Birmingham. I saw something shocking. I was in a parking lot when I saw two young men fighting. They were mid-twenties. They were screaming. Their shirts were torn. They were rolling on the ground, kicking each other. They were bleeding.
Sean Dietrich (Photo courtesy of seandietrich.com)
There was a crowd of onlookers. Someone threatened to call the cops. But the two young men were too busy mauling each other to care.
“Stop this!” a young woman cried.
And I felt helpless.
Our world is full of fighting people right now. Not metaphorically, but worse, digitally. Right now, people want to hurt each other. People want to win. People want to be right.
I learned how to fight as a boy. I come from blue-collar men who believed in using their fists. I was taught at a young age how to execute an uppercut and a left-hand jab. I was schooled on the necessity of violence by rough-handed men who said asserting oneself was the only way to defend against an indifferent world.
But I don’t believe this. In fact, I couldn’t disagree more.
I once got roped into a fight with DJ Newman in the fifth grade after he accused me of cheating at tetherball.
I kindly informed DJ that he was full of a substance common to barnyards and hogpens. Whereupon DJ announced that, when school was finished, he was going to remove my head and deposit it into a well-known orifice of my body.
DJ was an enormous fifth-grader who looked like he could have played fullback on an average SEC wishbone offense. So for the rest of the school day I was a wreck.
So, I faked the flu in hopes of getting sent home. The school nurse, Miss Albertson, who also taught my Sunday school class, knew something was wrong with me.
I told her about how DJ Newman said he was going to smear my backside on the asphalt like the abdomen of a deceased lightning bug.
She thought about this, then said, “That’s very serious. What’re you gonna do about DJ?”
“Well, I was hoping you’d send me home.”
“But that’s only a temporary solution. DJ will still be here when you get back.”
She made a good point. So I asked her to send me home until college.
“I’m not going to send you home,” she said. “You’re going to deal with this in a grown-up way. By playing possum.”
That’s what all our little elderly Sunday school teachers called turning the other cheek. “Playing possum.” This was part of our lessons growing up. We even sang a cute song that went with the lesson.
“When someone picks on me,
“And we both disagree,
“Play possum! Play possum!
“And turn the other cheek…”
It’s a cute theory, but the truth is it’s not practical. Even possums do not “play possum.” That’s a myth.
Zoologists have recently discovered that when a possum is threatened by a predator, it enters into an involuntary state known as thanatosis, or “tonic immobility.” This is a state of deep paralyzation.
Possums aren’t “playing” anything. A possum’s body completely shuts down. A possum’s eyes glaze over, it drops to the ground, stops breathing, quits functioning, then discharges its bowels.
So if I was understanding this old woman correctly, she was advising me to lie still on the pavement and evacuate in my pants in a convincing manner.
“No,” she clarified. “That’s not what I’m saying.”
Then she sang the little jingle again.
And so it was, after school, DJ Newman found me outside on the tetherball court. I followed that wise woman’s advice.
DJ came at me. He struck me once. Twice. Three times. I took every punch he threw. I never hit back. He started slapping me and laughing. I just stood there and waited for him to quit, but he didn’t. He kept kicking and throwing punches. My lips were bloody. My eye was black.
Finally, his tough demeanor broke. He asked whether I was soft in the head. He asked why any idiot would passively let someone hurt them without punching back.
And in a moment of brief clarity, I started singing, “When someone picks on me, and we both disagree…”
DJ started crying. So help me. He actually started crying. And then he disappeared.
I was sent to the school nurse again. She dabbed my bloody mouth with a rag and there were tears in her eyes, too. She hugged and kissed me and said she was proud of me. Then, and only then, did I confide in her that I needed to change my trousers.
Right now, our world has more than enough lions and tigers and bears. Maybe the old church ladies were right.
Sean Dietrich (Photo courtesy of seandietrich.com)
Sean of the South: The Fighter
By Sean Dietrich, Sean of the South
Commentary
Birmingham. I saw something shocking. I was in a parking lot when I saw two young men fighting. They were mid-twenties. They were screaming. Their shirts were torn. They were rolling on the ground, kicking each other. They were bleeding.
Sean Dietrich (Photo courtesy of seandietrich.com)
There was a crowd of onlookers. Someone threatened to call the cops. But the two young men were too busy mauling each other to care.
“Stop this!” a young woman cried.
And I felt helpless.
Our world is full of fighting people right now. Not metaphorically, but worse, digitally. Right now, people want to hurt each other. People want to win. People want to be right.
I learned how to fight as a boy. I come from blue-collar men who believed in using their fists. I was taught at a young age how to execute an uppercut and a left-hand jab. I was schooled on the necessity of violence by rough-handed men who said asserting oneself was the only way to defend against an indifferent world.
But I don’t believe this. In fact, I couldn’t disagree more.
I once got roped into a fight with DJ Newman in the fifth grade after he accused me of cheating at tetherball.
I kindly informed DJ that he was full of a substance common to barnyards and hogpens. Whereupon DJ announced that, when school was finished, he was going to remove my head and deposit it into a well-known orifice of my body.
DJ was an enormous fifth-grader who looked like he could have played fullback on an average SEC wishbone offense. So for the rest of the school day I was a wreck.
So, I faked the flu in hopes of getting sent home. The school nurse, Miss Albertson, who also taught my Sunday school class, knew something was wrong with me.
I told her about how DJ Newman said he was going to smear my backside on the asphalt like the abdomen of a deceased lightning bug.
She thought about this, then said, “That’s very serious. What’re you gonna do about DJ?”
“Well, I was hoping you’d send me home.”
“But that’s only a temporary solution. DJ will still be here when you get back.”
She made a good point. So I asked her to send me home until college.
“I’m not going to send you home,” she said. “You’re going to deal with this in a grown-up way. By playing possum.”
That’s what all our little elderly Sunday school teachers called turning the other cheek. “Playing possum.” This was part of our lessons growing up. We even sang a cute song that went with the lesson.
“When someone picks on me,
“And we both disagree,
“Play possum! Play possum!
“And turn the other cheek…”
It’s a cute theory, but the truth is it’s not practical. Even possums do not “play possum.” That’s a myth.
Zoologists have recently discovered that when a possum is threatened by a predator, it enters into an involuntary state known as thanatosis, or “tonic immobility.” This is a state of deep paralyzation.
Possums aren’t “playing” anything. A possum’s body completely shuts down. A possum’s eyes glaze over, it drops to the ground, stops breathing, quits functioning, then discharges its bowels.
So if I was understanding this old woman correctly, she was advising me to lie still on the pavement and evacuate in my pants in a convincing manner.
“No,” she clarified. “That’s not what I’m saying.”
Then she sang the little jingle again.
And so it was, after school, DJ Newman found me outside on the tetherball court. I followed that wise woman’s advice.
DJ came at me. He struck me once. Twice. Three times. I took every punch he threw. I never hit back. He started slapping me and laughing. I just stood there and waited for him to quit, but he didn’t. He kept kicking and throwing punches. My lips were bloody. My eye was black.
Finally, his tough demeanor broke. He asked whether I was soft in the head. He asked why any idiot would passively let someone hurt them without punching back.
And in a moment of brief clarity, I started singing, “When someone picks on me, and we both disagree…”
DJ started crying. So help me. He actually started crying. And then he disappeared.
I was sent to the school nurse again. She dabbed my bloody mouth with a rag and there were tears in her eyes, too. She hugged and kissed me and said she was proud of me. Then, and only then, did I confide in her that I needed to change my trousers.
Right now, our world has more than enough lions and tigers and bears. Maybe the old church ladies were right.
Maybe what we need right now are more possums.