OUT & ABOUT: My Part In The Knockout Game

The Philadelphia Public Record ^ | December 5, 2013 | Denise Clay

[2ndDivisionVet]

At just about every place I’ve ever worked, there’s been one feature in my office that has always stood out.

That feature is a bucket of baseball bats.

I have been collecting miniature baseball bats from major- and minor-league baseball parks since the mid-1990s. At first, it was because these bats, which range in price from $3 to $12, are the cheapest things you can get as souvenirs at the ballpark. But after a while, I started collecting them because they inadvertently sent a message.

That message: Leave me alone, and I’ll leave you alone.

Granted, I’ve never hit anyone with one of my bats, and I probably never would because they are collector’s items to me. But if the perception that I’ll take one of my collector bats to your head keeps you from approaching me in a way that could lead to something, that works.

I bring this up because I may have to start sticking one of my bats into the bag I usually carry when I go to my editing job or some of the other places I go when I’m out reporting.

It’s not because of the usual nonsense that I see and hear on SEPTA’s Route 23, a bus so crazy it’s made the folks at SEPTA start following me on Twitter because I make cracks about it.

It’s because I have this fear of being knocked out.

If you haven’t heard about the so-called Knockout Game, it’s obvious you’ve avoided the Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News. It’s all the rage.

Apparently, young people have been challenging each other to walk up to the first total stranger they see and knock said stranger out with one punch. And when I say “knock out,” I mean out cold. Like a mackerel. Gotta be revived and everything.

Now if I’ve learned nothing else between teaching college students at Temple and teaching The Children Of The Corn at the Performance Learning Center, I’ve learned you can’t tell young people anything these days.

If I had a nickel for every time I’ve heard the phrase “I’m grown” from someone who can barely shave, I could retire quite comfortably.

But I’m gonna tell the young folks playing this game one thing: STOP. I say this because the knockout you save may be your own.

I turn 50 in May and what you need to know about folks my age is that we’ve had about enough of your shenanigans. Every time I see a story on my Facebook page about this here “Knockout Game,” it’s usually put up there by some guy my age who prefaces it by saying “I wish some kid would.…”

Now some of these folks have boxed at one time or another. Others are armed. Most are just plain old, garden-variety crazy.

In any case, you can take that swing, but your fist might have written a check that your behind can’t cash.

Especially if the person you’re swinging at is a short lady with a large afro, glasses and braces. She’s carrying a baseball bat, and she will knock you out with it.

You have been warned.

[Charles Martel]

A person training their attention grows to see the average person as sleepwalking everywhere they go. People who are exceptions stand out a mile away. Like people in a mall moving around like cattle, your eyes are drawn to the twitchy one who’s a thief.

Other people with good situational awareness will usually stand out as "twitchy", too. You end up with a scenario similar to this, with the sleepwalking sheep being preyed upon from one side and defended from the other:

[SC_Pete]

YOU MIGHT WANT TO HAVE BACKUP.

[Right Wing Assault]

Mine is a little hard to twirl, but it is a good one; and legal in PA.

I figgered someone would suggest that model!

I wonder how this would twirl?

Or this one?