This happened a long time ago when I was young and stupid. Maybe eight at the time, I was part of our neighborhood “gang.” And that was a good thing to be. Some guys in the neighborhood were not in the gang. As it was for the Sharks and the Jets, belonging was important.
We were all in the seven to nine-year-old range, so some of us were more mature than others. I stood, as you see, in the middle, somewhere between the least and the most mature.
As a gang, we did all kinds of things together, almost all of them legal. One time – there was this very steep section of our street – we came up with the challenge of riding a rickety little scooter from the top to the bottom. The brake was a little metal tab that you could hit with your heel to press against the rear tire to slow and stop. Supposedly.
We all understood how it worked – in theory. But none of us had ever attempted a hill this long and steep. It wasn’t a cliff dive, but it was not far from a 45-degree slope, and there was a dogleg turn on the way to the bottom to make it even more dangerous.
The oldest and boldest members of the gang took the first rides. Bobby, the bravest of us all and de facto leader, took off and made the hairpin curve – what was by consensus the trickiest part – with little sweat, braking successfully at the bottom before running into a large stone wall backstop. That’s right, as an added concern, a stone wall sat at the bottom to ensure the end of your ride for sure.
The second boldest, Raymond, took the scooter from Bobby and ran to the top of the hill. He started his ride following a good line through the curve, but when he hit the little metal tab that should have slowed him at the bottom, even though he hit it with all his might, he kept going and smashed into the stone wall.
We all ran to where he lay on the asphalt.
“Oh s**t, Ray,” Bobby said, “you alive or what, brah?”
We hovered over the still figure, hoping he was alive. Raymond’s bloody face broke into a broad smile. “I don’t think I can stand up right now, but I’m not dead.”
“Everybody,” said Ray, “help me carry him over to the sidewalk.”
There were maybe seven of us there. We all grabbed some part of Ray and carried him to safety. After we laid him down, Bobby said, “Okay, who’s next?”
I looked over at the very limp body of our second in command. My hand did not shoot into the air, nor did I say a word, and I was not alone in my reticence. If you looked up unenthusiastic in the dictionary, it would have been a group shot of the rest of us.
“Eh, you like hang with this group, you gotta ride,” said Bobby.
Silence.
“Lanny,” he said, nodding at me, “you next.”
I swallowed hard. “Ah, why me?” I asked, wondering how I could be so lucky.
“Cuz I know you like step up and show us how good you are.”
Where he got this idea, I could not guess, but I didn’t think I would be very good at riding the scooter. At all.
The others, radiating fear like a blinding second sun, tried not to look like second-choice volunteers should I decline the challenge.
“Ah,” I said, “I really don’t want to do this.”
“Come on, Lanny, you not one panty, uh? Show us you get balls.”
Back in the day, if you were labeled a “panty,” you were marked a pariah. Someone so weak, so cowardly, could never hope to keep his place in our gang. Losing face was the worst thing you could do in front of your fraternity brothers.
“Eh,” I said, “I’m not a panty. Give me the thing.”
Bobby passed me the scooter. Taking it, I looked over at the mostly lifeless and bloody-faced body that was Raymond, and then I made the long hike up the hill, cursing my fate all the way.
Once I reached the top, I did not immediately jump on the scooter and get the whole ordeal out of the way quickly. Standing at that point in the road, I was very close to my house. The idea of laying the scooter down and running home flitted briefly through my mind, but darn it, I was no panty.
“Eh, panty, you coming down, or what?” yelled Bobby from the bottom. It had never seemed so far away. He was laughing. The others were not. Even this far away, I could smell the fear.
I tried to yell out to reiterate that I wasn’t a party, but my voice failed me.
Taking a deep breath, I stepped on the scooter and let gravity take control. The strength of the breeze hitting me surprised me. Indeed, I was so shocked by the sensation that I failed to make the turn and made a beeline toward a low wall bordering the Nakamura’s sunken lawn. From the street to the grass floor was about a five-foot fall.
I held on as the scooter jumped the curb, and I kept holding on as I did a head dive to the bottom.
I remember everyone – except Raymond, who was still recovering at the bottom of the hill – standing on the wall very, very far above me. Like they were in heaven, and I might be joining them there.
With the wind knocked out of me, I couldn’t call up to say, “Help me.”
Why was everyone so quiet? I found out later that none of them were quiet. They were yelling at me, wondering if I was okay.
I was not. It turned out that I’d fractured my right wrist. Fortunately, as my father said when he came over after my friends went to my house to tell him I was lying in the Nakamura’s garden, I was not in worse shape or dead.
“What were you thinking?” my dad asked when we were driving back after going to the emergency room to get a plaster cast.
“Bobby told me I’d be a panty if I didn’t ride the scooter down the hill.”
My dad shook his head. “Why do you want to go around with those boys?”
I found it hard to believe my dad didn’t know why it was important to be with the in-crowd. “Daddy, I want to be part of the gang. Those are my boys.”
My dad wasn’t young anymore. He’d forgotten what it was to be “in” with a group of your peers.
I was welcomed back with great cheers the next day, lots of back-slapping and well wishes. Everyone signed my cast. None of the others did the scooter challenge. Ray and I, the survivors, were the heroes.
For the time being at least, I was in solid as a member of the group. At that age, however, being “in” is a tenuous thing. You never knew when you might not meet the next challenge. Might be too panty to hang with the gang anymore.
Lanning Lee 