Charles Woodson and Terry Lindsay

Charles Woodson and Terry Lindsay

A Story

Copyright Catcher78 All rights reserved 6.20.2025

Author's Notes:

This is my story and all applicable copyright laws as per of the site as well my personal rights @ Do not copy, sample, record or parody it.

There is no sex in this story at all.

Mr. Hamm, taught metal shop. I was in the ninth grade at Worth McClure Junior High. The school was convenient as it was a block away from home, and I could come home for lunch. The Seattle Supersonics, practiced in the rec-center next door, which had a full size gym. Pete Elkins and I would skip class and watch the practice.

At one end of the gym, there was a complete stage with a metal proscenium. Pete and I would carefully raise the metal wall, until it was three inches off the stage. We laid on our bellies and watched the scrimmage, which was altogether different than my basketball practice, which involved repetitive drills.

The coach Al Bianchi, would smoke Benson & Hedges cigarettes throughout the practice, and the trainer Jack Curran, would walk around with a class room trash can and catch the butts, then he'd light another one. He called the players, NBA players mind you, lazy piece of shit, gutless cocksucker. Pete and I would marvel at how many creative ways he would use for the word "fuck." Noun, verb, adverb, adjective.

They were twenty-three and fifty-nine in their first season, just terrible. In hindsight he was a shitty coach as well.

This day he had admonished us, Mr. Hamm that is, to not skip class again, he was a really nice guy, so we agreed to not do it again. We had made a tool box out of sheet metal, by learning how to bend metal in a precise way. I was proud of my efforts and brought it home to my dad, who thanked me without effusively praising me for the surprise gift. He was a dick.

This day, we were finishing our work on building a metal scribe out of a 1/4 inch steel bar. We had learned to curl the end of the bar like an inverted question mark, which we could hang on a peg in the wall, then halfway down the scribe, we were shown how to twist the scribe, such that it looked like a twisted licorice piece, before ending in a very sharpened point. Simply it looked like a metal pencil. That was about ten inches long.

This was a second period class on the ground floor, the windows opened out onto second avenue west, which is where my parent's home was, just north of Boston Street, on Queen Anne Hill. All this was before Bill Gates, defiled Seattle, with his minions. It was mid-April this morning.

My bench faced the wall so that when I sat at my bench, my back was to the window. Directly to my left was Charles Woodson, a slight, light skinned fourteen-year-old black student. A year earlier we called him Charley, but in September of this school year, he announced that he was Charles.

I had played ball with his older half brother Earl Woodson, who had missed a school year when their dad fought for custody from his ex-wife. I played football, basketball and baseball with Earl. When he was in the ninth grade, he was six foot two and weighed two thirty or so, and he could run.

Where Earl was a nice guy, one of the best friends I ever had. I've lost touch since those years. Charles was a prick and a bully, when he found a victim he went in for the kill.

Charles sat to the left of me. Mostly I ignored him. But to his left sat Terry Lindsay. Terry was tormented by Charles, without mercy.

To put things in perspective, Terry bore a passing resemblance to today's cartoon character "Stewie," from the Cartoon show "Family Guy". A head that was shaped like a sidewise oval, with thinning hair.

The comparison is stretched thin as Stewie is a two dimensional character, and Terry Lindsay, was five eight inches tall and weighed two hundred and ninety pounds. He was not particularly bright either, and could not formulate the adequate response to Charles's verbal onslaught.

In today's life, Charles was fat shaming Terry, which was societally acceptable in the time that this happened, sort of a "Lord of the Flies" culling out of the weakling.

The only social response which the group of fourteen year old boys would accept, was for Terry to kick the shit out of Charles. Everybody accepted that Charles was a complete piece of shit, Earl couldn't stand his half-brother, so why should we have disagree with his opinion, if it were even voiced.

Mr. Hamm had sauntered by and told Charles to knock it off, that his scribe was half finished and he was going to flunk, then repaired to his glassed in office, and closed his door.

Nobody ever asked Mr. Hamm, what his contributory role was in the rapidly escalading events that happened, after he went to his office.

Charles was simmering as he contemplated having to flunk metal shop, and retake the ninth grade for some horse shit class. He slid away from the bench, his stool scraping the cement floor, stood up and walked behind Terry, who seemingly was unaware of Charles' and Mr. Hamm's remarks etc. and was sharpening the point of this scribe on a grinder.

Charles' kettle boiled over, "You fat, white, honkey piece of shit, " he punctuated this statement by grabbing both love handles above Terry's belt buckle, and vigorously shaking them in a vertical manner.

Several buttons tore lose. I was watching now with a spectator's interest. I thoroughly enjoyed a good scrap. I liked Terry's chances, if he got Charles on the ground.

Seeking to de-escalate, Charles sat down. Seeing Terry's acceptance of what had happened, Charles reached across and poked his finger into Terry's belly.

This was now like one of those movies when everything slows down, and the tick and tock of the clock, seem to have a ten second interval.

Terry sought a preemptive response. Holding his scribe in his pudgy fist, with the sharpened point exciting his grasp just past his little finger, he drove it into Charles' left thigh. Perhaps two inches, a little more.

Terry pivoted to his left and took off like a round sprinter past Mr. Hamm, who was reading the morning sports pages from the Seattle Post Intelligencer. This caused Mr. Hamm to look out toward where Charles was, still on his stool.

Charles, whose initial reaction was to suck in air, screamed like a possum does when confronted by an adversary and fell to the floor.

Mr. Hamm sprinted out of his office, and had his belt out of his pants' loop and fashioned a tourniquet of sorts using my scribe.

He said to me, "Hold it here Teddy," sprinted out his door and pulled the fire alarm, came back, called the vice principal's office and presumably said why he pulled it.

He came out of the office and screamed, "Go get him."

The troops were out the door and they collared him in the alley, behind my house. My mother doing her morning gardening, hosed the group down and they hauled Terry back to the school a block away.

It was all hushed up, Charles never returned. It seemed Earl and Charles's farther, Earl Senior, went through women regularly. Charles's mother was about to be replaced.

Terry met with counselors and was back in school the next week. I was interviewed several times.

My dad liked the scribe.

End