When was the last time you were in a fist fight #93? A real one, with blood and all.

For me, it was in December 1975, I was 11 years old. I remember it well because it was the last day of school before the Christmas break, a Friday morning.

There was already a lot of snow in our little suburb town south of Montreal, and my mom had driven us to my aunt where we had breakfast. Soon after, together with my cousins, we put our winter ensembles and headed outside to wait for the school bus. This was not the place I normally waited for it as we lived a few streets down, it was strange territory.

Here we were, my two cousins and I making our way to the house next door, all winterized with our snow suits, boots, toques, scarves and mittens, ready to take on the cold and snow, but mostly excited as it was the last day of school for the next 2 weeks. At the bus stop, we started fooling around as kids normally do and little by little some other kids from houses around started arriving to wait for the ride. One of those kids was a chubby bully wannabe, and we didn’t really like each other much. His nickname for me was Tapette Paquette which I didn’t care for, but he was bigger than me and I didn’t make waves (by the way tapette in French means fag… and since it rhymes with my last name, I guess it made it a “clever” play on words for a low wattage type kid). No one was really paying much attention to him, my cousins and I concentrating on the snowball attack going on, we were aiming at different targets around us: stop sign, telephone pole, garbage can, manky cat, etc.

All of a sudden it started: Tapette Paquette, Tapette Paquette, Tapette Paquette…

We continued our mission with snowballs, trying to find harder targets as each of us had hit the ones we started with.

Tapette Paquette, Tapette Paquette, Tapette Paquette…

At 11 years old, you can ignore things very easily, or you can get very mad just the same. So all of a sudden, I just packed a snowball and threw it directly at the little Asshole In The Making’s face. Right smack in the pie hole. I couldn’t have done it better if I had taken target lessons.

The chanting stopped.

My cousins looked at me and one exploded in laughter, then the other, then me. I was surprisingly proud of myself. It made the chubby bully mad. He charged at me and pushed me, I pushed back, he said something like: “you’re gonna regret this Tapette Paquette”. But I don’t know what took over me that morning, I was really not a fighter, small skinny kid that I was, but I guess all the chanting had made me see red, so I hit him.

Right on the nose.

Just like that, out of nowhere, surprising everyone around, no one more than myself.

His face crunched up, he made a fist and then motioned to punch at me but missed, he did a nice “air punch” and then the whole thing was over. He saw the blood on the snow, realized it was coming out of his nose… it was flowing like a tap.

I immediately felt bad, I knew I was in trouble, if not now, definitely later at home, and to top it all, the bus was now turning the corner coming our way. Bully turned around crying, ran home and we got on the bus. Chubby Bully missed the bus, it was going to be worst than I thought.

Both my cousins cheered me on, told the story to others on the bus and I was a mini celebrity for a while.

Fortunately for me, there was no aftermath. Although the neighbour told my mom, who then told my dad, I wasn’t disciplined that afternoon after school. My dad just said not to fight anymore (I’m sure he found out what nickname chubby bully had been calling me and probably thought he deserved the bloody nose). And as for Chubby Bully, we never really talked until years later. But I once caught his younger sister stick her tongue at me.

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