In addition to our homemade wrestling league with fake matches, my brother and I had full-contact ​pillow boxing matches​ in our house, and they were for real. Pillow boxing is when you take the small square throw pillows your mom bought for the couch, clench one in each hand, and use the padded side to try to punch the shit out of each other. My brother and I tried to be strategic. We’d move around the bedroom, ducking, dodging and trying to hit each other with well placed jabs, straights, and hooks. It was a lot of fun, and very exciting, and we punched the shit out of each other every now and then.
And then Dick Shucker came over.
Dick Shucker was my brother’s friend. To be fair, he didn’t actually go by “Dick,” he went by “Richard,” but it’s a lot more fun to say Dick Shucker. Anyway, Dick worked at the local mall in a music store and was an early video game nerd. He and my brother would come home after school and play video games for eight hours or more, or on the weekends all night long, way before the fancy 3-D graphics of today. These guys would play on the Atari 2600 and Mattel’s Intellivision (which was awesome!).
So, one time, Dick came over and watched Steve and me pillow box for a round or two. Then he decided he wanted to challenge Steve. Now, Dick was tall, probably six feet, or a little more, and Steve was probably about five to seven inches shorter than him. Dick was really lanky, too, so he definitely had a significant reach advantage. I showed him how to hold the pillows on the edge, which were now becoming more and more deformed and dingy with smudge marks from our sweaty hands. He swung his fists through the air a few times to get the feel of it, then they both backed into their corners.
“Ready?” I shouted. I acted like I hit a bell, “Ding Ding!”
My brother came out in a crouch, his hands held high, stalking forward like he’d done with me so many times. Dick charged out of his corner like a man on a mission. With his head down, he started swinging wild haymakers, one after the other, like a whirling dervish. Steve ducked and slipped to get out of the way, swung a few easy shots to gauge distance, then fired off a wild looping punch of his own...and it connected...hard. Dick was in the process of throwing another wild hook as Steve’s pillow-covered fist, with the power of 16-years of teenage angst behind it, crashed right into the side of Dick’s face. The force of the blow, and his own momentum, spun Dick 360 degrees and he crumpled to the ground...unconscious.
“Holy shit,” I thought, “Steve just killed Dick right here in our house.”
We both rushed forward and bent over his prostrate form. We called his name and slapped his face a few times. He opened his eyes but looked completely out of it, like he just woke up on another world. We pulled him up to the bed where he wiggled his jaw back and forth and took a few moments to gather his wits.
Steve looked at him, “Hey, don’t tell your parents about this, okay?” Dick groaned.
I’m no doctor now, but even at the age of 13, I was of the opinion that Dick Shucker was most definitley concussed that day at our house.