September 7, 2024
When I was in elementary school—it was either the sixth or seventh grade—my classmates elected me to fight a boy named Johnny because he supposedly was picking on smaller kids.
It was almost an honor.
The fight took place down at the railroad tracks near the school. Spectators could sit on cross ties stacked up alongside the tracks, and we were out of sight of the principal and teachers.
It wasn't much of a fight. It was one of those "I hit you last," "No, I hit you last," fights. My heart wasn't in it, because I had nothing against Johnny, a quiet guy who was called names because his head seemed too large for his body. If he had been picking on smaller kids, I wasn't aware of it. Johnny's heart certainly wasn't in it. He was the “bad guy.”
The alleged fight didn't last long. Although the principal and teachers couldn't see us, Frank Strickland could. He was a city policeman who lived within sight and earshot of our fighting place. And he happened to be at home during the big match.
"If you boys don't cut that out and go home," he yelled from his back door steps, "I'm going to come down there and haul you all to jail."
Suddenly, the fight was over.
The next day, I saw Johnny at school, and we talked. He said he hadn't been picking on any little kids, and I believed him. I told him I was sorry the so-called fight took place.
Presidential politics seems to have gotten that way. A few hotheads twist facts about a particular issue or candidate, and before long some people are calling for a fight, not a fight down by the railroad tracks, although that’s not out of the question. Good, well-intentioned people are called nasty names. It’s all a bit childish.
Apparently it takes a presidential candidate’s barely missing assassination for lawmakers—on both sides—to say it’s time to lower the temperature.
Surely everyone knows by now that it’s time for Republicans and Democrats and Independents and unlabeled others to cool it—to cool off the language.
If we talk to ordinary citizens one on one, we find out that most of us want the same thing. We want justice and fairness; we want a country that provides for our safety; we want to be able to assemble without fearing for our lives; we want to be able to put food on our family’s table and clothes on their backs without floating a loan.
“Unity” is the nicest word we’ve heard in a long time. Both Democrats and Republicans are using that word. Let’s hope they remember what it means.
Johnny and I became good friends, and we learned something that year. We learned it pays to check facts and not listen to hotheads who wouldn’t know the truth from a boiled egg.
So the ayes have it: Leave name-calling to elementary school kids who haven’t yet learned how to be decent human beings.
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Phil Hudgins is a retired newspaper editor and author from Gainesville, Ga.. Reach him at phudgins@cninewspapers.com.
