Chapter 25

Life for a teen is full of frustration and angst. And lies. Guys talk about supposed conquests. Imagine my shock when Grace told me girls did too. That was a woman's secret I didn't learn in either my first or second life.

There's terror lurking behind every shot of frustration and anger. Some guys learn early to take out the anger on someone smaller, weaker or both. And it works, usually. Until the smaller isn't weaker, just younger ... and combat trained in another life. When brute strength runs into Krav Maga, Jogar Capoëra and Special Forces tricks, brute strength had better be something special ... a size 48 shirt and a size 2 hat is not special.

I finally got the fretting under control ... didn't do a damn thing for the broken left wing. When I was 59 and stepping out of airplanes to places I didn't go, never been, and didn't do nasty things to people I'd never met or seen, I was always thinking I could take on the world single handed. I got my chance at the ripe old age of 14 in the lobby of the Paulina Stearns Hospital.

"Honest, officer. I didn't start it."

"Well ... the only way you could take Billy Badass (True facts: Badass is an Odaawaa name. It's not spelled like that but that's how it sounds.) out is to sucker punch him, unless you have steel rods in that cast."

He wasn't taking my word for it and he couldn't cuff me but he was trying when daddy came in the lobby door. After one glance at my bruised eye, the wreck on the floor and the officer trying to find a way to get the cuffs on, Daddy said, "I am the attorney of record of that young man. I need your name and badge number."

He turned to me and said, "David, you owe me a dollar." We already know how I feel about attorneys, I'll not ride that horse to death.

The steno pad came out and daddy started writing down names and addresses of the witnesses, the name and badge number of the cop and the particulars of the hulk ... who daddy referred to as the 'perpetrator'.

"Hear now," said the cop, "What do you need all that for? This is pretty plain. The kid attacked Billy ... had to have done. No way could this shrimp do that to Bill unless he did."

"Did you ask the witnesses?"

"What for? They had to see it like I said," the cop looked at the people behind the desks. They were all shaking their heads no. "No? What do you mean No!"

"Attempt to intimidate witnesses," said Daddy as he wrote in his pad. "Keep going, officer, this is great."

"What?"

"Hell of a law suit..."

"What?" exclaimed the cop. "Let me see your credentials."

Daddy took out his drivers license and displayed it. The cop took it and put it in his pocket.

"Theft of official state documents," Daddy wrote that down, too.

"No, I want to see your Michigan Bar license," argued the cop. The Bar license is a parchment that is displayed on the law office wall. It is NOT something a lawyer carries around.

"Badgering an officer of the court, God, this is great. David, we'll get this one tried before the State Supreme court."

About this time, Bill, the shambles on the floor, woke up and apologized for hitting me.

"Sorry kid, I was in a hurry and you were in the way. What the hell did you do?" asked Bill.

"A little of this and a little of that, some Krav Maga and Jogar Capoëra. You were easy. I wasn't expecting to get hit or you wouldn't have gotten the first blow. What kind of a guy strikes a cripple?"

"Krag Mara?" Bill asked.

"Krav Maga ... Israeli military offensive and self-defense un-armed combat."