Intimidation

The locker room was in the basement of the school and I was trudging up a long flight of stairs. It was the winter of 1966-67 and I was leaving school after ninth grade wrestling practice. It was a normal Iowa winter, so I was bundled up for an indeterminate wait at the city bus stop; Bever Park bus, 15 cent fare. I was mentally steeling myself for the blast of cold air when I reached the top of the steps and stepped out the door.

As I made my way up the stairs I noticed there was a student at the top, slouching against the wall and peering at me intently. I knew he was a student because I’d seen him in the hallways, but didn’t know his name. He hung out with the hoods, the hoodlums of the school, a disorganized precursor to gangs that existed back in the 60’s. The school had a policy that all students had to leave within 15 minutes of the last class unless they were in an authorized after-school school program. This guy wasn’t a member of anything other than the Principal’s watch list.

It was late afternoon and most of the teachers were gone or squirreled away in their rooms. If there were any administrators left they were no longer roaming the hallways. The administrative offices were up on the second floor, and I was just making my way up out of the basement to the first floor. If there was going to be trouble there would be nobody around to hear or witness it. I was one of the last guys out of practice and out of the locker room, and the only person left behind me might be the coach.

I thought about turning around and running for the coach’s office, but that seemed cowardly and it assumed that the hood was up to no good. Maybe this was just an innocuous encounter. Maybe he was waiting for his buddies who were vandalizing something in the basement. Maybe his unauthorized presence in the school had nothing to do with me. Maybe I had prejudged him unfairly. I slogged on up the stairs, bone tired from a hard workout.

Just as I was approaching the top of the stairs he stepped out from the wall to block my path. His movement was a signal to two buddies to slip out of their hiding places around the corner and take up station beside him. These were guys I’d never seen in school before, and of a size that indicated they were well beyond the ninth grade. Actually, they looked so big, dumb, and mean that I assumed they hadn’t made it to the sixth grade, but were old enough and big enough to be out of high school.

The three of them blocked my path, so I just stopped and stood there just short of the top of the stairs. I was too tired to run, didn’t know where I would run to anyway, and couldn’t fight my way through the three of them. I decided not to speak so they couldn’t twist my words into something they could use as provocation. This was their game and it was their move. It was up to them to either state their business or make a move. I hoped their move wasn’t to stab me or push me down the stairs and kill me, which seemed real possibilities.

The original hoodlum stepped close to me, as did his two buddies, and warned me to watch myself in wrestling practice, wagging a finger in my face while doing so. Though scared to death, I tried to look impassive and unintimidated, as if the threat meant nothing to me. The threat was delivered emphatically, and then the three turned and exited the door directly behind them. I stayed on the steps for several minutes to give them plenty of time to get away, concerned that they might have changed their minds about beating me up and were lying in wait for me outside. I also needed the minutes to quell the shaking in my legs.

Eventually I got up the courage to exit the building and make my way to the bus stop. The entire time I was watching left, right, and behind me to see that they weren’t coming after me. That seemed unlikely given the houses I was walking past and the cars on the street, but I suspected they didn’t care about such things. I could imagine them giving me a pretty good pounding in only a few moments and then disappearing into the neighborhood.

The threat about wrestling practice perplexed me. I was trying to be the model athlete. As I recall I’d been picked as a team captain. The only thing I could figure is that I’d recently been paired in practice with a gifted but lazy teammate. When the coach was distracted this guy wanted to skip the workout drills we were supposed to be doing, and I wouldn’t let him get away with it. I’d do the takedowns, escapes, and reversals on him, generally pounding him, while he made no effort at all. He was hoping that if he did next to nothing, I’d go easy on him. I didn’t. He told me to ease up, and I wouldn’t. I was doing the workout the way the coach wanted it done.

Nothing ever came of the threat, but I was wary and intimidated just the same. I did the wrestling workouts as directed, but also tried to avoid my lazy and suspect teammate. He ended up in my weight class in high school, and I never beat him in 2 out of 3 tryout matches to make the varsity squad. He was a talented wrestler, but sometimes I wonder if there was another reason why I couldn’t beat him in 2 out of 3.