The Meanest Thing I Ever Did

Now I don’t know what you think about me, but I’d imagine (hopefully) you think I’m a nice, funny, and friendly person. I wasn’t always that way.

I’ve had a few lapses.

The worst came when I was 10. I was like most ten-year-olds—happy, carefree, with a sloppy grin that said I’d probably done something worthy of getting in trouble for recently. I had a friend down the block named Josh Dover. Josh lived with his grandparents because his dad was a Green Beret and his mom had run off years before.

Josh’s dad was the epitome of coolness, absolutely idolized by Josh and I; his grandparents were the quintessential eccentrics. Josh’s dad came home on leave a couple of times a year. He would lie on the concrete by the side of the pool in his swimsuit, muscles taut, tan, and bulging from hours plunging through dark, humid jungles lugging around a belt-fed machinegun defending the good old U.S. of A. (that’s what we figured anyways since he couldn’t tell us where he’d been). He’d lie there with aviator sunglasses hiding his piercing stare, the paratrooper tattoo on one shoulder and a snake tattoo on the other. Every ten minutes he’d flip the sunglasses to the side, roll over into the pool, sink to the bottom and hold his breath for what seemed like two or three minutes, surface and climb back up to his previous spot, do 100 pushups, then put the sunglasses back on and lay there some more.

His grandparents were a different story. His grandmother was always trying to learn a foreign language. She had successfully taught herself several, including German and Japanese, but when I knew here she was working on Spanish. She expected Josh and his sister Nikki to address her as Abuelita, which is “little grandmother” in Spanish. Every meal she served seemed to include a variety of beans—lima, kidney, pinto, wax, and navy beans, but never anything normal like green or baked beans. She wore a lot of jewelry and it was all turquoise and silver.

She also wore a wig.
His grandpa was a three war veteran and had suffered the consequences. He’d served in the tail end of World War II, a good chunk of Korea, and the beginning of Vietnam. He was deeply moody and would change his mind frequently. When Josh was out playing with me and was supposed to come home, he would come out the front door and blow this red plastic bugle. We could hear it anywhere in the three or four block radius that we were allowed to roam.

So anyways, one day Josh and I were playing war—what we played at least 75% of the time. We each had a full uniform, minus the combat boots. We’d run around in our camouflage and white tennis shoes hiding behind trees, diving to the ground, and belly-crawling while surviving withering attacks by massive yet invisible forces.

Eventually we figured out who we should make the “bad guys.” In the middle of our block, exactly half way between Josh’s house and mine was a white house owned by a single lady who ran a daycare out of her home.

Every summer when we were out of school the daycare was packed with boys and girls our age who frankly had very little to do all day. We recruited them and outfitted them with our surplus cap guns and old BB-guns that didn’t work any more, and then we retreated to our bases and plotted attacks against each other.

One summer there were twin boys, probably around eight years old, who stayed there from 6:30am until 5:30pm Monday through Friday. Around 2:30 one afternoon we were hard at war. It was 105 degrees and we probably weren’t thinking as rationally as we should have been.

We captured one of the twins and began interrogating him. We wanted to know where his brother was, as well as the rest of his gang—but mainly where the brother was.

He wouldn’t tell. Like a good soldier, he’d give his name, rank, and serial number, but nothing else. We threatened torture. He called our bluff.

Then the meanest thing I ever did transpired.

I handcuffed the boy with a pair of metal cuffs (every good soldier carries handcuffs, I think).

I gave him one ‘last’ chance. He refused and repeated his name, rank, and serial number.

I pulled off his shirt.

I gave him one MORE ‘last’ chance. He declined again.

I marched him across my yard to the biggest ant hill I could find. I kicked the top off of it.

I gave him one more LAST chance—and this time it really was his last chance. He refused—I told him this wasn’t the time to be a hero. He pretended to spit in my face and say he’d do anything for his country.

I kicked his legs out from under him (which was easy since he was handcuffed) and laid him face down in the ant pile which was now swarming with angry ants. I held him for what seemed an eternity—probably 15-20 seconds. Then I rolled him over onto this back. After half a minute he began to scream.

My mom was in the kitchen and came running out. Of course I let him up immediately.

We walked the poor kid back to his babysitter’s house. The babysitter called his mother. The boy had an allergic reaction. His mom had to leave work early and take the boy to the emergency room where he was treated for 137 ant bites.

He never played with me again, and I never found out where his brother was hiding either.

Needless to say I got in big trouble and won’t be doing that again because I definitely learned my lesson.

And that is the meanest thing I have ever done.



—Eddy Zakes (as remember roughly 15 years later)

eazakes@juno.com