Entry 3. The cookie fight

Other than perhaps being shot, the worst I ever felt was after I inflicted pain on someone else.

I was on my way home from the store with a container of cookies. You know those huge chocolate chip cookies bakeries make, the ones that are so sweet and just a little crunchy and the chocolate chips kind of explode in your mouth? Yes, those cookies. I had bought a sixpack of them and was walking home along one of the main corridors to share them with my family.

“Hey, are those cookies?” Badi asked after the usual kid pleasantries were exchanged.

“Yeah,” I said, prying open the plastic. “You want one?”

“Absolutely.” And then, after a few bites, “We need to share these with the guys.”

“Can’t, sorry, I told my sister I’d bring her a couple, and the others are for Mom and Dad.”

“Screw that, the guys need them more,” Badi said calmly enough.

“No, they don’t,” I replied firmly. “I bought these for my family.”

I figured that would be that, but then he said, “Your family can have cookies anytime, the guys can’t. It would be a treat for them.”

“They’ll be a treat for my family, too,” I said. “And anyway, they’re my cookies. I bought them with my money. I decide who gets ‘em.”

This is when it got weird. And sad.

“Don’t be so selfish, you little jerk, just give them to me,” he said, and he gave me a good shove.

When I still didn’t hand over the cookies, he made a fist and slugged me. Then he slugged me again, and again.

“What are you doing, Badi?”

“Teaching you a lesson about being selfish,” and he knocked the box of cookies to the floor.

That’s when the little light went on behind my eyes – “light” might be the wrong word, but I do remember light and heat and pressure and something scary powerful inside me trying to explode.

And then it exploded.

I swung as hard as I could and cracked him behind the ear with my closed fist. He put his hand to the side of his head in surprise, and I planted my fist as hard as I could into his stomach.

He crumpled to the ground and I climbed on his chest, put my knees on either side of his ribs, and started wailing the tar out of his head. Now it was his turn to put his hands up in defense, but I slapped them aside and kept hitting.

Where my mother came from, I don’t really recall, but when she peeled me off Badi I still wasn’t finished. While she was pulling on my left hand, I got in one last poke, pounding Badi’s vulnerable stomach as he lay prone on his back, feeling some savage glee in the way the blow made his body twitch up like a wounded deer that had been shot in the head.

“Ray! What is wrong with you?” Mom said, making me sit down while she tended to Badi and make sure he wasn’t seriously hurt.

“He tried to steal my cookies!” I said sullenly. I don’t remember exactly what she said in reply, except that she took away the cookies altogether.

I didn’t mind that she took them; I was no longer interested in sweet treats anyway. Looking at my friend flat on the ground sobbing and gasping for air, I couldn’t do anything but stare ahead, too ashamed to apologize, aghast at the harm I would inflict on someone I loved.

Badi thought I was looking so serious because my mother had upbraided me.

“You should have just shared the cookies,” he whispered. Getting pummeled hadn’t changed his mind.

Although I made no conscious decisions in those moments, I can trace back to that incident some of my core understandings. Although I won back the cookies, Badiah never wavered in his belief that he had the right to decide for someone else what was “necessary for the greater good.” So in a grim way I feel some responsibility for what he became.

For my part I realized that violence accomplishes nothing; his mind was not changed in the slightest.

I developed a resolve that if ever again I had such a serious disagreement with my friend – or with any other man or woman, for that matter – I would try to convince them by any means except for imposing my will through the use of force. I learned that day – and Badi learned again and again as time went on – violence only leads to more violence. I would seek a different solution.

Entry 4