which was how he was raised, as was his father before him.

I’ve probably gone the opposite direction with my own kids and I wonder if it’s too late now to course-correct. Only time will tell, I suppose. But, if any of them find their inner handy-person calling late in life, I hope my tools–and memories–are still here for them.

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Boys Will Be Boys, But Bullies Ruin it for Everyone

On By Chris SoutherIn A Boy's Life, Dad Blogs, Life in these United States, SocietyLeave a comment

I was in 5th grade. After that thing my brother did, which resulted in his being forcefully removed from our house and becoming a ward of the state, life changed for us. At the time, I went to a good school; we lived in a great neighborhood for riding bicycles; I had my own room. Life was not bad, for me.

But after my brother left home, it went downhill fast. I was too young to understand the adult complexities that come with your child doing something horrible, but from the cautionary, muffled conversations I heard between my step-mom and my dad, and others in the family, I know there was a lot of embarrassment and general unease in our community, both within our neighborhood and our church.

I guess I can understand my parents’ decision to sell our house and move to another town. It wasn’t too far away, but far enough that we would no longer see any of our old neighbors or friends, and far enough away that I had to change schools right when I was starting the 6th grade.

In short, we moved to the country (more on it in this blog about our house and my friend, Joe). While I wasn’t exactly a city boy, I might as well have been from Saturn with glowing eyes and antennae coming out of my head. The established boys in my new neighborhood took an immediate and distinct dislike to me from the get-go. In fact, it wasn’t just the boys in my neighborhood, but a number of boys in my grade.

Today, society has a low tolerance for bullies. But back then, “bullying” was just boys being boys and if you didn’t want to be bullied, then you’d better learn how to avoid them or learn how to fight. At the time, I weighed in at a mere 60 pounds in 6th grade, so the best option for me seemed to be avoidance.

Every day I walked behind the portable classrooms to avoid the two boys who always used the well-traveled walkway behind the cafeteria and who, if they saw me, liked to physically push me around and tell me about all the horrible things they would do to me if they ever caught me off-campus. There was the boy in P.E. who also hated me for some unknown reason. This particular bully kept at it for nigh on a year until one day I snapped, threw him down, grabbed his legs and began dragging him all over the football field. To this day I don’t understand why I did that versus just straddling him and pummeling his face. I think it was over fear of actually hitting him, which I get into later.

To avoid all confrontation, I helped out just about anyone who asked, with their homework or with a “loaned” pencil or some paper that I never got back. In general, I did everything I could to stay under the radar and avoid a pummeling. But you know, boys will be boys. Bullies can smell fear and nothing makes them feel bigger than to see a kid they’ve picked on, running scared.

By far the worst of the lot was a kid in my neighborhood named “Craig.” Craig was a little taller than me, but he outweighed me by about 20 pounds. He and I were about like Ralphie and the bigger Farcus brother from “A Christmas Story.” Now, I didn’t have any classes with Craig. I assume that’s because he wasn’t terribly smart, which is probably why he overcompensated by being so hateful.

In the mornings I rode my bike over to another boy’s house (James) in the neighborhood to catch the bus. The bus wouldn’t come down our street, so we all had to meet it out on the main road. I don’t know why, but for some reason, James liked me well enough that, not only did he not pick on me, but he let me warm up inside his house in the morning after my bike ride, and he let me keep my bike at his house during school. James and I weren’t buddy-buddy enough that he took up for me over Craig and his cronies, but he was a big enough kid that nobody messed with him or his brother, a very large boy-man named “Boogie” who never wore a long-sleeved shirt or coat even in the winter. Boogie hardly ever gave me a second glance, but I got a sense from him that, while he was large and feared, he wasn’t mean. And I like to think that if anything had ever gone down around Boogie, he would have stepped in and at least stopped it. So James and Boogie were the Canada of the neighborhood–at least politically–so when I was with the two of them everyone basically left me alone.

After dropping my bike off at James’ house of a morning, I’d wait for him to finish getting ready, and then we would head out to the bus stop where I did my best to avoid looking at Craig, or his cronies. Because, like anyone in jail can tell you, eye contact is a form of aggression and I wanted to avoid that at all costs.

Still, I knew they watched me and whispered about me, and shot daggers from their eyes at me while I looked at anything BUT them. And the name-calling, man I heard it all. Mostly, it was words you can’t say these days without getting nailed with a hate crime, but back then it was just standard bully-fare.

Afternoon bus rides home were more of the same except I only had to avoid Craig and his bunch as they boarded the bus and moved to the back. Once we got off the bus my Canada protection-neutrality vanished once I got my bike, or on the unfortunate rainy days when I had to walk because my bike couldn’t make it through the 6-inches of muddy slush created by a freshly grated dirt road and an inch of rain.

After about a year of taunting, even Craig’s lackies became emboldened and started following me for about 1/10 of a mile off the bus, yelling obscenities and pushing me in the back. One particular boy, who became the worst of the non-Craig boys, was smaller than me but what he lacked in stature he made up in colorful language and bravado. And he was merciless.

Now, I had always been taught not to start fights. It was particularly stressed in my house because of my brother, who, before he was taken away, started–and won–more fights than I’ve ever been in. It was my genuine belief that if I got into a fight, whether I won or got my butt whipped, I’d face a certain butt-whipping from my father when I got home. And my father favored belts.

So, I put up with Craig and his ilk for far longer than I would have preferred. But little did I know that one summer day in 1985, I was about to do something that would at least grant me a reprieve for a time.

It started off typically. I got off the bus and for some reason that I can’t remember, I was walking home that day, which always extended the length of the taunting because it was easy for them to keep up with me. I remember vividly cutting through someone’s yard, which opened up into a wooded field where no houses had been built. This particular day, Craig was staying back and letting his minions handle the taunting.

This smaller boy I mentioned was walking just behind me and off my right shoulder. He had been calling me names for a good two or three minutes and there were several other boys walking behind him, egging him on as he worked me like a prize-fighter. As he got right up behind me to yell in my ear again, “fight or flight” took over and I spun around with a backhand, hoping to connect with his head. I missed. He may have been little, but the kid was quick and he dropped to the ground as I came around.

Though I didn’t connect with my would-be Joey LaRusso roundabout spin-move, it impressed upon him that maybe today wasn’t the day to pick on someone willing to fight and who happened to be bigger than you. I kept on walking and though they continued the name-calling and yelling, it lacked the usual vehemence it usually had and they stopped following me. A moral victory.

For a while, things quieted down. Sometimes with boys all they need to see is a willingness to stand up for yourself. Once they realize you’re not quite the victim they thought, self-preservation forces self-introspection, which inevitably leads to a decision to find an easier target.

About a year later, after a relatively quiet period of non-violence, Craig decided to start up on me again. I don’t know why, or what the catalyst was, but it was if nothing had ever happened and almost literally overnight, we were back to being sworn enemies.

By this time, the bus route had changed and instead of our having to get off at the front of the neighborhood and me riding or walking back to my house, the bus stopped about two-tenths of a mile from my house. One day on the ride home, I could hear Craig and his friends threatening me quietly from the back of the bus. I could hear them say they were getting off at my stop. I figured they were bluffing until they didn’t get off at their stop, at which point I knew I had troubles.

My adrenaline pumping and my heart racing, I stepped off the bus and immediately started walking home. Never turning around to check who else might be with me, I could hear the bus pull away and for just a minute, I thought I was safe. Then rocks began whizzing by my head, thumping into the red dirt as the boys pelted me with quarter-sized pebbles.

I don’t know what made me turn around that day. Maybe I’d finally just gotten tired of living in fear–of them and my father–or maybe it was the fact that I had gotten a little bigger and felt that I actually had a chance of winning a fight. As I got nearer, a few more rocks flew at me but even those stopped as I approached their group. I stopped just a few feet from Craig as he stood there glowering. Silently, I dropped my backpack on the ground; my heart beating out of my chest. I knew today was the day. It was him or me. No matter how it turned out, and no matter what my dad did to me when he found out, I knew that if I didn’t face Craig today, I’d have to live in fear the rest of my days there.

I looked at Craig and said, “Come on. Hit me.”

Any real fighter will tell you that you don’t wait for the other person to hit you first. Your best bet is to hit them first with everything you’ve got and hope it’s enough. But, I believed that if I could get Craig to swing at me first, then maybe I could get some leniency with my father, especially if I ended up losing the fight. But Craig just stood there glaring, not saying a word. So, I taunted him more, “Come on, hit me! You’ve been picking on me for years. Let’s do this!”

Craig just stood there. He didn’t say a word. He just stood there. “WTH?” I thought.

Finally, I pursed my lips, turned around, picked up my bag, and headed home, fully expecting someone to come crashing down on my back and for the pummeling to begin.

It never came.

After that, Craig and his friends left me alone. There were still sneers and dirty looks, but the days of picking were mostly over. I suppose they realized there was some fight in me and in the last couple of years, I’d managed to close the size gap between Craig and me and I probably wasn’t quite as easy a victim as they’d once thought. Maybe once I was actually standing in front of him at eye-level, he realized he might not come out of the fight as well as he thought. And losing to this city kid was something his reputation would never recover from.

Not long after, we were having a family get-together at my house and it came out that I had been dealing with, not only Craig, but other bullies at school. My dad was furious. Not at me, but at the situation. The school knew I was being bullied and offered no help and never reported it to my parents. When my father asked me why I didn’t stand up for myself, I told him I was afraid of what would happen at home. When he heard that, he immediately started showing me a few “moves” that could help me at least hold my own.

There was still an admonition to never “start a fight,” but my father wanted to make sure I didn’t have to continue living in fear. He told me that if someone else starts it, he wouldn’t be mad at me for standing up for myself, no matter what happened. It was a small turning point in my relationship with him, but an important one.

To this day, nothing chaps me more than a bully. It doesn’t have to be a physical bully like Craig, either. Bullies come in all shapes and sizes. Some are physical, while others verbally bully people, usually through coercion and fear, or by withholding something they know you need. I’ve run into a few of them in my professional career.

But no matter the method, they’re all the same to me–bullies. And maybe part of why I beat myself up in the gym, and ran until the joints in my feet fused, is because I regret the years I lived in fear. I never want that for my own kids and so I’ve continued my father’s “don’t start it, but finish it” philosophy with them. They know I don’t want them to start a fight, but they also know I don’t want them walking away from one, or encouraging others to continue bullying by ignoring it and hoping it goes away.

Boys will be boys, or at least some of them will be. No amount of gender-neutrality can take away the biological desire to eliminate the competition. We can teach our children right or wrong, however; and when diplomacy fails, I expect them to protect themselves and their families. I consider it part of my responsibility as a father and I think my father did too.