Childhood memory #2563

One time when I was a young lad of maybe 5, I had gotten all gussied up for some reason. Hair combed, a nice red and white jacket on. Clean. We were going somewhere. The destination has been lost from my memory. Anyway, it may have had something to do with a movie theater my Dad used to work at. The point is I looked like a dapper little fellow. While waiting to depart, I was outside in my backyard "messing around" wasting time, being careful not to get dirty or mess up my hair. My neighbors, the Lotts, had relatives visiting them. One of them was a boy who was about 4 years older than me. He was a lanky kid of questionable sanity. The proof of which was soon to be presented to me in spades. He was in the back yard of the Lott house. He called to me. Hey, he said, come over here. So, with deft agility I scaled the low chainlink fence that separated the Lott backyard from ours. I walked up to this wild-eyed, messy haired individual (David?) and asked him what he wanted and he delivered, without the slightest warning, a vigorous and powerful punch straight in my gut. Next thing I knew I was on one knee holding my stomach trying to get that next elusive breath. I was that way for approximately 3 days. Or at least it felt that way. It was actually a couple seconds. Finally my air rushed back into my lungs and along with it, a gentle weeping voice, with which I expressed unbridled bafflement as to why he would deliver such a devastating blow to a smaller and gentler child. I think he ran off after that, and maybe went back inside. Anyway, he exited the stage of this small drama quite suddenly. I climbed back over the fence while simultaneously wondering why this all had happened. In fact, that is the primary question I have about the whole episode. "Why?" I can't recall if my hair got messed up. I used to know more details about this story (the things we actually said to each other, where I was waiting to go to that day, etc.) but time has erased this minutiae from my memory banks. Anyway, I never interacted with this kid again after that.

Here is an updated more humorous version of the above story!

THE TIME I GOT PUNCHED BY A PSYCHOPATHIC CHILD WHILE WEARING A VERY NICE JACKET

By Me, A Helpless Five-Year-Old Fashion Icon

When I was about five years old—a tender, innocent age when your head is mostly full of graham crackers and vague parental warnings—I was dressed to impress. I don’t know why I was so cleaned up. Maybe we were going to a wedding, or a high-level diplomatic summit, or maybe just to the movie theater where my dad worked, which in my brain at the time was basically the same thing. The point is, I was looking sharp. My hair was combed. I was wearing a red-and-white jacket that screamed, “This boy will NOT be climbing trees or rolling in dirt today.”

So naturally, I went outside to “mess around,” which is five-year-old speak for walking around the backyard pretending to do stuff while avoiding eye contact with anything muddy.

This is when the Lotts’ relatives came into the picture. The Lotts were our neighbors, and among their visiting relatives was a boy who was approximately nine years old, but spiritually about 43 and possibly feral. Let’s call him David, because I’m 80% sure that was his name and 100% sure it was something equally capable of betrayal.

David saw me from his side of the chain-link fence and summoned me like some kind of backyard goblin with a quest. “Hey!” he said. So naturally, because I was a trusting young lad and also an idiot, I scaled the fence with the elegance of a squirrel in formalwear and approached him.

Without any warning—no dramatic monologue, no villainous laugh, no time to update my will—David hauled off and punched me directly in the stomach. I didn’t even get a chance to be offended. One moment I was upright, the next I was on one knee like I’d been knighted by a medieval ghost with anger issues. All the air in my body left for a better host. I’m pretty sure I actually died for a second and briefly saw my grandmother’s dog.

After what felt like three days but was actually about eight seconds, I finally gasped back to life like someone learning to breathe for the first time. And, in a gentle weeping voice I didn’t know I had, I asked the only logical question:

“WHY?”

David didn’t answer. He just vanished. Poof. Gone. Like a weird backyard hitman hired by the universe to remind me never to trust anyone taller than me.

I climbed back over the fence—still slightly dapper, although emotionally destroyed—and went on with my day. I have no idea where we ended up going, or if my hair survived, or whether David was later arrested by the FBI. What I do know is I never saw him again.

And that’s the story of the time I learned that jackets won’t protect you from haymakers.