When we played hockey competitively in elementary school, somebody was always trying to maim either the goalie or the best player on the other team or both.  When the team played poorly, our coach, a former NHL defenceman, would come into the locker room and invite us to try to kill him.  He was over six feet and weighed over two hundred pounds so most of us just ended up battered and bruised.
 

I myself tended to stay out of scrapes unless I could not avoid them.  It did not dawn on me right away that I was relatively large until the time I got so angry I punched someone with an uppercut.  I stood amazed as I watched him lift off the ground and fly through the air to land on his back.  Few people my age bothered me after that.
 

Whenever they did, I discovered I had a talent for using other people’s momentum to make them look foolish in a fight.  I think it is part of my nature to help people go in the direction they are heading so when someone charged me, I stepped out of the way and helped them along.  If they came at me and grabbed me, I held their arms as I fell backward and helped them on their way with a lift from my knee or foot.  I felt like a super hero as they seemed to take flight.
 

As I got older, things got rougher.   In the school yard when there was ice on the concrete surface, we would slide into people from the back and knock their feet out from under them.  It is astonishing that no one got a concussion.  One day I was watching Jenkins, who was older than me run around sliding into people in my grade, laughing uproariously when he knocked them down.  I thought I would get in on the fun so I did to him what he had been doing to everyone else.   He did not laugh this time.  Instead he came over to me as I was still lying on the ground giggling and punched me forcefully in the stomach, expelling all of my breath.  In return, my older brother did to Jenkins what he had done to me.  It gave me a great feeling of satisfaction to watch him bent over double with tears in his eyes.  It felt like justice.
 

Similarly, when someone hit me with a bat in the mid-section, I made sure to find him later and return the favour.  Most people stopped attacking me.  There was one guy, though, who never gave up.  No matter how many times I beat him in a fight, he would come back again.  He hated Jews.
 

Late in grade eight, we fought again just behind the school.  I began as usual to simply throw him around.   He bent over and I started to pound on his back.  I fell into a kind of reverie.  Why was I doing it?  It all seemed so stupid.  Here I was pounding on his back and it seemed so boring.  At that precise moment, he straightened up and punched me in the mouth.   From behind the fence, two of his friends came forward and also started to hit me.  I curled up on the ground.  Mercifully, the other two lost interest and convinced my enemy the fight was over. 
 

I was never able to avenge this fight because he dropped out of school within a week.  About four years later, he was convicted of assault with a deadly weapon when he pistol whipped someone who had beaten him at pool.  By the time I got to high school none of those I had fought were left.  One was arrested for armed robbery.  One joined the army.  Most just disappeared.
 

Since those days, I have lost my taste for violence and vengeance and I no longer think of myself as a superhero.  Nowadays, I feel more like the Yiddish soldier who when told to fire in front of him said, “God forbid!  I could put somebody’s eye out!”