The day I snapped.

As a boy I lived in a fairly close nit neighborhood. I think that I knew everyone and I think that everyone knew me. There were a lot of kids around my age and we always had a lot of fun things going on. It didn't matter if we were out in the nearby fields building huts, or building dams on the irrigation ditches, we were all fairly active. Video games were just coming out and they just weren't as important to kids as they are now. In the bustle of all of the fun activities there was a black cloud about three houses down from mine. There lived, what I thought, and what all of the neighbor kids thought was the meanest man alive. Ever since I could remember, I remember tails of the evil of this man. Stories ranging from him stabbing his daughters with nails to punching little kids. Needless to say, I was a little scared of him. As I grew up, incident after incident confirmed my suspicions. There many occasions that I got yelled at. Sometimes for good reasons and sometimes for no reason at all. When riding my bike past his house, I always double timed my peddling to avoid any confrontation. He was just mean. He wasn't prejudice, he was mean to everyone, even his own kids. He had a son a few years younger than me, and I remember the famous church bathroom incident. On Sunday at church my younger brother and I walked into the bathroom and there he was. He was taking his son to the bathroom, and as some little kids do, as they take a wizz, his son had his pants dropped around his ankles. As our mean neighbor saw us, he said in a gruff voice to his son. "My hell Allen, Ive never seen a grown boy pee with his pants down." My little brother's jaw dropped as he looked at me speechless, he didn't know weather to laugh or just ignore it until he left. His son finished his business and they walked off. That further confirmed to us that he was the meanest man alive. He was even mean in church and he wasn't afraid to swear at kids at church. I think that my brother and I used and reused the famous bathroom quote over a million times. "My hell Gregg, I've never seen a grown boy pee with his pants down". Though comical, it was again a reaffirmation that he was the meanest man alive. My mean neighbor had a really neat 55 Chevy that was his pride and joy. If you looked at it wrong, you were yelled at. We usually steered clear of it for personal protection.
Then one day, the tables turned, the right stars aligned and It happened. I snapped.
One summer evening, my friend Dale and I were walking up the street. The mood was set. I was 11 or 12 years old, the testosterone had just started flowing in my body, girls were starting to become interesting to me, I was as smart as I ever remember feeling, and that particular night I was feeling extraordinarily tough, I felt good, I felt confident, most important, I felt like a man. As we walked up the street to my house our path fell unavoidably past his house and past his beloved cherry red 55 Chevy. I noticed something different about the car. It had new rims, and naturally I had to stop to take it in. I stopped and pointed out the new rims to my friend. My friend nudged me and pointed out that our mean neighbor was on the porch watching his new rims. It was too late, I had stopped too long and there it came:"You two get your @$$es away from my car." Expecting us to run, he stood up, my friend Dale assumed starting block position. There was a noise in my brain that sounded like a rubber band getting pulled to a breaking point, and I snapped. I said NO! As I walked towards him, And then came a flood of words that would have made Perry Mason silent. He stood there in shock as I let him have it. He hung on every word. When I finished, I stood there waiting for a punch or something and I didn't get it. He just looked down at the ground and apologised. In fact it was probably the most sincere apology that I had ever heard. He talked to me and explained previous events in his life that caused him to be the mean man that he was. That night we stood out in front of his house even past dark and talked. We talked like men. I went home that night, stunned at the reality of what had taken place. From that time forward he never yelled at me again. I would pass his house, he would wave and I would wave back. Some days we even had conversations. He respected me and I knew it. I never had any trouble from that time forward.
I learned something that day. I learned that if you are right, and that is if you are right. (Very important.) You have to stand up for that. Sometimes you have to stand up for that aggressively. It's easy to be passive and just let things slip, and I believe turning the other cheek is important, but you can only turn the other cheek for so long. Some times you have to fix it.