Nine boys suspended for having a Fight Club.
The boys were given what are termed emergency expulsions, effective Monday.
Seriously? When we’re in the middle of the largest emasculation program ever conceived of in the history of the United States they’re going to throw boys out of school for having the cojones to risk some injury in order to have so very much fun pounding the crap out of each other?
Voelpel said Stewart took action based on the videos. He said none of the boys’ parents had reported the incidents to school authorities before the video aired.
Yeah, and you know why? Because it was boys being boys. It isn’t expulsion-worthy.
Note: I am a huge fan of Fight Club. Some of the quotes are from the book, some from the movie. They may not be verbatim, even (although my editor can probably quote the movie by heart).
God Damn! We just had a near-life experience, fellas.
We should be congratulating the boys for being boys. What are their options… hopscotch and homogenized non-gender-specific organized reverse-role-playing? Getting in touch with our freaking feelings? Hey, I think everyone is touching themselves quite enough and we need to start giving boys different activities: cap guns, bb guns, GI Joe action figures, bottle rockets, garbage can “shields” and piles of dirt clods (one of my favorites as a boy), tree-climbing contests, no-hands no-helmet bike riding, running with scissors, magnifying glasses on a sunny day, slingshots… hell, people, chime in! Gimme your suggestions for good “stupid” boy activities that BY GOD will build character if they survive it!
Man, I see in fight club the strongest and smartest men who’ve ever lived. I see all this potential, and I see squandering. God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need. We’re the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War’s a spiritual war… our Great Depression is our lives. We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won’t. And we’re slowly learning that fact. And we’re very, very pissed off.
Imagine how pissed off a bunch of future girly-men are going to feel when they finally wake up to the fact that their masculinity was stripped from them by sleeping parents and reprehensible teachers. And they won’t know what to do about it because they have only been taught things that do guys no good whatsoever.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken.
But back to the rant… Yes, they will survive it. I did. Most guys I know did. Hell, I plowed a furrow in fresh sharp gravel with my face when I wiped out racing down a steep graveled hill on my ten-speed. Blood and snot everywhere. I was streaked with gore from forehead to waist and gashed all over the place. And somehow I survived. I leapt off of my parent’s roof using a bedsheet as a parachute (which doesn’t work at all when you’re 12 feet off the ground). I survived. You gotta do things that can’t possibly work because those painful lessons make us stronger.
By this time next week, each guy on the Assault Committee has to pick a fight where he won’t come out a hero. And not in fight club. This is harder than it sounds. A man on the street will do anything not to fight. The idea is to take some Joe on the street who’s never been in a fight and recruit him. Let him experience winning for the first time in his life. Get him to explode. Give him permission to beat the crap out of you. You can take it. If you win, you screwed up. “What we have to do, people,” Tyler told the committee, “is remind these guys what kind of power they still have.”
Share your dumb-boy-stunts, please. For the sake of tomorrow’s MEN.
I just don’t want to die without a few scars.
Here’s one of my favorite scenes. Not for the sadism, but for the truth in what Tyler says. The kid’s life IS going to be changed, he WON’T be taking it for granted (at least he better not). I think it’s the things we survive that make us appreciate living a bit more. Think of it as the positive that you explore since you can’t actually sense the negative.
No, I’m not waxing metaphysical. No, I don’t worship every line in the movie. I don’t even have the movie in my home collection. But I think there are some nuggets of insightful observation in it.
[Tyler Durden has told a clerk behind a store to get on his knees, and the conversation takes place with Tyler behind the clerk, gun to his head.]
CLERK: Please… don’t…
TYLER: Give me your wallet.
[The clerk fumbles his wallet out of his pocket and Tyler snatches it. Tyler pulls out the driver’s license.]
TYLER: Raymond K. Hessel. 1320 SE Benning, apartment A. A small, cramped basement apartment.
RAYMOND: How’d you know?
TYLER: They give basement apartments letters instead of numbers. Raymond, you’re going to die.
[Tyler rummages through the wallet.]
TYLER: Is this a picture of Mom and Dad?
RAYMOND: Yesssss…
TYLER: Your mom and dad will have to call kindly doctor so-and-so to dig up your dental records, because there won’t be much left of your face.
RAYMOND: Please, God, no…
[Raymond begins to weep, shoulders heaving.]
JACK: Tyler…
TYLER: An expired community college student ID card. What did you used to study, Raymond K. Hessel?
RAYMOND: S-S-Stuff.
TYLER: “Stuff.” Were the mid-terms hard?
[Tyler rams the gun barrel against Raymond’s temple.]
TYLER: I asked you what you studied.
JACK: Tell him!
RAYMOND: Biology, mostly.
TYLER: Why?
RAYMOND: I… I don’t know…
TYLER: What did you want to be, Raymond K. Hessel?
[Raymond weeps and says nothing. Tyler cocks the gun. Raymond gasps.]
TYLER: The question, Raymond, was “what did you want to be?”
[silence]
JACK: Answer him!
RAYMOND: A veterinarian!
TYLER: Animals.
RAYMOND: Yeah … animals and s-s-s —
TYLER: Stuff. That means you have to get more schooling.
RAYMOND: Too much school.
[Tyler shoves Raymond’s wallet back into Raymond’s pocket.]
TYLER: Would you rather be dead? Would you rather die? Here? On your knees? In the back of a convenience store?
RAYMOND: No, please, no, God, no!
[Tyler moves the gun right between Raymond’s eyes.]
RAYMOND: Noooo!
[Tyler uncocks the gun, lowers it.]
TYLER: I’m keeping your license. I’m gonna check in on you. I know where you live. If you’re not on your way to becoming a veterinarian in six weeks, you will be dead. Now run on home.
[Tyler throws him his wallet. Raymond takes it, staggers to his feet and runs down the alley]
TYLER: [shouting to Raymond] Run, Forrest, run!
JACK: I feel ill.
TYLER: Imagine how he feels.
JACK: Come on, this isn’t funny! That wasn’t funny! What the fuck was the point of that?
[Tyler brings the gun to his own head, pulls the trigger — CLICK. Empty.]
JACK: I don’t care, that was horrible.
[Tyler walks away.]
TYLER: Tomorrow will be the most beautiful day of Raymond K. Hessell’s life. His breakfast will taste better than any meal you and I have ever tasted.
**************
Lemur King's Folly 
I remember my youth well: going all summer without wearing shoes; jumping our bicycles off homemade ramps (helmets? forget it?); sweet-gum-ball fights (those suckers sting); melting plastic army men with gasoline fires to simulate flamethrower attacks; lighting firecrackers and throwing them at each other.
Good times.
I wrote a post about this trend a year ago:
http://redstatewitch.com/wordpress/?p=394#comments
Looking back, I can’t figure out which is harder to believe: that I once took a (non-functioning) Vietnam-era hand grenade to school, or that I was allowed to play with it at recess.
That was when adults had some level of common sense or at least the balls to correct an adult that didn’t have a lick of it.
All of what wp said, and:
-tearing hundreds of firecrackers apart to get the powder out, and then making a REAL bomb from it and blowing the neighbors mailbox off the post!
-swiping a farmers big metal cattle watering trough, dragging it to the pond, and making a great boat out of it.
-putting coins, bottle caps, or whatever on railroad tracks and recovering the smooshed result after the train passed.
-letting the air out of the neighborhood jerks car tires – repeatedly.
M-80’s were a huge favorite of mine as a kid. Threw one down the old well which had turned salty. 4″ pipe, roughly 90-100 feet deep. The resulting bang, geyser of water, and echoing/reverberation was soooo satisfying. At least until my dad came out and yelled “What the HELL are you doing goddamit! Get away from there!”
“What the HELL are you doing goddamit!”
But Dad, I thought my name was Jesus Christ!
Quoth Bill Cosby.
Yeah, and I watched a guy clear out a sand-clogged well pipe with a shotgun and a shell that had no pellets. It worked splendidly, too.
My old man had a mole trap that wasn’t one of them wussyfied traps. When the mole hit the trigger it set the nail to plunge down and hit the 12 gauge shotgun shell loaded in the pipe. Basically it was a 4″ shotgun.
We were eating lunch one day and we heard this “POW” from the garden.
Went down there after lunch and all we could find was a chunk of fur and a few feet.
He stopped using that trap the day he accidentally triggered it while setting it. Didn’t hurt him but it scared the crap out of him. “No more.” he said.
Hubby was making explosives at the age of 12.
I was taking my machete to school in 4th grade, to help cut back the vegetation from the river that flowed behind the school building.
My friends all took their rifles to school upon the advent of whitewing dove season. Hell, our principal would come out to compare his to the students’.
I pity this generation.
You are right to pity them, Ag. Oh so right.
I was reading a book about raising boys, and one of the chapters was talking about the sense of adventure and experimentation that boys have. One of the anecdotes was about two brothers who had just recently learned that gasoline was explosive. So, they grabbed their dad’s gas can and went down the street a ways. They thought if they poured some gas down into the storm drain and then threw in a match, they’d get to see a nice little explosion without any danger of hurting anyone or anything.
So, they poured in some gas and threw in a match. Nothing.
They poured in more gas and threw in a couple more lit matches. Still nothing.
They ended up emptying the gas can into the drain and threw in two or three more matches. Again, nothing happened.
Dejected, they began walking home when suddenly their was a really loud bang and thump from the house they were passing. Then again from across the street. Then the noises were progressing up the street in the direction of their house. They began running home and were almost there when their dad came flying out, half dressed, with a really pissed off look on his face, even more so when he saw them running up with the empty gas can.
Seems the toilets in about twelve houses were blasted off the floor and slammed into the bathroom ceilings, hence the bang and thump.
Anyway, the two boys were not sent to jail. They were not treated like criminals in any way. They did get their asses whupped, and they did have to spend all the rest of summer doing odd jobs to raise the money to pay to fix all the bathrooms.
Today, those kids would have spent most of junior high and high school in a correctional facility of some kind.
BEAUTIFUL story, CF. My eyes are all teary. Piece of dust, that’s all.
People are getting their childhoods stolen from them. It’s criminal.
How about mixing all of the chemicals of a Jr. Scientist kit together at one time?
Dirt clod wars (with the occasional mis-identified rock)
Bareback horseback riding with just a halter rope, no bit or helmet
Mini-bike races up the grandparents half-mile long dirt/gravel driveway. Sans helmet, of course
Taking apart the tube-amped AM radio. On the carpet floor. With power still applied
Disappearing from the house for hours exploring up and down the creek that ran through the neighborhood, wandering through two dozen neighbors yards without care
And of course, Boy Scouts! The evil I got into in Boy Scouts.
Yes, I did all of that. And survived, all extremities intact.
No wonder we call the current generation wusses.
We had a dirt clod war in which one of the guys (Major Wuss) was perfectly fine throwing clods until he got clipped in the center of his forehead and he ran home crying to mommy.
If we’d have known about Man Cards back then, we’d have burned his in front of him and made him eat the ashes.
The chemical kit experience… well whut happ’ned???
I stuck a bare on both ends wire in a wall outlet once. Scorched the plate black from the *POP*. Dad was an electrician so I just prayed PRAYED no one would notice. Not sure if they did or not.
Yeah, Major Wuss deserved to have is Man Card revoked. Even a few of the gurls got into our big dirt clod wars. That was out on a step-uncle’s farm. Lots of room to roam and get into trouble, and we didn’t have any problems finding trouble.
Sorry to disappoint, but the Jr. Chemistry set was defanged by the manufacturer. No magnesium, sodium, fluorine, chlorine, monomethylhyrazine, refined U235, nitroglycerine, crystalline dilihtium, dark matter, antimatter, or other fun stuff. Sigh.
Wow, all you got was a *POP*. That’s weak. I singed/fused a few square inches of lovely brown shag carpet in my bedroom. Had a nice little electronics work area under my platform bed, too. But that was later on, after I learned a little more.
If you learn from experience like I do, you tend to have some shaky experiences…
Oh, and now DHS will be checking out your blog, thanks to my chemistry set… You’re welcome. 😛
I was a bookish child, but my grandpa did give me a boot knife dagger when I was a youngun. Used it a lot and never cut myself with it. I was taught knife safety (not that it did me any good here recently…).
The hub has tons of stories, though. Arrows through the leg, roman candle fights, 3 wheeler wrecks into drainage ditches and through barbed wire fences, lighting friends’ socks on fire, whitewashing his ass off (literally), more fighting than you can shake a stick at… Basically being thrown out of the house everyday of summer and being told to not show his face there again until dark. Taught him self reliance, a perspective on physical pain and basic trauma medicine. 🙂
Knife safety badness recently? Ruh roh, what the heck did I miss?
I would dearly love to hear hubby’s account of the arrow through the leg. Now that’s a serious badge of honor that any guy would be proud to wear!
You know, I was thinking, maybe one of these weeks we should devote to posting about some of the things we did when younger.
Hell, maybe even some of the things we still occasionally do.
My grandfather had an expression, a somewhat colorful description of the thought processes boys and men go through.
“Every man gets a monkey fart in his head every now and then.”
I got that applied to me the time I thought it would be cool to ride my bike partway down a hill, onto a huge concrete slab, pedal as hard as a I could along the slab, and then do a bike jump off the side, ten feet off the ground, into a sand pit. After I hit the ground and had the bike land on top of me and came out of the experience with some bruises and a couple of cuts and a cracked rib from where I hit a rock I didn’t notice, he declared I must have gotten one of those monkey farts in my head.
Hell, maybe I did, but I also noticed that there was not the slightest hint of disapproval in his voice.
Arrow incident has been posted. 🙂
http://www.autumn-people.com/?p=4769
“monkey farts in the head” Awesome and completely fitting.
As the knife safety issue, I cored an apple in my hand and cored my hand deeply enough to need 4 stitches. Idiot me. But hey at least the knife was sharp. 🙂
My grandfather, a surgeon, used to do frequent repairs for a condition known as “bagel thumb”, a malady that, many years ago, tended to affect a certain limited population density. Bagels weren’t a common occurrence among gentiles back then. Go fig.
Similar to what you did with your apple corer, Bagel Thumb occurs when you hold the bagel in the palm of your hand, and slice the bagel open, into the palm. Neatly severing the base of your thumb.
I always referred to the condition as “recto-cranial inversion”. Never hear of “monkey farts in the head”. New one.