The papers have been full of stories lately about bullies in  schools and it might make you think  that  big guys  picking on little  guys is something  new. It is not , never has  been. Little people have  been low hanging  fruit since Goliath.

I know because even though I weighed 10 pounds at birth it seemed like I got smaller as I got older.
That was not  all bad. Of course it made me eligible  to wear hand me downs till I was 14, and I was perfect size to crawl through a 10 inch size hole in the wall in the handball sport court at the Peninsula Park swim pool. Whenever an errant shot escaped into the hole  they hunted me up  and coerced me to wiggle through the tiny spider web ridden gap to get  their ball under penalty of dangling me by the heels in the deep end until I hollered "unclezzzzzzzzzz" glub glub.

Sometimes they said  thanks.

And though I looked like a refugee I was able  to entertain my sister's  boyfriends  by putting my legs behind my head, roll my eyes and walk on my hands across the front  room linoleum. I made a  starving orphan even though my shorts were black velvet scraps Mom's sewing  basket.

I often garnered some polite applause and a nickel.

But the penalty of being a pipsqeak at school resulted in a some bloody noses and bruised eye sockets after school or some times during . Nothing  serious. Lots of disdain by boys  with notice able biceps. Like Quentin Bouncer. I was his favorite runt.

One time I was sitting  on a top rail during  lunch hour  with my feet securing my perch behind a second steel rail Quentin came out of a door  behind me  and my back  was target for the day. He  gave it a shove and I went head first into the concrete  base. My left  cheekbone was devastated as he  flounced off to greener game and i stumbled  to the nurses room. I did not die. Just bled  like  a stuck pig. Still have a vee notch in the bone .

I told her I fell down but I told my big  brother who owned me as his beloved  but personal punching  bag, He never forgot Quentin's name.

Flash forward  to Pearl Harbor, My brud was in the Navy. So was Quentin. Just so happened they were both in boxing classes, same  weight. In what was called the MId Pacific Eliminations for the championship they met in the  ring.

You guessed it.        

Russell remembered the name. True story. Quentin met a furious whirlwind of flying fists and hollered uncle after going  down three times in the first  round.

He told me that story when he  got out of the navy.