I mentioned once in this column that my only superpower was my indomitable colon, a colon with a particular kryptonite.  But that doesn’t mean that I don’t have an array of Batman like skills that make me rather exceptional … if still only an ordinary human.  Call it Peak Human if you will.  Oh yes, I will.  Like Captain American and the Super Soldier Formula.  Some of these skills include the ability to loudly pop my ankle at will (a gift from soccer) or phonetic belching.

There is one skill though that was forged through long hours of pain and suffering, but when it came to fruition was masterfully used in absolute and total domination.  Pillow fighting.

The Forge of Childhood

I am the youngest child of four.  And we were hellions.  A pack of ravenous wolves eager for blood.  My siblings are solely responsible for any toughness, nastiness, or feistiness I possess.  Growing up I was beaten, bloodied, scratched, bitten, belted, kicked, hogtied, battered, and buttered.

Yes, buttered.

When I was in sixth grade, my older brother tied me down with a long coil of heavy rope.  Real tight, Houdini type knots.  He then put several dabs of butter on me.  It was summer time and I was only wearing a pair of nylon shorts.  My dear brother then let in the 8 hungry dogs in our back yard to tear me to pieces.  Imagine a herd of frantically wagging tails and a butter feed line of slathering tongues.  Its the kind of thing that would have ended up on Youtube nowadays … as well as Dr. Phil.  I have flashbacks to this day … let’s move on …

Of course, we’d pillow fight as well.  Poor kids are naturally the best pillow warriors.  You wanna know why?  Rich people can afford soft, feathery pillows.  Poor people have old sacks of grain that they use to lay their head.  These pillows were hard and all the old grit inside collected in one end … like a morningstar.  Get hit by one of those suckers and you’d lose your breath and perhaps even your short term memory.

As the littlest, I was meat for the older kids.  My siblings were seven, four, and two years older.  Huge differences in size and strength.  But their beatings with those pillows of stone crafted an unbreakable will in me.  It grew and grew as my brother brought over his friends from high school and they’d clobber me, as well.

I remember one guy coming over, Rex or Rhett or something.  He was 17 and 6′ 2″ -ish, big guy.  Rex/Rhett hit me so hard that he knocked me into the wall and I broke the plaster drywall.  Of course, I immediately sprang back to the battle swinging the pillow as hard as I could.  Work the body!  Work the body!  Afterwards, Rex/Rhett looked at me and said with true appreciation, “You’re one tough little kid.

Hell yes.

Pillow Permeatations

Not only did we pillow fight with bricks, we invented new and more painful ways to play.  We’d take long, long socks and roll up another pair as tightly as possible and stuff them at the end of them.  Then swing said sock over your head and you have a deadly flail.  Those things pack a punch, particularly when you wash your socks as infrequently as we did.  Bammo!

Its the same device that the Marines used for a code red in these famous scene:

“It’s just a bad dream, fat boy.”

Frat Fighting

I can neither confirm nor deny that there is a fraternity sponsored pillow fight between the brothers and the pledges.  If there were such a horrible event … then it would probably match a Big against his Little.  For non-Greek people, a Big is like an adopted Big Brother in the fraternity that looks out for you, buys you stuff, blah blah blah.  Naturally, I had a Big – every pledge gets one.  I also had not one, but TWO littles.  Because I’m cool like that.  My Big was a fellow soccer player, Stumph.  My two littles were Devon in the Spring of 1998 and Aaron (aka Tank) in the Fall of 1999.  Thusly, I had three fights … allegedly.

ROUND 1

In college, I was still poor.  In fact, I was so poor that I still had the same pillow that I had been sleeping on for the last ten years.  Yep, good ole Mr. Painless.  Hard, weighted, and swingable.  When I fought my big, I was in the midst of Hell Week … sleep deprived, surviving on portions of oven grease and orange soda, and sleeping on the floor with 15 other guys.  As are all of the events of that week, we were woken up with clanging pots, shouts, and shotguns.  Oh wait, I keep forgetting that I wasn’t a Sigma Nu.

Our fight was cut pretty short as Stumpy was going into his Hulkamaniac fury before we engaged, showboating a little bit for the brothers.  That cut into our alloted fight time as their were still a horde of other pledges still to go.  We swung three times and each time our pillow cases got entangled, wrapping around each other like a mass of cables at the back of your computer.  And each time that happened … we had to stop and untie them.  That was our entire fight.

You were lucky, Stumph.

ROUND 2

My first match as a brother was against Devon, a spring pledge.  I knew it was coming so I could mentally focus and prepare.  Some of the brothers put pairs of jeans down their pillow cases for that added punching power, but to me that was a pussy movie.  Besides, my pillow was far more lethal than any denim steroid.

My first Little was not what I would call Mr. Athletic.  Tall, lanky, engineering type.  In fact, the first time he played on a fraternity softball team in intramurals, one of the other brothers looked at him deadpan after watching him throw the ball and asked, “Devon, do you have a father?”  Ouch.

So needless to say that the odds were not in his favor.  We came out and poor Devon had his pillow shyly at his side.  I could have played it easy on him, but I didn’t.  This was his Hell Week and it was go time.  Boom, boom, boom.  TKO first round.

Afterwards one of the older brothers came up to me, Rick, and mentioned that I shouldn’t have gone so hard on him.  As if he looked down on me for doing it.  He did the same thing for one of his littles later, just standing there looking menacing and letting himself get hit.  My first thought was Cobra Kai.  ”MERCY IS FOR THE WEAK … WHAT IS YOUR PROBLEM, MR. LAWRENCE!”

Suck it up.

ROUND 3

My second Little, Aaron, was much more of a challenge.  Aaron, also known as Tank, was a little bit shorter than me, but he was a weight lifter.  I’d guess that he had about 15 pounds on me and an inch shorter.  I knew that he’d come out amped up and swinging for a one-punch knockout.  And I decided to use that to my advantage.

We met in the arena of doom and as suspected, he took a massive swipe with his pillow.  I didn’t swing, but stepped just out of range.  While he struggled to recover from his momentum I swung back right at his head.  Ka-Pow!  He became enraged.  Another mighty swing … like Thor wielding Mjolnir against the Midgard Serpent.  Unfortunately, I was crafty like Loki.  Another dodge and a counterstrike right on the money.  The crowd of onlookers started to ‘ooh’ and ‘aah’ as the match unfolded.  Two more swings and two more deft returns.

At this point, poor Tank was so lost in his rage that he actually just fist tackled me in my chest into the crowd.  And at that point, I knew that he had lost.   Checkmate.

I’ve seen retired undefeated in my professional career, much like Rocky Marciano.  Pillow Fight King.