True Story©… Church of the Modern Day Goon Hand

 

     This is not a story about a church.
This is not even a story about anything remotely religious.

     Today, we will discuss the dangers of not minding one’s own business to the point of bringing violence upon one’s self.

     Everyone has a breaking point, this is a fact that cannot be disputed.  There are, naturally, differences in how people react when they have been driven to that point of course.  Some people shell up and go silent, some people go to their safe space and cry their eyes out and others still will put hands on a motherfucker.  Today, we’re here to talk about that last one.

     First, we need to discuss a moment from my early childhood…  The year is 1986…  Or perhaps 87…  Fuck, I don’t remember which.  I just know it was summer during my elementary years.  My pops was a brick mason and would sometimes travel with his boss for jobs.  This particular time it was to Virginia Beach and because it was summer, he took my brother and I with him.
Rather than bore a couple of 7 (or 8, again, I forget what year this was) year olds with having them sit aside on a construction site from sunup to dusk, pops would give us some money and drop us off at the beach with instructions to meet him at the 7/11 across the street at like 6pm.  Since this was a time wherein children were more street smart than the ones we are currently sending out into the world, we were not abducted or anything like that.  So the second or third night of the trip, we meet pops back at the gas station and--…  hold it.

     ** trigger warning, my pops is 70 years old NOW and, well… **

… so yeah.  We meet him back at the gas station and there are these three fellows who get out of a car and walk kind of effeminately into the store.  My brother and I, in our youthful 1980s ignorance, laugh and point and do as children are wont to do.
Rather than laugh and point with us, pops took this as a teachable moment, yelling “boy y’all leave them f**gots alone, they ain’t done nothin’ to nobody…  Probably done had to fight all they life!”

[Phlip note: I said “teachable moment,” I said nothing about the couth of the statement]

     Anyway, with that uncomfortably sage piece of advice aside, we return to 2023.
I keep my head down, I KIND OF mind my business most of the time.  I am also a people-watcher, so I also kind of voyeur my way through life in general.  So a couple weeks back on a lunch break, I was in The Walmarks™ and then Lowe’s gathering sundries for my household when these two, um…  “southern gentlemen” if you know what I mean, are giving an other-than-masculine man a tough go of just going about his life as the four of us are walking into Lowe’s.  The confederate logos on their truck led me to witness without saying anything because rednecks have guns in NC and I have people who want – no, NEED – me to make it home.  There is something to be said for the boldness of people when they think they have the upper hand in a situation and these two made no bones about being heard by their mark.

     Naturally, it was made known that he knew he heard them and would appreciate if they knocked it off, and that was like trying to put out a fire with kerosene.  Me?  I got my popcorn out and I wanna see how this plays out, so much so that I didn’t notice that I had left my fucking phone in the Nitro.
Never in the history of the words “would you please cut this shit out” has an aggressor just cut the shit out.  This is science, I have done the research.

     The lesson from the beach with my pops all of a sudden came to my mind as these two assholes followed this man around the Lowe’s Pro section of the store fake catcalling him and calling him all kinds of vile shit.  They stopped short of using the N-word out loud of course.  This continues clear through back out to the parking lot and THAT is where it really transpired.

I should interject that the title of this presentation of The Church of the Modern Day Goon Hand is about to matter.  These men were about to open their bibles to the book of Fuck Around, verse Find Out.  These gentlemen were about to Learn the lesson my father taught me in the 80s.

     So our subject here has had enough of being followed and ridiculed and has turned to directly confront his tormenters.  Rather than behave decently, these mega-geniuses decide there was no loss to be experienced in engaging physically with this less-than individual and got closer.  The short fat one pushes him on the shoulder and he yells “don’t touch me!” in response which only further stoked their brutish ignorance…
As the late great poet laureate Tupac Shakur once said, “punk-trick what a dumb move!” because when the taller one moved in to, himself, put hands on their victim-to-be, he sidestepped and caught Mr. Idiot in the side of the head with the fastest left hand I have seen in my life.  As the now-stunned redneck is holding the side of his head in obvious, embarrassed and very surprised pain, the fat one barrels in to avenge his partner and catches a flurry of them himself.

     Of course THIS is when, as I stood a safe distance from the ongoings, that I noticed my phone was not in its holster and I was missing my chance to preserve this golden moment for the people of The Internets.
This is also when the now-defeated would-be attackers scrambled together and headed toward their truck.  Luckily for me and anyone else who might have caught one of those nameless strays, their would-be victim read the room and jumped in his own and got the whole fuck out of there rather than make the news.

     So yeah…  Sinners go to church for salvation.  Dumbasses go to The Church of the Modern Day Goon Hand to fuck around and find out.  Both are effective places to learn, when one is in need of what they offer.