The Day I Punched My Childhood Friends Little Brother in the Belly

By Sean Patrick

Earlier today when I was riding my bike, I passed my grade school friend Jarod’s old house. Whenever I see that place, I am reminded of the time that I punched his little brother in the belly. 

It was the year I was in third or fourth grade, which means I was probably about nine years old. It was a Friday and my friend Jarod had me over for a sleep over party, an event we had been excited about for weeks. Jarod lived with his parents and his little brother, whose name I think was Josh. Josh was about four years old at the time, and unfortunately for him, he was being annoying as shit.  

For reasons unknown, Josh kept insisting that we play fight. When I think about it today, it’s likely that play fighting may have been something that he would do frequently with his dad and/or his older brother. But at that time I didnt have a little brother that wanted to play fight, and if me and my older brother were ever fighting it wasn’t out of playfulness, making this scenario quite puzzling to me.

For several minutes Josh kept innocently egging me on, and I kept wondering what the hell I was supposed to do. Now up to this point he hadn’t made any sort of contact with me, so although he was annoying, I didn’t really have a legit reason to strike him. But then Josh started hitting me. It didn’t hurt, but I didn’t want him to do it anymore, so I politely informed him that he should stop before I hit him back. Of course he kept hitting me though because he wanted me to (softly) hit him back. I reached my breaking point. After he hit me once more, I wound up and punched him with all my strength right in his gut, instantly knocking him to the floor.

Nine year olds are a lot bigger than four year olds, and I in particular was kind of big for a nine year old, and he in particular was a pretty tiny for a four year old. I’d say I outweighed him by about sixty or seventy pounds. By rule even professional boxers with that much weight difference are not allowed to fight each other, and yet I decided that regardless of our size difference, punching his frail four year old frame as hard as I could was not only necessary, but also deserved. 

After falling to the floor, Josh laid there motionless. Jarod, who had never tried to stop his brother from hitting me, looked at me with a shocked expression. The look on his face can only be compared to the expression A.J. Cowling must have had on his face the first time he saw O.J., after O.J. allegedly (allegedly = actually) killed his wife and wife’s friend.  In a frightened tone, Jarod said…

” You weren’t supposed to hit him hard…” 

“He told me to!” was my only defense. 

At that point the little guy sprang back to life: he got up from the floor, let out a bloodcurdling scream, and ran downstairs to his mom yelling, “Sean hit me!” My friend Jarod said he was going downstairs also, most likely because he was afraid to be alone with me after my sickening display of aggression. I told him I didn’t feel like going downstairs (translation: I’m scared to death to go downstairs), and he quickly descended to the downstairs area without me.

Here I was, a nine year old with a bad boy mullet haircut, left alone in my friends house because of my dangerous temper and trying to plan my next move. I thought maybe I could hide until either things blew over, or they moved out. But because their upstairs wasn’t very big, the cops (who I was sure were going to be called) would easily find me. I also contemplated jumping out the window, but my fear of heights wouldn’t allow me the balls to do so. My only choice was to take it like a man and go downstairs, leading to one of the most visual memories from my childhood.

I walked slowly down the stairs, and when I got to the first floor, I saw my friends mom cradling her youngest boy in her arms and yelling, “BREATHE! PLEASE BREATHE!! OH MY GOD!! BREATHE!!” Josh, who wasn’t screaming anymore, appeared unconscious. It was like a scene out of Apocalypse Now. I avoided eye contact and ran to their basement. Luckily the mom thought this might be the last time she saw her child alive, so she focused on him and didn’t notice his potential murderer stroll by.

I was sure I killed the kid. From the basement I could still hear her yelling frantically, and luckily after a while I could also hear Josh screaming again also… which on the upside meant that the kid was now breathing… but I still wanted to be nowhere around any of these people. But since I couldn’t escape from the house, I came up with the next best plan a nine year old could conjure up: I would pretend nothing happened. It was brilliant. I turned on the television they had in their basement and started watching Roseanne. That’s when Jarod and Josh’s dad came down. 

In an attempt to not look suspicious, I sat there ignoring his presence and laughing at all of the jokes on Roseanne. At that time I thought it worked great, but looking back I’m sure I was laughing at jokes that were way over my head: jokes about Dan and Roseanne’s financial shortcomings, Jackie’s sex life, and Darlene’s first period. These things were nothing I would have understood, yet I laughed hysterically at each and every one of the jokes. I probably looked guiltier than Hugh Grant.  

The dad sat there for a couple minutes without saying anything to me, which made me think that either I had pulled it off and he didn’t think I did it, or that everyone had completely forgotten about the whole wacky ordeal. The latter was a little tough to believe since I could still hear screaming from the upstairs, but there was hope. That hope was destroyed when the dad calmly asked, “Did you punch Josh?” I didn’t know what to say, so I blurted out the first thing that came to mind: “I don’t remember.” 

For the life of me I cannot recall what happened after that. I don’t remember what he said next, or what we did at the sleep over. What I do recall is that I kicked that four year olds ass. 

Mr. Miyagi Might Have Been a Pedophile

By Sean Patrick

It’s a theory I’ve been discussing for years. It began one night in college when I was drinking and watching The Karate Kid. I was sitting there enjoying this nostalgic film, when like an abusive uncle it hit me: the relationship between Mr. Miyagi and Daniel is quite sketchy. Here we have an elderly veteran devoting all of his time to the adorable kid from New Jersey, the pedophile victim capital of the world.* I watched the Miyagi/Daniel scenes from the film again this morning to see if I noticed anything suspicious, and I stumbled upon some red flags that suggest Miyagi’s motives may not have just been teaching this kid karate.

When Daniel first arrives at his apartment complex in California, he is greeted by the hunky Freddy Fernandez. Within the first couple of minutes of meeting Daniel, Freddy expresses his interest in learning karate. The superintendent at his building is Asian, and it’s a fact that all Asian’s know karate.* However, Freddy has never asked Miyagi for lessons. Why? Because kids around the neighborhood know not to go near creepy old man Miyagi. Their parents have warned them about this pervert, but since Daniel’s friendship with Freddy is short lived he is never properly cautioned about the sex offender who dwells downstairs. Even in the Halloween scene where Miyagi shows off his three pumpkins (bait), not one child comes to the door to trick-or-treat. This is most likely because they have been instructed not to to Miyagi’s door by their parents. As a kid, there were houses I was warned to not go trick-or-treating at, and I guarantee it wasn’t because my parents thought I might be disturbing the residents martial arts training. 

Another thing that struck me as odd is what Miyagi does to the bullies that are harrassing Daniel. Because a group of Kobra Kai’s have been battering Daniel’s pretty face, he does what any responsible adult would do in that situation: he kicks their ass! An elderly man beats up five eighteen year olds at once. Two things seem odd about that: 1) An adult just beat up kids. Even in the eighties that was illegal. Yet instead of scaring the kids off by yelling at them or threatening to call the police, Miyagi jumps a fence and beats the life out of five teenages who just left a costume party. 2) You know what kind elderly man would have the strength to beat up five young karate experts? A horny one. Horny people have more strength than Superman,* and when Miyagi saw Daniel getting his ass pounded, he had the strength of twelve thousand elephants. Speaking of the debacle that was Daniel’s evening at the Halloween dance…

…it’s almost like Miyagi schemed up the whole scenario. Daniel didn’t want to go to the costume dance because he knew he’d get his ass kicked. So what does Miyagi do? He makes him a costume and demands that he go. I’m sure Miyagi knew his share of Kamikaze pilots back in his war days, and he was aware of how those missions ended… yet he sent Daniel to the wolves to get roughed up, making it necessary for Miyagi to come and save the day. This put Daniel in his debt, and he was hoping that debt would be paid off at his love palace…

Miyagi has a second home outside of the apartment complex. It’s a rickety secluded house that, along with the fences, needs to be painted, has old cars that need to be waxed, and has floors that need to be sanded. Sounds like he hasn’t spent too much time there lately. But when naive sexy boy Daniel comes to town, the brothel is open for business. Even more frightening is Miyagi’s one rule of the house: “I say, you do. No question.” Yikes. 

And the gifts he gives this kid? Ridiculous. He fixes his bike, making it better than new. A typical predator would consider a new bike enough to allure a child, but Miyagi takes it up a notch; he gives him a karate robe that his deceased wife made for him, a classic car, and a Bonsai tree. Not only is he bestowing to him a sentimental gift his dead wife gave him decades earlier, but he’s also giving him rare shrubs and automobiles. In retrospect, within the first few months of their relationship, Miyagi gave a sixteen year old a new bike, a car, a karate outfit, and a fucking Bonsai tree! He throws in a pack of smokes and a Hustler and Daniel has everything a sixteen year old boy could ever want.  But where’s the pay off? Why didn’t Miyagi ever try to score with this Italian dream boat? Well he did, but unfortunately he blew it…

After a rough date with Allie, Daniel comes over to Miyagi’s to blow off some steam. When he arrives, Miyagi is drunk (by the way Pat Morita plays one of the best drunks in the history of film). Seeing his chance, Miyagi pours the vulnerable Daniel a drink. Not used to the taste of liquor, Daniel coughs and struggles to get the drink down, all to the delight of his bartender. Miyagi laughs at him, pours him another round, and pleads for him to take another drink. Then, in attempt to impress and arouse the teenager, he demonstrates his old Army drills while wearing his military uniform. Fed up with all the foreplay, Miyagi goes for the score by popping a squat on his bed. Unfortunately he overestimated how much liquor he could handle, and when the karate master sits down, he falls asleep. Sixty years of karate training couldn’t prepare him for the effects of cheap whiskey, and his big night turns into his biggest failure.

These are not the only things that put in question Mr. Miyagi’s motives. If you watch the movie, you’ll notice that Miyagi rarely looks in Mrs. Larousso’s eyes (most likely out of guilt), he frequently wears flamboyant Hawaiian shirts, and he always makes sure that Daniel gets wet when they are around a body of water.  It’s like something out of a child molesters playbook.

Now obviously I’m not saying that Pat Morita himself was a pedophile. In fact, I think the picture below proves otherwise… 

… and it’s possible that the character Mr. Miyagi wasn’t a pedophile either. Regardless, it’s worth nothing that Miyagi’s relationship with the sixteen year old Daniel was very inappropriate. 

You don’t see movies like The Karate Kid anymore. Because of internet predators, film executives are no longer encouraged to make movies about latchkey kids who exclusively hang out with old men. It’s just another thing that Chris Hansen has ruined for all of us. 

*This statistic is completely assumed. 

OLD WRITING SAMPLE

By Sean Patrick

Old Ladies are Adorable

By Sean Patrick

Today I decided to walk to Jewel, our local grocery store, to buy some Band-Aids. The reason? Last week I ran into a problem: while I was walking home from a bar in Wisconsin Dells, I saw a rock on the ground and tried to kick it as far as possible. Needless to say things went awry, I busted up my toe, and since then I’ve gone through an Iraq’s amount of bandages to cover up my grotesque busted appendage. This morning I found myself needing more, so I headed off to Jewel. 

When I got to the bandage aisle, an elderly woman approached me in a rush. 

“Can you help me?!?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” I replied. You see, I’m not a guy that can really  help out much… not that I don’t want to, I just don’t have the mental or physical capabilities to do so. Things like building, fixing cars, solving calculus problems… these are all things that I struggle with. So if she is approaching me wanting me to build her a new ash tray, fix her brakes, or use the limit definition to compute the derivative, f‘(x), for f (x) = 1/2 x – 3/5, I know I’m not going to be able to help her out, and I don’t want to give her false hope, which is why I said, “I don’t know.”

Ignoring my response, she demanded that I come with her. She grabbed my arm and had me follow her out of the bandage aisle and towards the center of the store. On the way I rechecked my outfit, making sure I didn’t look like an employee. Unless the newest Jewel garb is a blue and white sleeved softball shirt that has  the word “KRUNK” written on the center of it with black marker, green khaki shorts, and Alabama crock sandals, I in no way resembled a Jewel employee. 

Out of pure curiosity I let her drag me through the store, ignoring the fact that I might be being kidnapped. Once we got to the card aisle she let me go and hurried down towards the middle section of the cards, which contained all the stores “singing cards.” These are the cards that when opened, play music. They’re great.

She looked around at the various cards, and when she spotted the one she wanted she took it out and handed it to me.

“Is this funny?” she asked.

The card had a cartoon picture of an elderly woman and a man on it, and when I opened it up, the Right Said Fred masterpiece “I’m Too Sexy” came on, specifically at the part where Fred says, “I’m too sexy for my shirt…”  On the inside, the excited cartoon man has no shirt on, revealing his old, spotted obese upper half, and the cartoon woman is making a grossed out face. Above the characters it says, “Happy Birthday! You’re Too Old for This!”

I didn’t really get it. Maybe I was looking too deep into the singing card creator, but the whole spectacle of the card seemed unnecessary. But I figured the lady might really like it, which is why she wanted to show it to me, and since I didn’t want to make her feel stupid I said, “It’s hilarious.” She looked at me square in the eyes and said sternly, “I think it’s filthy.” Then she walked away without saying another word, leaving me with the “filthy” card. It felt like I was in trouble. 

So I bought the card.

Old ladies are adorable. 

So I quit my job…

By Sean Patrick

When it comes my career move, I like to think of myself as having the same passion for independence and adventure as the main character from “Into the Wild”… only I don’t want to do anything adventurous… and I don’t want to die…

A couple months ago, I read an article that explained how it was a terrible idea to leave your steady job in the year 2009 to try and pursue a dream.

“That’s funny,” I thought. “That’s exactly what I’m planning on doing this year.” 

 The actual day I informed my manager of my plans to pursue a career in screenwriting, the big headlines was, “UNEMPLOYMENT RATE AT AN ALL TIME HIGH!” It’s tough to see that headline right before you’re planning to quit your very steady job. If I believed in signs, I would have probably never quit. Actually, I do kind of believe in signs… but I really wanted to ignore that one. So I went ahead, and two weeks later I was on my sabbatical.

This is where I find myself: 27, purposely unemployed during a recession, and trying to pursue a job in arguably one of the toughest businesses to get into. It’s pretty hilarious.