Women's Lib 101

After my mother, in a fit of pique at a mostly innocent remark of mine, gave my hair a really nasty yank I only beat a woman once for the rest of my life. So far.

When I was in third grade we had a thing going where the guys would "bet" punches on the shoulder or upper arm. We could wager five that such an such would happen or so and so would win, for example. I remember getting hammered pretty good after the November 1952 election which my Democrat forever dad assured me Adlai Stevenson would win. These "slugs" as we called them, also generally accepted as intramural discipline, were not created equal. Some were real wallops. You sure didn't want to lose a bet to, or be punished by Jerry Creek! I always tried to deliver as good as I got (one comment on a report card was "Mike doesn't know his own strength") and hit pretty hard.

This passing frontier justice corporal punishment strategy was coincident with a popular game called "Flip Cup" which employed a wooden ball with a bored hole attached by string to a handle that had a cup at one end and a dowel slightly smaller than the hole in the ball at the other. The object, of course, was to flip the ball on string and catch it in the cup or spear it with the dowel. After a bit of practice we all were good at cupping, but catching on the dowel was much harder. So there was a competition for consecutive catches, and one day I was winning - had seven or something. Nancy Pasco didn't want me to succeed so she grabbed the string, to break my string, so to speak. As far as I was concerned she wasn't a girl; she was just a troublemaker who needed to be punished. I figured it was a bout a "four slugger" so that's what she got. After an apalled Denny Morris hit me a few times for not being a gentleman it should have been over, but.....no. Next day Nancy came to school in a dress with no sleeve, showing off a colorful bruise on her trouble making shoulder. Mrs. Blumer, otherwise one of my favorite grade school teachers, noticed, as she was of course intended to, and elicited a whispered "Mike hit me" from a tearful Nancy. Mrs Blumer administered a more traditional penalty for this episode and it didn't go beyond the third grade classroom, but I've never been able to shake the idea that it wasn't justice; it was Women's Lib 101.