Big G and the Little Lenny Roll
Hey Kids! It’s another heartwarming tale from my idyllic 1970s childhood!
Part 1: Big G
It’s no surprise to me that of all my Medium articles, one of the most popular is Lessons From My Grandmother, my no holds barred, hard-hitting tribute to my paternal grandma. “Big G” (as my brothers and I called her) was certainly a larger-than-life character and if you’ve read the article you fucking-A know that’s shit’s true.
But what you may not know is how her relentless barrage of dogmatic beliefs, unremitting lectures and wholesale suspicions toward the human race made me the man I am today back when I was eight years old.
My First Lesson in Litigation
Big G wasn’t a lawyer, she was a real estate agent, but she sure as hell had the mind of a legal scholar — especially when it came to how the law could unfairly fuck her over. Because she was a realtor, her specialty was premises liability law in personal injury tort.
When I was eight, Big G warned me that if someone slipped and fell on our property we could be held responsible for their injuries — and it didn’t matter whether we gave the person permission to be on our property or not. Wow. That didn’t seem…fair.
Then Big G hit me with the most terrifying part: the way we would be held responsible. That’s when I first learned about suing, a magical process adults used to punish each other — the grownup version of being grounded or having your allowance taken away.
While it may not have clarified all the complex and convoluted legal principles my eight-year-old brain struggled to comprehend, the relatable way Big G explained it did put the fear of God into me.
“Imagine, if someone makes you pay for their mistake by taking your allowance.”
“But I don’t get an allowance.”
“Exactly. And you never will if you get sued.”
My Second Lesson in Litigation
Less than a year after she indelibly branded my psyche with her signature exhortation to trust no living man and walk carefully around the dead ones, Big G further scandalized me with a crash course in being sued. It was simple, brutal and devastating.
Someone who fell and hurt themselves on our property could hire a “shyster” who would use a “lawsuit” to take our stuff and give it to the injured person. Simple. What stuff of ours could the shyster take? Anything and everything. Brutal. Our money, our car, our furniture, even our house. Devastating. Our house?! Where would I live if a shyster took our house?
Please, No More Lessons in Litigation
I went into a panic. If someone were to simply fall inside or outside our house — just like I had done lots of times — every single thing we had could be taken away. No more money, no more food, no more toys, no more house.
I could not let that happen. I would not let that happen. Big G was entrusting me to help guard what was ours from the shysters and “opportunistic” people out to get us.
I was not about to let her down.
Part 2: The Little Lenny Roll
We didn’t call him “Little Lenny” because he was little, although he was smaller than most nine-year-olds. He was Little Lenny because his dad was “Big Lenny.” The “little” and “big” were used in place of Sr. and Jr. Of course, the irony was lost on no one that “Big” Lenny too was small, around 5' 7".
Given an audience, Little Lenny would spin all sorts of fantastical yarns spotlighting his astounding abilities and achievements. He even invented his own knot, The Crazy Knot, which, in the ensuing years, became known simply as The Little Lenny Knot. Little Lenny also had a battery of supposed afflictions including tiny tubes that had been surgically implanted in his ear canals (the reasons for which I have long since forgotten), endless allergies and an asthma condition — all of which elicited curiosity and sympathy from us kids.
Pace Yourself Before You Race Yourself
Summer 1975 was the inaugural Douglas Street Olympics (actually, it was the only Douglas Street Olympics). We kids in the cul-de-sac held contests of running, jumping, throwing, and bike riding with gold spray-painted margarine-loving tubs going to the winner of each event. (My family ate a lot of margarine preparing for those Olympics.)
Little Lenny signed up for the long-distance run, five laps around the cul-de-sac to the finish line. The contestants took their places at the starting line.
On your mark…Get set…GO!
Immediately, Little Lenny took the lead, likely as a display bravado to prove he could run faster than any of us. But this was a marathon, not a sprint, and Little Lenny had not paced himself. On his second lap, he was running in the middle of the pack. By the next half-turn, he’d fallen to the rear. And as he entered his third lap, he was dead last.
At that point, Little Lenny began hyperventilating. Staggering to a stop, he bent forward at the waist resting his hands on his knees. He was gasping for air and could no longer run. Making a heroic effort, he managed to stumble another yard or two before he collapsed. Everybody rushed to his aid.
“Where’s his inhaler?!”
“Hang in there, Little Lenny, you’re gonna be all right!”
“Find his inhaler!!!”
I was across the street when I saw him hit the concrete. He was all flippin’ and floppin’ around like a fish out of water. I knew immediately this was serious.
One Boy’s Call to Action
In the pandemonium what everyone failed to notice, everyone that is but me, little Lenny keeled over right onto my driveway. Immediately I began channeling the premises liability law and personal injury tort lectures Big G subjected me to three years prior.
I hauled ass across the street to my house. On the way, my mind went to work running every potential litigious trajectory pursuable by Little Lenny’s parents against mine. I knew if he suffered a serious injury, including death, on our property, he (or more likely his parents since Little Lenny was only nine years old) would have legal grounds to hire a shyster, sue my family and take our house.
By the time I joined the crowd, they’d located his inhaler. Little Lenny wrapped his lips around it, pressed and filled his lungs with a restorative breath.
I asserted my way into the center of the throng and sized up the situation. Yep, Little Lenny was squarely on my property. While his convulsions began to subside, he was still ostensibly incapacitated. I wasn’t a doctor; I couldn’t help him medically. But I could prevent any further damage from being done.
So I cleared a path through my friends and then, without the slightest hesitation, rolled Little Lenny off my property and onto the public sidewalk.
Was There Blowback?
Of course, there was blowback.
All the other kids lit into me.
“What’s wrong with you?!”
“He’s having an asthma attack!”
“Why’d you do that to him!?”
Easy for them to say, it wasn’t their homes in jeopardy. Had the tables been turned and I was rolling Little Lenny off one of their driveways they’d have been thanking me.
Truth be told, I didn’t care if they thought I was insensitive or not because I didn’t buy Little Lenny’s asthma charade for one second. I had a friend at school, Ronald, who had asthma and he never went into convulsions. I even accompanied him to the school nurse’s office once when his inhaler wasn’t working. He had great trouble breathing, but I didn’t have to roll him into the street.
That fact is Little Lenny was running dead last in the marathon and he knew there was no way he could win. So he hit the ground, faked a seizure and the next thing you knew he had everybody making a fuss over him and no one cared about the race anymore — the race he was losing.
But thanks to Big G, I knew what was really at stake. Her distrust of humanity and penchant for proselytizing prepared me to act in a moment of calamity to save our family home.
The Legacy of Big G’s Legal Lessons
It’s been over four decades since The Little Lenny Roll. Those who were there that day still talk about it. And those who weren’t there still wish they had been. The intervening decades of wild west litigation have all but vindicated my actions. If someone can sue McDonald’s because the hot coffee’s hot and receive a jury award of nearly $3 million in punitive damages, why wouldn’t you roll some kid off your property? I mean just to be on the safe side, right?
Not only do I have zero doubt I did the right thing back then but you know what? I’d do it again — especially now that I’m a homeowner. If anyone on my property hits the floor for any reason, I will not hesitate for one single second to roll that person right out into the street. I’ll be goddamned if I’m gonna lose my house because some inattentive friend or family member can’t tell the difference between an open sliding glass door and a closed sliding glass door.
I’ll be forever grateful to Big G for having the sagacity to know that an 11-year-old is better served by a skeptical eye than a gullible nature. I know she’s looking down (or up) at me, filled with pride that 46 years later I still trust no living man and walk carefully around the dead ones.
Check out all the other pies I have my fingers in…
© 2021 M. K. Jackson
