Heavy hands Brutal feet

The wheels in the tidy little recess machine

Recess was fun once

Back in school

You know that school that they went to

Not so fun for me that recess thing

With that recess lady

With her recess whistle and stern shouts

Stop that!

Recess was the place where they lurked

The shining ones

Having the new shoes and well styled looks

With recess lady beguiling personalities

Sharp wit and evil words Heavy hands brutal feet

And willing followers

Oh yesss the followers

The wheels in the tidy little recess machine

Chewing away at the resolve to make it through another day

Recess was fun once…for you maybe

Not so much for me.

Chris McQueeney 2/28/12  10:12 PM

Who among you were afraid to go out on the playground as a child? Did tetherball ever turn into a nightmare for you, the twirling ball of death? Were you ever chased down and beaten by the students you were forced to spend your days with? Did you dread the places that others had fun with, because you knew that you probably were going to be tortured by the kids that smelled that your life was already hard enough?

That is it, I think; the dirty little bastards could smell the torment I was going through. And like animals they would pounce. I went through years of almost daily torment in school, before school, during school, and after school. Let’s focus on recess. I was the typical picked on kid, socially awkward, short, skinny, and had huge ears. Perfect target!

I think in the long run the emotional abuse that was piled on me was much more destructive in my life than the physical, I’ll explain why. Every confrontation started with words. The name calling, incessant stream of catcalls and hurtful descriptions were the intro. I could pull out the laundry list and go into detail on what they said, but I don’t need to; you can provide them for yourself, either you heard them said to another, said to you, or you were the one doing the calling. Early on this was followed by the physical assault.

I said I would tell you why the verbal was worse than the physical, here’s why. I may have been short and skinny, but I was no easy meat. I could fight, and fight well. They could smell that I was tormented, but they didn’t have the ability to know that it had created in me the capacity to endure a lot of physical pain in times of anger without feeling it. What would happen is they would start to hit me and the next thing I knew I had hurt them, sometimes badly.

I got in a lot of trouble for defending myself.  And the smart bully’s learned that they could only use the taunting; if they had disposable followers they would use them against me, but even that got less and less. The words continued well into high school and they left their mark.

The reason recess was so hard was there was no escape…and the teachers did nothing about it. I went to Lincoln Elementary school in Nampa Idaho. I will write, and have written about things that happened to me there. People should know what went on, what that school created….

Note to the reader: this happened to me a long time ago, I am not a victim of this anymore. I grew up and had challenges due to my life experiences but I survived and know now that the world is not out to get me, at least not in this sense. I am now an adult, a father, and a man. No longer am I the wounded child without a defender.

Chris McQueeney  3/1/2012    12:08 AM

Last night I was at another poet's blog and his poem sparked this in me. The subject matter in my poem and story in no way reflect the content or intent  of  his work, or his blog. Brian at Waystationone is a very skilled poet and writer. The posts of his that I have read, having only found his blog in the last few months, have been well worth my time. Here is a link to the post that inspired this piece, Off the wall is its name.