I was just a little boy, around
10 years old as I recall. I was a good kid too,
always doing what my momma told me to do.
I was with a bunch of other good little Protestant boys from small
southern towns attending summer camp in Tennessee and we were having a great
time. At night we would gather around a
big campfire under the star-filled skies and hear wonderful stories mingled in
with an occasional ghost story to keep us from running away.
The
older boys, who had been to camp before, told us different kinds of stories
that were much more frightening than the ghost stories the counselors
told. They told of a group of boys who
came to camp every summer from New Orleans.
They were big and mean, bullies in every way. They terrorized the smaller boys, taking
their food, hanging their underwear in the trees, and sometimes teaching them a
lesson with their fists that they would never forget. There were stories of boys who were beaten
and tied to a tree, covered with honey to attract the bugs and left for
hours. The legend of the New Orleans
boys was growing bigger and more terrifying each and every day.
I
will never forget the sight of the big charter bus pulling up in front of the
lodge and watching those big, bad boys getting off and surveying their
domain. All the little fearful
Protestant boys who listened to their mommas looked on with fear. Up to this point camp had been fun and
carefree, but now, it was all about survival.
The New Orleans boys were back!
They
staked their claim the first few hours of their arrival. I watched one crying boy being taken to First
Aid with a bloodied nose. Several others
told of the New Orleans boys ransacking their cabins for snacks and tearing up
a picture of one boy’s momma and daddy.
I managed to stay out of their way.
The
leader of the New Orleans boys was a tall, lanky boy named Jeff. Jeff was street smart and talked with a
strange accent, punctuating every sentence with a vocabulary that this good
Baptist boy had never heard before. Jeff had a group of bodyguards who followed
him around doing his dirty work.
One
day I was walking into the back door of my cabin and Jeff simultaneously walked
through the front door. The cabin was
empty and we were all alone. He stopped
and stared at me. His silent message was
loud and clear. Get out of here little
boy, this is my house. But I didn’t
move. I stood still and stared
back. Finally, with much irritation and
anger that I had not trembled in his presence he shouted, “What!”
I
don’t know what came over me or what made me say what I did. Jeff was much larger and definitely more
intimidating than I could ever be. I
wasn’t a little John Wayne by any stretch of the imagination, but something
inside of me caused me to speak and I heard my trembling voice say, “Jeff,
you’re not nearly as tough as you think you are.”
That
was the last thing I remember. Jeff made
quick work of me, leaving me beaten and battered between two footlockers.
A
few days later I received a box of brownies from home. Most of the good little Protestant boys got
care packages. The New Orleans boys did
not. My first thought was that I needed
to hide these from the bullies, but then I heard another voice speaking to me.
I
found Jeff. “What do you want?” he
demanded, thinking I should have learned my lesson. “I wanted to share something with you,” I
said. I opened the box of
brownies. His eyes widened and he said,
“Those look good.” “Take one,” I told
him. And he did. We sat down together and ate the whole box!
Jeff
didn’t become my best friend that day, but he didn’t
bother me anymore. In fact, he would
speak to me like we were friends. And
his boys stopped terrorizing my friends.
The voice that I heard that day was a Bible verse that I had learned in
Sunday School. “Love your enemies. If someone strikes you on the cheek, turn the
other cheek.”
I
took Jesus at his word and discovered that he knows what he is talking about.
