I’m intrigued with the street slang of the hip-hop movement. Although, my ability to speak it and translate it is about as good as my ability to give birth. We have a couple of hip-hoppers who work in the office here. They’re great guys and are always joking with me about my inability to understand anything they say. For example, the other day one of them came in and said…and I’m trying to paraphrase this from memory.

“Yo-Yo Buck, what’s da 4-1-1 on dat ho who busted a cap on a brother down in the A-T-L, bitch say dat brother grew up with her in the 2-0-2.”

Then he would bust out laughing as I roughly attempted to respond with a hillbilly accent to his tirade. It’s cool how that stuff rolls off the tongue, but if I try to talk like that, it’s very likely what I say would be translated into, “I’m an asshole and your cat looks like a piece of pork.”

I was talking with an old high school buddy the other day and we were reliving some of the antics from “back in the day” since the 20th reunion is coming up soon. He reminded me of a game we used to play in Spanish class for money. Our teacher was a complete lunatic who was also, I’m convinced, stone blind. He would write on the board, in half-inch letters and cover the ENTIRE blackboard with rambling Spanish phrases, expecting us to write them down and learn them. During these postings he was in a complete trance and held his face a full three inches from the board. While he was writing, we’d put up cash to see who could do the most push-ups before he could turn around. The idea was to set a goal, something like 20-bucks to whoever can do 100 pushups without getting caught. Then the game went to sit-ups…and eventually we got cocky and made it jumping jacks. We may have had it coming, since the jumping jacks were just a little too much commotion and drew the attention of the teacher across the hall who was distracted by all of the jumping and flailing about. She told the assistant principal, who staked out the hall and caught us red handed. The punishment would have been grounds for a lawsuit by today’s standards, but he took five us to the gym where he proceeded, in drill instructor style, to make us do sit-ups, push-ups, and jumping jacks for a full hour.

This guy was a former Marine Corps drill instructor and even the baddest dudes in school who were “top of the food chain bullies” didn’t fuck with him. We were fairly certain he’d killed at least a dozen men in Vietnam with his bare hands. I’m sure they were registered as lethal weapons.

On another occasion he broke up a fight, by himself, and dragged each participant to the gym…one in each hand. There he proceeded to put boxing gloves on both combatants and told them if they had that much piss and vinegar it had to be worked out. Eventually, one started to get the best of the other in this fair fight and General Patton stepped in to stop the rumble. Trouble was, the winner didn’t want to let it go. Coach said, “Okay, since you’re not done, I’LL put on the gloves and you can whip on me for a while.” He did so, donned the gloves and proceeded to quite literally beat the living daylights out of this guy. It was an ass whipping they wrote several songs about. Turns out, the coach/asst. principal/drill instructor was the former Golden Gloves Champion in the Marine Corps. That was information that would have been very useful about five minutes earlier for the bully lying in a heap on the floor.

Did you guys have a lot of fights in your high school? I had my share and remember once shoving a guy’s face through a glass trophy case. I also remember a fight between two girls that resulted in the same trophy case getting broken. That was broken up when a math teacher grabbed one of the cat fighters by the back of her bra and dragged her away.

Another time I recall trying to start some shit with a guy who liked to run his mouth, but pussed out. He was popping off and making hillbilly jokes during class. I warned him to shut the fuck up or he’d be sorry. Yeah, he was buying that. Then I offered that if he kept it up, I’d take care of him in the hallway after class. Still with the smart remarks. By the time that class ended I was worked up into a healthy lather and was out looking for a fight. I saw the guy at his locker went straight to him and without a word shoved him up against the wall hoping to incite retaliation. He had nothing to say other than, “Come on Buck…calm down and get over it—it was just a joke.” To quote my hip-hop friend, he was threatening my “cred.” He bent over with his head in the locker to get some books leaving me standing there. Here’s a hard, fast rule for your travels…. when you’re about to get your ass kicked; NEVER EVER take your eye off your opponent. I stepped back and kicked the locker door so hard it nearly came off its hinges, especially when it struck the side of his head. I held him there with his head wedged inside the locker door and proceeded to punch his exposed ribs as hard as I could. Three broken ribs, three days of detention---time well served.

You may wonder why I only got detention for the action. Well, the aforementioned drill instructor apparently liked my style. He didn’t like people having to take needless shit from spoiled rich pussies. Make no mistake; broken rib boy was rich…and a pussy. We got hauled into Sgt. Slaughter’s office and were forced to stand at attention while he gave us a lecture that would have made R. Lee Emery proud. He told me fighting was not condoned in the school or in society in general, therefore I deserved punishment and would spend three days in an isolated room. However, upon hearing my story and the fact that pussy boy didn’t want to fight, he was inclined to go easy on me and even said, from about an inch from the victim’s face, that he was nothing more than a spoiled pussy and that he was free to go home for the day to let his mamma change his panties. I’m pretty sure the guy was on the verge of tears.

I’m looking forward to the 20th reunion and I’m sure those stories will be retold over ice cold beer and we’ll laugh at pussies from the Class of ’86.

Buck Out