Fight! Fight! Those words screamed across any playground in America will bring a crowd for sure. When my family moved from Colorado to Naperville, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago, the boys there seemed much more inclined to both fight and run in gangs, something I had no experience or stomach for. Years before my coming growth spurt lead to the banana pants experience, my lot always seemed to fall that I didn’t quite fit into the hood. This time because I wore rolled up blue jeans, western shirts, and tennis shoes. The boys in Naperville wore dress pants, oxfords and leather pointed shoes. I was a perfect target to get picked on by the bullies. The worst of which in my 6th grade world was Billy Kilmer.
Billy had been intimidating me all school year; he lived in our neighborhood and was allegedly the leader of the toughest gang in school. Even worse for me was that he rode my bus and even worse than that he and I had the same bus stop. So nearly every morning he picked on me, put down my clothes, my accent. He had a gift for getting his followers to laugh at people and he especially like to get them laughing at the ‘Colorado, Kid’, (me).
Looking back on it now I can easily see that I was scared to stand up for myself, I was in unknown territory and had no concept of gangs. My older sister rode the same bus so to ad to the humiliation she would come home and tell my mother how the boys picked on me and my mother would tell my father. My father had been bullied a lot by his older brothers when he was a child and that pushed on an old wound for him. Yes, he was not too proud of my lack of manhood, the whole thing made him furious. So the fear and humiliation piled on and on.
September, October, November, December apparently four months was all I could take, something had to give and when it broke loose it surprised me perhaps more than anyone.
It was a cold January morning about a foot of snow on the ground and as usual I was carrying a little brown paper bag lunch. Right as the bus pulled up Billy thought it would be funny to grab my lunch bag from me and squish it in front of everyone bringing the usual chorus of laughter at my expense. I often wonder what it was that snapped the chains that fear had on me. Was it the constant humiliation, or the surprise of how brash and arrogant Billy was that morning? Perhaps in heaven I’ll get an instant replay to refresh my memories of the thoughts that occurred, I would love to know.
Snap! The chains broke and gang or no gang, toughest kid in school or not, BAM! I punched him right in the nose. Straight shot with all I had, it almost knocked him down and when he turned back toward me his nose was bleeding some. The school bus doors opened behind me and I hoped up the stairs like nothing had happened. Billy’s men at arms shouting, “now you’re gonna get it Dilmore”. Billy’s eyes were like flint staring me down the whole ride to school.
“When we get off the bus tonight, Dilmore you are going to die!” Billy informed me as we unloaded for school.
All that day word circled around and around, quite sure everyone in school knew how Dilmore gave Billy Kilmer a bloody nose that morning and how he was going to die when we got off the bus that day.
I will have to say its one thing to anticipate a spanking or trouble at school or walking to the principal’s office. It is quite a different story to anticipate taking on the toughest kid in school along with most of his gang. I had bitten into this apple and now I was going to have to eat it.
Sure enough as soon as the bus cleared that afternoon about thirty kids had all gotten off at our stop to watch the action and they encircled us, “Fight!, Fight, Fight!” They all screamed. Surprisingly it was just Billy and I in the ring that had been formed. I had reasoned in my mind that his nose bled easy enough so that was my target.
When the fists started flying I went for the nose the nose the nose and after four or five direct hits blood was flowing and flowing in a big way. I must have been oblivious to his punches, I was so focused that I can’t remember a one of them; I just kept pummeling his nose. I don’t think he could even see. Within minutes he was down. The snow around us crimson red, then with a fury I didn’t know I had in me, I screamed to his men at arms, “does any one else want some of this?” It was a gruesome sight with the snow and the blood it really was and just then a car drove up. It was Billy’s mom.
Before I knew what happened she had Billy in the front me in the back headed for my house. “Wait till your mother sees what you have done to my son!” I couldn’t win for losing I concluded. Billy’s mom wasn’t going to rest until she had her vengeance. WHAT NOW?
Then came my third surprise of the day, my mom was having none of Mrs. Kilmer’s stuff. With the same fervor I had gone after Billy’s nose my mother went after Billy’s mother. She let her know what it had been like for months as she heard of Billy’s bulling, ‘her’ son. How my sister had witnessed it many times and how my father had been infuriated by it. When she had her fill of that, she took after Mrs. Kilmer for not caring for her son’s bloody nose. Taking Billy herself and cleaning him up with her nursing instincts all the while berating the stunned mother for her lack of immediate care for Billy.
I would love to tell you that Billy and I became friends after that, but we didn’t. I would even hope to tell you that kids stopped picking on me, but we moved to a new city, Flint, Michigan that summer and it all started again. God did have a plan for me, so He didn’t waste my pain or Billy’s for that matter.
God had fathered me where He knew I needed it; I needed to know I have what it takes. I had to experience my own strength my own fury and the point at which fear is overcome by courage, my own courage. The understanding of knowing you are in the right and willing to fight for it, really fight for it….
Like the ‘Cowardly Lion’ I had to be cornered to the point where I would find out what I was made of. John Eldredge teaches we are made in the image of a warrior God .
“A BATTLE TO FIGHT
Christ draws the enemy out, exposes him for what he is, and shames him in front of everyone. The Lord is a gentleman??? Not if you’re in the service of his enemy. God has a battle to fight, and the battle is for our freedom. I wonder if the Egyptians who kept Israel under the whip would describe Yahweh as a Really Nice Guy? Plagues , pestilence, the death of every firstborn— that doesn’t seem very gentlemanly now, does it? What would Miss Manners have to say about taking the Promised Land? Does wholesale slaughter fit under “Calling on Your New Neighbors”? You remember that wild man, Samson? He’s got a pretty impressive masculine résumé: killed a lion with his bare hands, pummeled and stripped thirty Philistines when they used his wife against him, and finally, after they burned her to death, he killed a thousand men with the jawbone of a donkey. Not a guy to mess with. But did you notice? All those events happened when “the Spirit of the LORD came upon him” (Judges 15: 14, emphasis added).
Eldredge, John (2001-04-03). Wild at Heart: Discovering the Secret of a Man’s Soul (pp. 25-26). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.
God had brought me to a place where I would bare his image, finding my courage and experiencing that I did have what it took to defend myself in a fair fight.
This lesson has served me many, many times. One way I particularly love is as I put on the full amour from Ephesians 6: 14 “Stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth”. The truth I put on is in part the truth that I have experienced for myself. It is in the truth of knowing that when left no other option I can and will, “Fight”!
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