The year was 1984. It was just another day on the mean streets of Whitby, Ontario. My friend Adam came to me because he had a problem. The kind of problem that could only be resolved with muscle. The kind of problem that I specialized in. Never mind that we were in grade four and I’d never been in a fistfight before in my life.
Problem was, a couple goons in Adam’s neighbourhood had been picking on his kid sister, and Adam was not the kind of guy to take it. He’d let them know that the Farnsworth family was off-limits, but these weren’t the smart kind of kids who attended E.A. Fairman like us; these were the other kind. The kind that needed to learn lessons the hard way.
Yeah, they’d heard Adam clear enough, and their answer was call in some friends for backup. They’d be waiting for Adam after school. So that’s why Adam came to me. We went back a ways, Adam and I. All the way to grade two when I’d first moved to the neighbourhood and we met in Ms. Corrett’s class.
“How many of them do you reckon?” I asked Adam.
“At least four,” Adam told me. “I’m good for a couple, but I don’t know if I can handle four.”
I was in the enrichment program at school. One of those fast learners. I could do the math.
“We’re gonna need some help,” I told Adam.
So we met up with my associate, Scott Allenby, at recess.
“Only four?” Scott asked. “Sure, you can count on me.”
I knew Scott would back us up. Scott was new to the hood, but ever since grade three, Scott was my tagalong. If there was trouble in the neighbourhood and I was in it, Scott was right there with me.
The dismissal bell could not come early enough. We met outside the school, ready for business. We skipped the bus ride and made the long walk to Adam’s house to get our blood up. As we marched along Bonacord Avenue, Scott and I started a war chant to get us primed for action:
“There’s going to be a big fight on Adam’s street tonight,” we sang as we went.
Course, we’d never been in a fight, but some primitive tribal instinct kicked in, and suddenly we felt ready. We were going to war.
There was a chill wind that day, so I turned up the collar of my Oiler’s jacket, tugged my toque down low and pulled my scarf up to cover my face so that only my predatory eyes showed as the three of us turned off McQuay Boulevard and onto Adam’s cul-de-sac. His house was partway down, and sure enough, standing in front of it, arrayed out across the asphalt expanse, were the pair of ne’er-do-wells and their two hired goons.
“I’ll take the one on the right,” I told Scott as I veered to the right side of McGillivary Court.
Scott wordlessly went the opposite direction, approaching the leftmost thug.
Adam marched boldly down the middle toward the two ruffians who had been making his sister cry.
I locked eyes with my man as I stalked toward him. Staring into his soul. He held my gaze for a moment, but I saw his will wavering as I closed the distance between us. Was he bluffing, or was I? We were about to find out.
But as I stepped within fighting distance, his resolve broke. Turns out the tough guy was as green as I was when it came to street fights and just a shade more yellow because as closed the gap between us, he stepped aside to let me by. I brushed past him. His courage had taken a one-way trip to elsewhere. He wasn’t going to be a problem.
Glancing across the street, I saw Scott walk down the other enforcer. I guess cowardice was contagious. When the hoodlum saw his buddy give way to me, he too caught the yellow-belly bug, moving aside to let Scott pass by unchallenged.
The pair of yardies, the instigators, weren’t so lucky. Adam had them in his crosshairs. I’ll give them credit. They didn’t turn tail. Even when they saw their support team fold up. Maybe they thought their two-to-one advantage over Adam might carry the day.
They threw fists with bad intentions, but Adam was unstoppable. He walked right through the barrage. One threw punches from his left, one from his right. Adam returned fire with both fists, his left aimed at one bully, his right at the other. They may have doubled his output, but they couldn’t match Adam’s resolve.
Shaken by the opening salvo, they gave ground, Adam’s blows forcing them back until they were up against the brick wall of his neighbour’s house. With no ground left to surrender, and no way to match Adam’s relentless firepower, they broke and ran, one scampering north, the other scurrying south.
And that was the end of that. Those cretins never bothered Adam’s sister again, and they and their crew got an education on steering clear of the Farnsworth family. Scott and I saluted our friend and began our long walk home, another mission successfully completed. Technically, we still had neither of us been in an actual street fight, but hey, we’d shown up to face down the McGillivary Court crew and watched them turn tail. Maybe when you are real badasses, the street rats just know better than to tangle with you.
Story Notes:
Though I changed the names, the actual events unfolded pretty much exactly as written, the only embellishment being my gangster persona. I was exactly the opposite: meek, mild and gentle. At this point in my young life, I had never even been in a proper fight, and to this day I have never struck a person in anger. The whole thug persona was born out of incredulity that my friend Adam considered me as backup for this dust-up. What was he thinking?
Adam’s the real deal, though; he did go after those two guys, one fist for each. It was the most John Wayne thing I’d seen up to that point in my young life. Outnumbered? No. For Adam, it was a target-rich environment. And boy, after the first few salvos, faced with Adam’s relentless fury, those boys sure high-tailed it out of there. To this day, it probably still ranks in my top five list of badass moments I’ve personally witnessed.
And Adam claims he doesn’t even remember the incident at all. That to me may be the most badass thing of all. Dude marches into an ambush, outduels two assailants in a savage firefight, and is so nonchalant about the whole experience that it fails to register as an event worth remembering.
Adam and I met in grade two at E.A. Fairman Elementary in Whitby, Ontario, and were friends right through to our grade ten year at Henry Street High School. We were already drifting into different social circles when I moved away at the end of grade ten, so we didn’t stay in contact.
We were reunited in our forties through Facebook, proving that social media has a few upsides. Somehow the little differences that drove us apart as teens feel minuscule in the memory of a fifty-year-old, and mostly, I remember the countless youthful adventures we shared under train trellises, on Adam’s roof, cutting class and so many others. But when I think of Adam, the memory that stands out most is always the image of him grimly wading into battle, facing two-to-one odds, and coming out victorious. Epic Adam!