King Of The Playground
Sixth grade was a really rough year for me. It was the year it clicked that my family situation was very different from my friends. It was the year that I was forced to address, or at least begin addressing, the anger I felt every day towards my dad. I was forced to sit down and start understanding why I was upset.
But in the sixth grade, I was angry and I felt like I had to let the world know. My mouth that landed me in the most trouble. Hanscom Air Force Base and the fantastic state of Massachusetts gave me plenty of language learning ability. Being so close to Boston, and my many trips there, opened my eyes to a colorful palette of language that could make a sailor blush. I was in detention at least once a week, both during recess and/or after school because of my “foul” language. Two or three times a week if you include all the times I skipped detention. Skipping always ensured the detention was after school.
After school detention meant my parents were called, which led to a lecture when I got home, followed by some form of grounding me, more chores, no Xbox, or the actual worst punishment: I could not go outside of our fenced in backyard. Being stuck to the confinement of the fence meant I could not partake in Nerf wars or games of manhunt.
But, my parents never said that my friends couldn’t come into the backyard. So, for a few days, we played king of the hill in the fenced in area.
When my parents said I couldn’t have friends in the backyard, since it defeated the purpose of the punishment, I heard “Your friends can play right outside the fence.” So, our games of king of the hill changed slightly, but continued. After that, my parents ended the “no going outside the fence” punishments, replacing them with groundings and more chores that would keep me inside. I started listening for what they didn’t say, and using it to “get out” of punishments.
It never worked, and usually resulted in an extended punishment. But, if I had a dollar for every time mine and my friend’s parents told me “you should be a lawyer,” I’d have more money than a degree in law would ever earn me.
My parents knew why I acted out, but they didn’t believe in excuses. Maybe they were right, but I don’t know. They knew that I knew right from wrong, and they felt I was intentionally choosing wrong. There may be some truth to that. Some parents felt I was a bad influence. Others, like Rachael’s mom, knew where it was all coming from and was the most patient with me.
Coming home from school meant dropping my bags and eating a sleeve of Oreos before rushing back outside. If I wasn’t in a Nerf war (one that usually consisted anywhere between 10 to 30 of us, our campaign spanning over weeks), I was at the park diagonally across the street from my house, behind the one-story garage complex and the cul-de-sac that Rachael’s house was part of. I normally joined her brother’s team during Nerf wars since they had cooler guns than I did.
Like most days, we were running around the green and tan metal bars and grey steel slides, shooting at one another while other kids sat at the top of the slides talking, playing house, or spending their time going down the slides before running around the playground to do it again. I wasn’t paying attention to my game, so I was shot in the back, giving me the perfect reason to call my opponent a “bitch-ass.” After laughing, we went right back to it without a second thought. I never noticed the girl who left the park, running to the cul-de-sac that was right across the street from my house.
A solid 15 minutes must have passed before the girl’s dad showed up.
“Hey, you!” He yelled. We all stopped running, diving, and shooting at one another and turned towards the voice.
We watched as a man who never skipped a day in the gym approached us, his grey shirt, clearly a size too small, constricted his body. He stormed towards the slide, where I sat, his face twisted in all sorts of anger.
“Who?” I asked, despite my uneasy stomach telling me exactly who. My friends backed away, sensing the same thing. My mind raced; what did I do this time?
“You!” He pointed a finger right at me, still storming my way, yelling. “We need to talk!”
“Shit,” I thought as I put down my gun, hopped off the slide, and met him halfway. Well, really about 1/4 the way, since by the time I realized it was me he was speaking to, he was already at the corner of the playground. He walked until his chest was in my face, ensuring I had to look up to speak to him.
“Yes sir?” I asked, just as my parents taught me.
“Are you out here cussing?”
I stood in silence. Was I? If I was, I certainty didn’t know it. This was around the time that swear words were becoming a very regular part of my language, so if I had sworn, I genuinely didn’t realize it. To this day, I don’t hear myself swearing when I talk.
“No sir, I haven’t.” I shook my head, being, as far as I could remember, honest.
He turned to the girl who hid on the park stairs. “This is him?” She nodded, and he turned back towards me.
“No, it is you cussing at my park!” Spit hit my face when he spat out “park.”
“What did I say?” Truly, I had no idea what this guy was talking about. I was just out there having fun with my friends.
“You called someone a ‘bitch-ass.’” It clicked, and I remembered the dart to my back from someone who was supposed to be on my team but had been a spy the whole time. Surely that couldn’t have prompted such a reaction from him. “Get off my park, now.”
He didn’t yell that last part. He ordered it like he were a drill sergeant.
“No.” I scoffed. “It isn’t your park.”
“It sure as hell isn’t yours,” he said, taking a step closer to me, my neck craning up that much more. “Now get the fuck off my park!”
“But it isn’t yours, it’s everyone's.” I was shaking. I’d been spoken to sternly and cussed at before, but never yelled and cussed at like this, let alone by some random douchebag.
“Everyone includes me. Now get the fuck out of here before I call the cops.”
That did it. I already had one run-in with the police, which led to meeting with DSS earlier that year and was not looking for another round. I walked home, head down, hands clenched in fists as tears ran down my face. I was confused. What prompted such a visceral reaction from this man? He clearly had no issue with cussing. Surely what I said couldn’t have ticked him off this much.
“And don’t you dare come back here!”
When I got home, I told my babysitter, Rosemary, what happened. We then told my stepdad, who told my mom, and all of them told me “Ignore and don’t listen to him. He doesn’t own the park. Also, watch your language.”
My mom, who worked for the FBI at the time, explained to me that no cop in the world was going to waste their time kicking some foul-mouthed kid off a park, let alone Hanscom’s security forces. It would be a waste of time, resources, and most importantly, energy. If security forces didn’t have to move, they weren’t going to.
She also explained that if he touched me, I could call the cops and that they would care way more about that than some “bad words.” Really, I had nothing to worry about.
She also told me, despite the “watch your language” comment, that I could tell him to “fuck off.” I had permission to say it just this once. I practiced saying in the mirror that night, knowing I was going to go back to the park. It wasn’t just because I wanted to instigate, it was genuinely because I wanted to hang out with my friends and believed no one could order someone to leave public property. But, the idea of instigating made me giddy. The snow that turned into slush by spring’s warmth had finally dried up. The weather was perfect. There was no way in hell I wasn’t going to the park.
The next day at school my friends asked all the details, since only a few watched me get booted off the park. Word spreads fast. I remember feeling like some biblical character as everyone asked what happened. I was David facing Goliath. I retold the story, ending it with “I’m going back. He doesn’t own the park. He can’t tell me what the fuck to do!”
After school and my sleeve of Oreos, I did what I said would and went back to the park. I met up with Rachael and a small group (although larger than the day before) of friends, sitting at the highest point of the playground, next to the grey metal slide. The second I stepped onto the park, the same girl who hid behind the stairs the day before ran towards the cul-de-sac. I was fishing, and it took just a few minutes to get a bite.
“Seriously?” Goliath yelled, approaching the park. We all glanced at him before turning back to our conversation. I don’t remember what it was, I just remember being nervous and excited.
“Get down here, now,” He demanded, standing at the bottom of the slide. Grinning, I walked across the whole playground, across the monkey bars, and to the stairs before circling around the playground, the long way, to meet him at the slide. He yelled “Hey!” and “Get over here now!” as he followed me around the park, trying to get my attention. It took more focus than I thought it would have to ignore him. I wonder what he thought when we ended up at the slide.
“Yeah?” It was monotone and emotionless, just as I taught myself.
“Did you think I was joking? Did you think I wasn’t serious about you returning?” He bellowed.
“I thought you meant for the day,” I said, knowing damn well what he really meant. My body trembled.
“Well, I didn’t,” he said, his tone dropping to the oddly calm one my stepdad would answer in after I asked a dumb question. “So, leave.”
“No. You don’t own the park.”
“I don’t care, I told you not to come back.” He was slowly raising his voice.
“I’m not leaving.” I meant it. I was not leaving with my tail tucked between my legs again. “Why can’t your daughter go somewhere else?”
That was the wrong thing to ask.
He pointed a finger centimeters from the bridge of my nose. “If you don’t get your ass off this god damn park, I’m going to drag you off of it!” Spit flew from the red-faced man as he yelled, showering my forehead.
I stood still and didn’t say anything. Despite being on the verge of shitting myself, I only stared at him with, what I like to imagine, was a blank expression.
“Leave!” He screamed into my face. “Get off of my park!”
“It isn’t your fucking park!” I yelled back, getting into his face and surprising myself with the sudden courage I’d found. “The base owns it, not you!” Cussing at him led to him stepping so close to me I had to crane my neck 90 degrees to see Goliath’s puffed-up, vein-popping, red face of absolute rage. Part of me really hoped he put his hands on me. I was waiting for it.
“I don’t give a shit who owns the park,” he hissed. Once again, his saliva rained on my forehead. “I’m telling you to leave and not come back. You don’t get to be a bad influence around my daughter. Now leave, you little asshole!”
Something about being called an asshole by an adult hit me like a freight train. I stood in silence, trying to force myself to say the two magic words I had been given the permission to use. Instead, all that came out was a quiet “No.” Who calls a kid an asshole? I thought you were supposed to call them lawyers.
“If you don’t leave right now, I-”
“You need to leave him alone!”
We both turned to see who had jumped into what was surely about to become Ent Road’s own Elah Valley. A few yards from the playground was Rachael’s mom, making her way towards the man and me. Like a guardian from the heavens, she appeared out of nowhere in my time of need.
“Orion, go play,” she said in a calm and motherly tone as she took my spot in front of the man, just as close to him as I had been.
I backed away from him, eyes locked with his, shooting him a grin as I stepped towards the slide, and he began backpedaling. Suddenly, he couldn’t yell or cuss anymore. Suddenly, he could speak like an “adult.”
The only words I caught during the arm waving, pointing, and glaring in my direction were “cops,” “assault,” a “I am not defending his language, I am defending him from you” and, loudly, something along the lines of “if she doesn’t like it, then your daughter can go play elsewhere.”
And a very loud “You don’t own the park, asshole.”
I didn’t hear a single word from the man who had the stomach to yell and cuss at a kid, but not the rest of the guts to keep that energy with an adult. Maybe he worried about his image; how would it look if he were yelling in a woman’s face versus a boy’s face?
I don’t remember too much after my savior arrived. I remember the man stormed off while his daughter stayed at the park. I remember Rachael’s mom making sure that I was alright, assuring me that I wasn’t in any trouble.
“You didn’t do anything wrong,” she told me. “You did what all kids do when they’re away from adults; try to speak like one.”
I knew that was a fact. Her three sons, whose ages ranged, but all younger than me, cussed like sailors when away from their mom. Everyone I knew used completely different language when away from adults. It’s what kids do.
When Rachael’s mom went inside, we started a game of manhunt. When the man’s daughter asked if she could join, for a split second, I wanted to tell her to fuck off. I think we all did. I wanted to ask, mockingly, if she would get her daddy when she lost or heard more cussing. I really wanted her to go somewhere else with the headache she caused.
But, that isn’t what I did. Instead, with everyone else, she ran off to find a hiding spot while I began counting down from 60.
