When I was in elementary school, we always played Red Rover during recess. There are probably quite a few of you who don’t know what Red Rover is, because it can be a bit aggressive, and most schools don’t allow it to be played anymore. Red Rover is a game where kids stand next to each other in two opposing lines about thirty feet apart. Then all of the kids in both lines hold hands to create a “chain link” of arms. One line is usually called the East line, and the other is called the West line. One at a time, one of the lines, let’s say the East line for example, sings, “Red Rover, Red Rover, send Danielle right over.” (They don’t always sing the name Danielle, but this is my book, so I’m going to use my name. When you write a book, you can use your name if you’d like. You’re welcome.) Then Danielle is supposed to run from the West line to the East line and try to break through two players’ linked arms. If Danielle is successful in doing this (of course, I am—I mean, of course, she is), she gets to pick a player to go back to the West team with her. The whole goal is eventually to get every person onto your team to prove that you are strong and brave. Or something like that—I don’t really know.
One day, during a particularly riveting game of Red Rover, one of my female friends went running over to break the chain of arms between two boys on the opposing team. They were much bigger and stronger than she was, and they clotheslined her. My poor little friend fell to the ground, gasping for air. (I don’t remember her name, so we’ll call her Danielle. Just kidding; we’ll call her Stacy.) One of the boys, who doesn’t deserve a mention here, started laughing in her face and calling her a “whiny baby.” (I don’t remember his name, either, to be honest; we’ll just call him Dan. Ha! See what I did there?) I was so furious at him that I ran from my team over to his team and told him he needed to apologize to her or I was going to tell on him. Unlike Dan, I was a good kid and did not like to get in trouble with anyone, so that threat would have scared me straight. It didn’t scare him, though. Nope, Dan socked me right in the eye as hard as he could. I immediately started crying, took Stacy’s hand, and left the game with her. I thought about going to tell someone what had happened, but I really didn’t want to deal with the wrath of Dan for the rest of my elementary school days. Any boy who thinks nothing of socking a girl in the face is obviously a sociopath, right?
Later, when my mom picked me up from school, I had a full shiner. My whole eye was puffy and black and blue. My mom demanded to know what happened, and because I believed her to be a rational woman who had a heart, I told her the story. I also told her that under no circumstances was she “allowed” to tell anyone about it. We were all going to forget that this had happened, and I was going to avoid Dan like the plague for the rest of my life. Problem solved. But that’s not what happened. I wrongfully assumed my mom would handle this situation like I did—like a big wuss. No, no, no. Not my mother. She took me home and put a bag of frozen peas on my eye and told me to be ready to leave the house in thirty minutes.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“We’re going to CCD, and I am going to have a word with Dan’s father,” she said.
“Mom, no!” I yelled.
Until I was about ten years old, my family attended a Catholic church, which meant I was required to attend catechism class, or CCD, on Wednesdays after school. I really disliked having to go to CCD after my regular school day, and my mom didn’t particularly like having to take me, so like the horrible Catholics we were, she wouldn’t always make me go. On the day of the Red Rover Incident, I hadn’t been to CCD in a few weeks. I barely remembered that good ol’ “Dan the Girl Puncher” was in my class—but my mom remembered everything, apparently.
I begged and pleaded to no avail, and my mom drove me to CCD and dragged me out of our car and toward the church classroom. Dan wasn’t there yet, so I prayed extra hard that Dan’s parents had decided they wanted to skip CCD so they could spend a lovely afternoon with their psychopath child and I could be spared this horrendous embarrassment.
God did not answer my prayer that day.
My mom was still fuming. She stood outside the CCD classroom with her arms tightly folded, every now and then muttering something like “Who does he think he is?” or “I should punch him in the face.” Even though I was furious that she was putting me through this awkward encounter, there was a part of me that loved seeing my mom this worked up. I knew that my parents loved me, but every now and then—usually when something either really amazing or really awful happened—I got to peer into the deep, dark depths of their love. And until I have kids of my own, I don’t think I’ll ever even scratch the surface of how profound that love is.
Dan and his dad started across the parking lot and headed right toward us. My mom dropped her arms and took my hand. Please let this be swift and painless, I thought to myself while staring at the ground as we walked. When we got to within ten feet of them, I looked up and made eye contact with Dan. His eyes were squinting, and he was scowling with disdain. This couldn’t end well for me.
“Sir, look at my daughter’s face,” my mom said in her sternest voice. “Do you see that black eye? Take a good hard look at it, and then you tell me if you think it is acceptable to raise a son who punches little girls in the eye.”
Dan’s dad looked shocked. “Dan, did you punch Danielle in the face?” he asked. I wasn’t thrilled with the way he said “face.” It was as if Dan and his dad had a previous discussion about where it was acceptable to punch a girl and where it wasn’t—and face was apparently one of the no-no’s.
Dan, to his credit, didn’t try to lie. He hung his head in—what I perceived to be—shame and nodded his head. Dan’s dad took Dan by the hand and told him that this was completely unacceptable behavior and he was going to be severely punished. I hoped this meant he was going to be severely punished right now, in front of Danielle, but it did not. Dan’s dad apologized to my mom and me, and then he made Dan apologize to both of us. My mom accepted and said that she hoped Dan really would be punished, because it sure would be a shame if this event had to be reported to our school principal and Dan was expelled from elementary school. And then Dan’s dad and my mom just sent Dan and me on our merry way into CCD, where Dan gave me the evil eye for a straight hour. I don’t know what Dan’s parents did to punish him but, other than the occasional stink-eye from across the playground, he actually left me alone, and I never exchanged words (or fists) with him again.
For a few years, I was conflict-free on the playground. Then, one day while playing softball in middle school PE, I went up to bat and hit a grounder out to right field. I started running around the bases and was around first when the second baseman caught the ball from the right outfielder, and I knew he needed to tag me with the ball before I touched base if he wanted to get me out. The normal thing to do would have been to slide into second base before he could tag me out with the ball. But this was middle school, and I had other classes to go to before the day was over, and I didn’t want to be a dirty mess for the rest of the day; I mean, I wasn’t winning the World Series here. So I just kept running for second base—and the baseman who was holding the softball. When I got right in front of him, he jetted his arm out and smashed my chest with the ball, hard. Really hard. So hard that I couldn’t breathe; the wind was knocked out of me. I bent over and tried to catch my breath while he laughed and said it was an accident. My teacher came over to check on me, but at this point, everyone on the field was laughing, and I was embarrassed. I stood upright and walked over to the second baseman and kicked him in his “private area” as hard as I could.
Now, I’m not a boy, clearly, but I hear that it hurts extremely badly when this part of the male body gets abused. I understand that, completely. But try explaining that to my developing chest!
The second baseman doubled over in excruciating pain. I instantly felt terrible. It was very apparent in that moment that my pain was at most one-third of what he seemed to be experiencing; he was coughing and had rolled onto the ground in the
fetal position. Our (male) PE teacher looked at me like I was possibly the spawn of Satan. I hugged myself to casually remind him why I had kicked in the first place. Our PE teacher wasn’t just angry with me, and he yelled at both of us. He decided not to send either one of us to the principal’s office, and my fellow student and I exchanged apologies. Although my pain level was decreasing rapidly, it did appear that the second baseman was not as lucky. Every time I saw him for the rest of the day, he was hunched over like he had a terrible stomach ache. I swore I would never kick another male in the privates ever again, unless, of course, I was being attacked. In that case, a swift kick seemed debilitating enough for a woman to get away from her attacker, and I thought of it as a good learning experience—albeit a painful one for my male classmate.
You’d think my previous elementary school experience with Dan would have permanently scared me away from the idea of giving or receiving punches, but it did not. Years later, when I was in high school, I became obsessed with working out. My parents had a gym in our home, and I would work out any time I had the chance. My dad was an avid exerciser, and sometimes he and I would work out together. It was fun. We were both competitive, and I loved to see how much weight he could bench-press, leg-press, and squat. Of course, I was never able to come anywhere near doing the same weight he did, but I still liked to compare. I tried to compete with my dad over everything: how fast we could run, how much weight we could lift, whether I could beat him in arm wrestling. My mom was not thrilled with my competitive nature and wondered how it was possible that she, the ultimate girly-girl, had given birth to a daughter who suddenly desired to be as manlike as her father. It was during this time that my mom told me that boys didn’t usually like it when a girl could beat them in weight lifting and arm wrestling. I still didn’t care—and I loved boys, so that says a lot about my desire to beat them in everything.
One Saturday afternoon, my dad and I were working out together in the gym. He was walking on the treadmill, and I was doing leg lifts and reverse curls on the leg extension machine. When he finished walking, he put on some boxing gloves and started shadow boxing. Excited to have yet another thing to compete over, I stopped my leg exercises and asked him if we could trade a few punches. I put the boxing gloves on my hands and delivered a few punches to his arms, and he was impressed with how strong I was. He told me to hit him as hard as I could in the arm a couple of times. Then I got tired.
“OK, your turn, Dad. Hit me as hard as you can,” I said.
“Danielle, I’m not going to hit you.” He laughed.
This did not make me very happy. “What, because I’m a girl, you don’t think I can take a punch to the arm?” I quipped.
He told me that being a girl had nothing to do with it and that he just didn’t want to hurt me. I assured him that he was not going to hurt me and that I could take a punch.
Eventually, he relented and took a few light jabs at my right arm, but that wasn’t going to work for me.
“Dad, stop hitting me like a baby. Hit me as hard as you can—I promise I won’t get hurt.” I’m not sure why that worked, but it did. I bet all parents have a desire to punch their kids as hard as they can at least once. How could they not? I imagine kids bring a whole lot of joy most of the time but can also completely suck the life and sanity out of a normal person occasionally.
My dad said, “All right. One punch, OK?” I nodded and braced myself for what came next, a swift punch to my flexed right arm. Instantly, I felt teeth-chattering, brain-shaking pain and numbness—all over. I swear my head must have looked like a bobble head, and I had no control over it. I just stood there, shaking and frozen. My dad ripped his gloves off, grabbed my shoulders, looked me in the eye, and asked if I was OK. I started smiling while my teeth were still chattering, and I tried to bring feeling back into my arm.
“I didn’t really think you’d hit me as hard as you could, but I’m glad you did. I definitely won’t ever ask you to do that again, though,” I chattered.
“I’m glad to hear that. And Danielle, that wasn’t even close to as hard as I can punch. Make sure you tell your future boyfriends,” he said as he gave me a hug.
While I don’t condone violence, there’s something nice about knowing that if anyone messes with me, my dad could easily beat the crap out of them—and then go to jail, because you’re not allowed to beat the crap out of people. Yay! Family stories!
As freaked out as my dad was by the punching incident, he didn’t exactly learn his lesson. About a year later, he took me out to play tennis. We had a community tennis court at the end of our street, and he would regularly take his ball machine out to practice returns. My dad was exceptionally good at tennis and even won a few singles and doubles tournaments at our local club. I was not that good at it and could never master a one-handed forehand. I always played with both hands on my racket for my forehand and backhand shots. This made me fairly slow to return balls, and I knew I wasn’t much of a match for my dad. In typical me fashion, I didn’t like this very much. Instead of just rallying back and forth, I asked my dad to serve me a few balls as fast as he could; he had a very fast serve that I rarely got to see because he always took it easy on me. He told me to get ready to return his serve, so I set myself up in the corner opposite his and got my two-handed forehand shot ready. I watched him throw the ball into the air and hit it with his racket.
That’s the last thing I saw. The next thing I knew, his tennis ball was perfectly wedged in my right eye socket. My eyeball had never felt so much pain, and I clamped my hand over it and screamed. Panicked, my dad came running over to make sure he hadn’t blinded me. I peeled my hand off my eye so he could look at it. I was fine: no popped blood vessels, no instant bruising, just some blurry vision and white stars when I closed my eyes.
Suddenly, I started laughing. “Dad, how did that ball get to my eye so quickly? I didn’t even see it cross the court.”
He cracked up. “Danielle, you just stood there—like, you didn’t even move a muscle. I don’t think tennis is your sport. Let’s go home.”
Sadly, when it comes to sports, spectating seems to be as dangerous as participating for me. When I was in my mid-twenties, I started going to golf tournaments with my boyfriend at the time. We both enjoyed watching Tiger Woods compete, and he has an annual tournament called the World Challenge at the Sherwood Country Club, which is not too far from where I was living. My boyfriend and I decided it would be a fun weekend activity to go to the tournament and follow Tiger from hole to hole. While it is absolutely impressive to watch the pros drive, chip, and putt like I could only dream of doing, it is also a really long day out in the heat, and I had stupidly worn jeans because it was cold in the morning when I got dressed.
Around noon, after drinking three bottles of water and walking consistently for four hours, I needed to use the bathroom. I asked someone where I could find the nearest restroom, and he told me there was a port-a-potty a few holes away. I wasn’t that excited about having to walk ahead a few holes to use a port-a-potty, only to have to turn around and walk all the way back to keep following Tiger. I decided I didn’t really need to go to the bathroom that badly and that I could wait until we got closer to port-a-potty headquarters.
About an hour later, and only one hole closer, I could no longer wait. I had to pee so badly that I could hardly stand upright. I told my boyfriend and his dad, who had joined us for the day, that I was going to have to run for my life to the port-a-potties and that I’d be back. I walked as fast as my little legs could walk. I tried jogging a bit, but that was too painful. My mantra became, Danielle, you will not pee your pants. Don’t you even dare.
Finally, I made it to the bathrooms. Apparently, I was not the only one who needed to relieve herself, because there were easily fifteen people in line in front of me. I started doing a little pee-pee dance in hopes it would prevent me from wetting my pants. Miraculously, it worked. I made it into a port-a-potty and was happy to see that it was pretty nice, as port-
a-potties go. The moment I closed the door, I flipped the lock and unbuttoned my jeans. I got into the hovercraft position—just like in my ill-fated audition, except this time I was actually peeing. The first thing I noticed was not relief; it was the sound my urine was making as it hit the toilet bowl. It was louder than I thought it should have been, but I was just so happy to have not peed my pants I didn’t care.
When I was done, I pulled up my jeans and realized they were sopping wet. I groaned loudly and turned around. There was a freaking toilet-seat cover in this fancy golf tournament port-a-potty, and apparently, the unnecessarily polite user before me had put the cover down. In my haste, I had not noticed this and had just peed directly onto the seat cover—which, in turn, funneled all of my urine directly into my jeans.
I tried to think of a way to get myself out of this horrendous situation, but there was none. I didn’t have an extra pair of pants with me, I didn’t have a sweater to tie around my waist, and walking around in my underwear didn’t seem appropriate. So I did the only thing I could do: I washed my hands and exited the port-a-potty with the confidence of a Victoria’s Secret model. Being careful not to make eye contact with anyone, I calmly and quickly walked over to my boyfriend and his father and told them what happened. We made the unanimous decision that we had to leave (ya think?). I sat down on a bench in my uncomfortably wet, pee-soaked jeans while my boyfriend went to the pro shop to buy a long-sleeved golf shirt. When he came back, I tied it around my waist, and we made the long walk back to the car. I rode home in a pair of basketball shorts my boyfriend had in his trunk. It was not my best look.
Because I am a glutton for punishment, I decided to take up playing golf a couple of years after that pee-soaked spectating incident. As a birthday gift to my dad, I booked us a round at our favorite local golf course and invited my usual golf partners, Tim and his dad, Mike. I didn’t play particularly well all day, but it was nice to be outside, enjoying the company of three of my favorite men. When we got to the eighteenth hole, there was a huge flock of ducks sitting on the fairway that leads to the green. I looked at my dad and said, “Oh, God. What if I hit one of them with my ball?” My dad assured me that as long as I got loft on the ball, I wouldn’t be killing any ducks that day. I wasn’t convinced, though. I decided I would feel a lot better if I could simply get the ducks to waddle into the pond that was right behind them. I squawked and jumped and yelled at the ducks to move, but they refused to listen—they probably thought I was a maniac (everyone else on the golf course certainly did). In a last-ditch effort, I slowly drove my golf cart toward them, and that worked—the gaggle of ducks made their way into the pond. Proudly, I drove back to my ball, ready to take my shot.
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