Rand Unwrapped (13 page)

“The creeps are coming out of the woodwork. I'm surrounded!”

The Invid Invasion - Episode 1

One thing I can't stand is a bully. Bullying is abusive treatment by another person that can be through physical force, verbal abuse or both. While I worked on
The New Generation
, I couldn't help but think of the Invid as a bunch of bullies. They almost always attacked in numbers, were large in size and formidable but could easily be dispatched when challenged. The Invid, to me, were a despicable bunch that reminded of many people that I had met in my past.

When I was a small Italian child growing up in Long Island, New York there were plenty of bullies to go around. Bullies back then, appeared in all the usual places including the playground at school, when you were hanging out around your neighborhood or at your neighborhood public pool. Back then there was no internet, satellite television or computer games. When I got home from school, I usually did some homework, then hopped on my bike, out the front driveway and was off to play with whoever else might be out there. Social activities were not structured in any way. You just went out, looked around and kind of made it up as you went along. All I knew was at a certain time I had to be home for dinner. That was it. This was my understanding of how children met and played until I had children of my own. I remember, the first time I got a call for my daughter, who was five or six at the time, from a parent regarding her availability for what was called a
play date.
The mom on the line said something like, “Chloe would like to know if your daughter is available for a play date?” When the mom said this to me, two things went through my mind. First I wish my wife had picked up the phone instead of me and secondly, what the hell was a
play date
? Well, my wife later informed me that a play date was supervised play. What that meant was that your kid went to some other kid's house or visa versa and
played
under the watchful eye of a parent or baby sitter. Everything was planned including what the children would do, what they would eat if snacks were included and when the play period would begin and end. The end of a play date was usually when one of the parents arrived and picked the visiting child up. During the pick up period the hosting parent would be required to carry on some form of inane small talk with the “picking up parent” as they would sporadically call out, “Time to go home now Chloe… time for your ballet lessons.” or something like that. As a parent, I hated to do play dates, because of the pick up and drop off banter. I never felt comfortable with the conversations which ranged from what lessons their child was taking to where they would attend college. Now remember, that these children were not even five years old and their parents were talking about what college they would attend. So, whenever I could, I skipped the play date thing and left it to my wife. I never could get wrapped around the idea of having to arrange and supervise every minute of a child's play. I thought that there were some things they had to learn on their own. I felt then and now, that such supervised activities would result in the raising a generation of social misfits incapable of human contact.

When I was the age my daughter was when she got the play date call, I was out playing on the streets without the constant supervision of my parents. We can debate whether or not this was wise parenting but that's the way it was. Out of that unsupervised play
environment I learned how to communicate with other children and more importantly how to problem solve without constant parent supervision. I made and ended my own play dates. I had to be able to think quickly on my feet and not wait around for someone to make the decisions for me. Back then, when it came to bullies, you weren't abused on the internet or by cell phone texts. When you were bullied back then, you were usually on your own and all of it was done to you face to face. It was often like the wild west and at any moment you could find yourself surrounded by a whole posse of bullies.

Now, even as a child, I had never been one to walk away from a confrontation. My parents were both from the Little Italy section of New York City. This was the lower East Side of Manhattan, a rough and tumble place to grow up and whatever they learned, they acquired from the streets and even though I grew up in Long Island a lot of the New York street thing rubbed off. They taught me always to be respectful to others and to honor my commitments. That's something that's always stayed with me over the years. But, they also taught me not to be afraid to stand up for what I believed in and not to let anyone, especially a bully, push me around. Now I didn't go around looking for fights but I always figured that the best defense was a good offense. This meant that if I found myself in a tight situation, I had to
act
rather than
react.
I wanted the bully to be thinking about what I was going to do rather than what they were going to do to me.

I put this into practice one summer afternoon when I was eight or nine years old at the public pool. My mom always bought me a pool pass for the public pool every summer. It wasn't near my house but close enough to get there by bike. I rode my bike there and then chained it near the front entrance on a bike rack. The public pool was actually a combination of three pools including a diving pool which was really deep with boards, a swimming pool that had a three-foot shallow end and a deep end and a shallow small pool which we all called the “baby pool” for the young kids. They should have called it the “piss pool” because all the little ones went to the bathroom in it. The public pool was a cool place to hang out in the summer and see all the kids that you would see in school during the school term. It also had a very symbolic meaning for me. It was the place that I learned how to swim for the first time. Now, I don't want you to think that I had a pretty college girl swim instructor who took me into the deep water a little at a time. It just wasn't that way. I learned to swim all by myself and I did it the hard way. There was always that peer pressure from my friends to do things I really didn't want to do. They were constantly challenging me to climb the highest of the three diving boards that were part of the diving pool. They all said I was afraid to climb up the ladder and dive. But the truth was, I didn't mind going up the very tall ladder. The problem was I couldn't really swim. No, the truth was that I couldn't swim at all. I was able to fake it in the other pool because the water wasn't too deep. I could hop along with my feet on the bottom or cling along the side. But the diving pool was another story. You just climbed up there and dove in. It was really deep and you couldn't put your feet on the bottom to hold you up. So, they kept on pressuring me to go up to the top of the diving board and cannon ball off the top. One summer afternoon I found myself climbing up the chrome ladder and standing on the top of the tallest diving board looking down at what seemed like a thousand people all staring at me. I was frozen with fear but I knew I couldn't go back down that ladder without getting a whole lot of crap for it. I walked slowly toward the edge of the diving board and stepped off. A second later I splashed down and felt myself sinking deeper than I wanted to. But the bubbles that surrounded me kind of pushed me back up toward
the surface. Before I knew it, I was on the top and not very far from the chrome ladder that you grabbed to get out of the pool. A few pumps of my arms and legs and was climbing up that ladder. My heart was pounding like crazy but I never let anyone know it. It wasn't beating because I was scared. It was beating because I was so excited that I had learned how to swim. I wanted to shout it out to the world, but I couldn't. I just walked away from the pool and quietly sat down on my towel. It was one of the most exciting days of my life. Another day, wasn't so exciting.

There were also days, that I went to the community pool alone. It was on a late summer afternoon after a day of swimming and I was on my way home. I had just finished wrapping the chain around the seat of my bike. I was getting ready to take off when I was approached by what we used to call
big kids.
I didn't know who they were which meant that they didn't go to my school. There were three of them and they were taking a very long look at me and more importantly my bike. Now, my bike wasn't fancy with bells and streamers. It was a simple smaller two-wheeler with no fenders with a chain and lock wrapped underneath the seat. The handlebars had grips that you could take off and then hide stuff inside the chrome bar. It was not a fancy bike but it was my cyclone and no one was going to mess with it. On that day, these three big kids approached me – two in front and one in back of me. I remember thinking, there's always one in the back of you and that's the one you've got to watch out for. The other two in front were just window dressing. It was the one in the back that was going to jump me. I also remember thinking, where the hell is a cop when you need one? Just then, the tallest of the two in front got in my face, “Hey punk, you got any money on you? I got right back in his face and said, “No… and even if I did, I wouldn't give it to a stupid prick like you.” That wise-ass reply was more about getting myself psyched than pissing them off. I was scared but I figured if I could piss them off,
that
was a good thing because it would throw them off their game. The downside of that was that if they really got pissed off and caught me, they would beat the crap out of me for sure. But everything's got its good and bad points. Am I right? The truth was I had a dollar stuffed inside my handle bar and there was no way I was going to give it to those three ass holes. Then the tallest one in front of me got up even closer and grabbed my handle bar with one hand while the one in the back of me closed in. He said, “Then I'm
takin
your piece of shit bike!” Before he could make good on that promise, I pushed my bike backward really hard and sprang loose of his grip and as an added bonus, my rear tire got the kid in back of me square in the balls. He crunched over in agony. I figured forget about him, he's done all I had to do was deal with the two in front of me. That was a spring forward, right through the two of them. The big tall kid grabbed my shirt and ripped it, but it was too late. I was gone. I never felt my little legs pump so fast. The big kid screamed after me something like “Wait till I find you – you little ass hole!” Speeding away, I screamed something back like, “You know where I'll be dickless – at your house
fucking
your mother!” Please don't think ill of me. I know those were harsh words for an eight year old but I remembered my older brother saying that once and thought it was a good comeback. Maybe Errol Flynn wouldn't have said anything like that but I wanted those big kids to know if they tried to take my bike again I was going to make them work for it. I didn't go back to the pool for a few days and figured I'd let things cool off and when I finally did return, I didn't go alone because I was really worried about them catching up with me and really letting me have it. But after a few
days, I did go back with a few of my cousins and my older friend Ray. The three bullies were nowhere to be found. The rest of the summer went by without incident and I was really happy about that. If you three
big kids
that were there at the pool that day (now adults) read this book and remember the incident, I was the little Italian kid with the bike. Sorry for what I said about your mother. I was really scared and it just blurted out. And if you were that big kid in back of me, sorry about the
wiener slam
with my bike tire but you were sneaking up behind me. It was kind of your fault. I also learned a lesson that day, that's it's okay to run away when the odds are mounted against you. You can always come back and fight another day.

Episode #4 – “Survival” of The New Generation
is a case in point. The characters were grossly outnumbered and the Invid had the tactical advantage. The script rightly had our characters retreat into the woods to safety with the understanding that when the situation improved that they would return to the fight. What I used to connect to these scenes where the Invid were closing in from all directions and the idea that the odds weren't with me at that moment. The right decision was to run, get out of danger, regroup and then fight them again. This was a clear case of the bullies having the upper hand and sometimes they do. By walking away, you can perhaps learn something more that will help you the next time around. In
Survival
the group learns tactical information that the Invid can track them by sensing their power cells when they are turn powered on. By the end of the episode, the Invid of course are dispatched and the group survives. My disdain for bullies continued through childhood, into my college years. However, sometimes the universe takes care of bullies on its own.

I remember the first few months of graduate school when I first moved to Hawaii. I was truly a fish out of water moving from New York, an urban environment to Hawaii, which was a tropical wonderland. The rules that applied in New York seemed out of step with the low-key island life style. For example, taking your shoes off when you entered someone's house. That was something I never did in New York especially in the summer time. That was something you wouldn't do in back east. You just wipe your feet if you can and walk in. Not so in Hawaii, at the front of most doors in Hawaii homes you will see shoes (really sandals) all lined up at the front door. This simple practice highlighted the disconnect between the two places. Hawaii also had a mellow laid back life style, which was the exact opposite of New York that was very driven. To add to the mix, I too was very driven in those days and wanted to “get it done” whatever it was as fast and as simple as possible. Maybe too fast which is one reason that many locals were not too crazy about people from the mainland. They felt that we were rude and lacked the civility of island life. In many ways they were right. A lot of tourists that came to the islands were on vacation and sometimes behaved badly. Locals are called
kama'aina,
which meant that you were a long time resident. I on the other hand, was thought of as a
haole,
a foreigner and Caucasian. I think the fact that I wasn't a tourist made it worse because I didn't go back home after ten days. I lived there and was thought of as a reason why the island was getting more commercialized and overcrowded. It was actually a learning experience for me to be considered a minority. I learned what it was like to be on the downside of prejudice. You learn that some people buy into it and treat you poorly and then there are others that are just wonderful to be around. I truly did understand the source of this prejudice and really made an effort to be a good citizen in the island community.
However, even if your intentions are well placed, not everyone is going to give you a break.