1/24/2003
Are Ya Hurt?
My son’s 8th-Grade Social Studies class is learning about Dr. Martin Luther King and the 1960s Civil Rights Movement. Today’s project involved interviewing parents to find out how they were involved in the turmoil of those emotionally charged times. “Dad, did you ever attend a civil rights demonstration?” he asked. I told him I didn’t think so, but I couldn’t be positive. I know for a fact that I attended a couple of Vietnam War protest rallies, but don’t specifically remember attending any civil rights demos. I went to the war protest rallies because it was a great excuse to get out of school early, so it’s possible that there’d been incentives to attend other protests as well. Maybe they served refreshments or something…
He also asked if I had attended an integrated school. Well, yes…eventually. But my early grade-school years were spent in a totally whitebread neighborhood. I had never personally laid eyes on a non-Caucasian until Sam Wee showed up in Mrs. Jones’s fourth grade class. In Junior High, David Buckley was the one black kid in the entire school. Everybody else was pure white.
I didn’t think about it much. My parents never cared or commented on the color of anyone’s skin. People were treated as people, regardless of their heritage. We watched Star Trek and I Spy…and it just made sense to me that the world should operate as those programs did – folks were judged on competence, not on appearance. (Well, except for that Frank Gorshin episode, but, well… that was the whole point, wasn’t it?)
We just went about our business. At the time, I was fortunate enough to be in the famed “Black Widow” Patrol in Boy Scout Troop 703. The Black Widows were the smartest, fastest, most boy-scoutin-est patrol in all of central Kansas. When the legendary John Graves was promoted to Senior Patrol Leader, I was honored to accept the position of Black Widows Patrol Leader.
Since I was the Patrol Leader, the weekly patrol meetings were held at my house. We usually discussed things like how many cans of Spam we’d need for the next campout, or why the patrol mascot was a stuffed bear (named Hiram) instead of an arachnid. When the business portion of the meeting concluded, we’d move to the exercise phase; which meant going outside to play. Sometimes we’d play football, sometimes capture the flag. But on this particular night, we decided to play “fake mugging”.
The object of the game was to polish our acting skills in preparation for the day when we’d all be famous movie stars or professional wrestlers. One boy would be designated as the “victim”. He’d casually stroll down the street, appearing to be minding his own business… until a car happened by. As the car approached, the remainder of the patrol would leap from their hiding places (behind trashcans or under shrubberies) and charge the hapless victim. Depending on the speed of the car, we had between 10 and 20 seconds to pummel our patrol-mate senseless, drop him “unconscious” into the gutter and disappear back behind the bushes.
OK, so it’s a stupid game. But for some reason, we derived great amusement from it. Most times, the drivers would continue on by as if they hadn’t noticed. We assumed that they were simply too old to be able to see what we were doing (you know… over 30), so we didn’t mind when they did that. But our enjoyment came from the cars who would slow down and take a good long look. If they slowed significantly, we figured we had fooled them. Yea, us! We’re such great performers – we pulled it off!
Tommy J. VanderBloeman got the nod to go as the next victim. He started the stroll, perhaps trying just a bit too hard to sell his nonchalance, but well within believability. When the next car approached, I was among the first to reach Tommy J., and I began whaling away with fake punches to the head and stomach.
About the time the other boys arrived to help me finish him off, the car slammed on its brakes. The passenger door popped open and a huge guy jumped out. “Are ya hurt?” he shouted. “Are ya hurt, boy?”
We took off running. So did the erstwhile Samaritan. Hot on our feet, the guy kept yelling, “Are ya hurt?” We ran right past our hidey bushes, and just kept going.
I’ll confess that I really have no idea what this helpful EMT-wannabe really looked like. He could have been wearing a dress or a clown suit for all I knew. The important thing was to keep running, cuz he was just about close enough to grab me.
Even though Tommy J. had been flat on the ground when the car stopped, he had already flown past me and disappeared. The other guys had vanished as well…it was just me and the hot breath of Mr. Urgent-Care right on my neck. “Are ya hurt, boy?!!!”
Running with the speed of pure, unreasoning panic, I managed to stay ahead of him. For reasons beyond my ability to think rationally, I ended up going all the way around the house, and back out into the street where the car was still idling. Sure as hell didn’t want to go there, so I turned and headed for Herbert the Pervert’s back yard.
My pursuer was laughing by now. He’d put a much bigger scare into us with one simple loop around the house than we’d been able to accomplish for anyone else, throughout an entire evening of muggings. His fun concluded, the guy jumped back into the car and drove off on down the street.
A few minutes later when my patrol-mates rematerialized from behind various shrubs, we took a moment to verify that no one had actually soiled himself. Then we took a vote that resulted in the declared end of exercise period, followed by adjournment back into the house for refreshments… and, of course, swapping of stories about our narrow escape from the scary mugger-chasing madman.
Wandering into the house laughing, we came upon my older sister, who was standing in the hallway with a worried look on her face. “You gotta watch this on TV,” she said. Her serious tone subdued our adrenaline, and each of the Scouts filed into the family room to stare at the tube.
As a group, we watched the news reports about the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. We may not have been following the intimate details of recent civil rights events, especially if they were happening somewhere other than the heartland…but we all knew of Dr. King and his messages of non-violent protests in the name of equality for all. When they said that they thought his murderer had been a white male, the room got very quiet.
Now, you may think that boys who are stupid enough to play the “fake mugging” game would probably be shallow in other areas as well, but I disagree. What followed was a very thoughtful discussion among a group of articulate kids. We concluded that this event would definitely set back the cause of racial understanding. We understood that it could be a catalyst for long-held hatreds to turn violent. We grasped the concept that we, as white boys from suburbia, would likely be tainted with peripheral guilt associations – just because we were the same color as the stupid bastard that pulled the trigger.
I lost some of my optimism that night. I had thought that the open-minded age portrayed by Star Trek was just over the horizon, but now, well…
Sigh. We were right, of course. In 2003, the struggle for equality is far from over. And when someone talks to me about the civil rights movement, I still instantly recall that 60’s night and its association with that simple, three-word phrase. When the question was asked, “Are ya hurt?” I heard an entire nation say, “Yes, we are”.
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