A Family Story

OK, here’s the cast of characters.

I was probably about 16 at the time. There’s my younger cousin Richie, as he was known at the time. These days, he likes to be called Rick, but I usually end up calling him Ricky. He was probably 14 at the time. Then his girlfriend was also there, and my little sister Lisa who was probably 13, my cousin Jimmy, 12, his little sister Jennifer, 9 maybe, and Richie’s little brother Billy, who was probably 8 or 9.

(See, now this is what I love about blogs. If I were writing this for some creative writing class or a newspaper or some literary magazine or something, I probably would have had to introduce everyone prosaically. Likewise, I’m sure I wouldn’t be able to take a break to wax on about the medium in which I was writing. But anyway, I digress).

So we were all over at Ritchie’s house. It was Christmas vacation time and there were about six inches of snow on the ground from a blizzard earlier in the week. We were playing around outside; I think we were playing tag. At some point, the game devolved into a snowball fight, and a rather lopsided one at that with everyone going after a target smaller and weaker than they were.

After some time, Ritchie had Billy cornered against a fence in their backyard. Smelling blood, Jimmy and I moved in and surrounded him, ensuring he couldn’t escape whatever. Billy was sitting on the ground kicking wildly as Ritchie tried to jump on him. Ritchie caught his kick and grabbed onto Billy’s shoe. He ripped it off and threw it across the yard. Billy began kicking with the other foot and Ritchie did the same with his other shoe.

This did not make Billy happy. He was now running around in an absolute frenzy wearing only soaking wet socks in six inches of snow. He was so angry he didn’t know what to do. He stormed around the yard for a couple seconds before finally finding one of his shoes. His rage overcame his common sense, and instead of looking for his other shoe, he grabbed some snow, packed it tightly, and ran after Ritchie’s girlfriend. She cowered and Ritchie, being the gentleman he was, ran over, threw Billy to the ground, pulled his shoe back off as well as one of his socks, and threw them back across the yard again. Billy now stormed around with one sock and one bare foot demanding revenge.

Seeing his agitated state, we decided the best thing to do was to calm things down and let him have his way. He demanded we stand still so he could hit each of us with a snowball, execution style. We thought it was all over.

We went back inside and up to the attic where Ritchie and Billy had their bedrooms. We sat around watching TV in Ritchie’s room while Billy was sulking in his room. I looked in to see what he was doing and saw him stooped over something. He turned and revealed a slingshot, which he was loading with BBs. “Uh, Billy’s doing something with a slingshot,” I said.

Everyone panicked. The three girls rushed towards the staircase, which unfortunately for me, I happened to be standing directly in front of. They pushed me downstairs. I almost lost my balance. Collecting ourselves downstairs, we realized that Jimmy and Ritchie hadn’t made it down and I bolted back up into the attic.

Billy (tougher than your average 8-year-old, honestly, he could be quite intimidating) had thrown Ritchie to the ground right as I got to the top of the stairs. Jimmy cowered on a pile of dirty clothes in the corner. “Please don’t kill me! I’ll give you all my money!” Jimmy pleaded. Ritchie and I jumped on Billy and wrestled the slingshot out of his hands before he was able to do any damage.