Hats'n'Boots

The only Christmas gift I recall asking for in 1989 was a fedora hat- and I got it.

If I wasn't enough of an outcast as a child I had to go and wear a black fedora to school every day. It didn't stop there either: I found a pair of rattlesnake-skin boots at a yard sale and proceeded to wear them every day. They weren't quite big enough for my clown feet so I would have to keep foot powder in my backpack to act as a sort of lubricant to get them back on after gym class.

I caught plenty of hell for it all. Rural Oklahoma doesn't ask too much of an individual except that you not be an individual. Funny thing was that I was entirely oblivious to why this would be perceived as odd by others. I have a long history with that problem.

When I was in fourth grade I was unceremoniously moved to the back corner of the classroom for reasons I no longer recall. The teacher, an elderly piece of chewed up beef jerky named Eleanor Carter, didn't like me and would take every opportunity to remind me and the rest of the class that we didn't mix. (This was, I suppose, a tactic to project some sort of command presence or bold authority...to fourth graders.)
I liked my corner. I felt as if I was in an office cubicle and that the walls were mine. I felt grown up.
So, since these corner walls were mine, I felt that I could decorate them like a cubicle, a prison cell, or whatever. And I did- with many, many pages of bloody, beaten pro-wrestlers of the day. I put up A LOT of them. I didn't even think twice.
The other children decorated their desks with Garfield, with drawings...one rambunctious fellow put up a Bon Jovi group photo. I felt I was decorating just like they were. I taped the grotesque images to my desk AND to my walls. Sweaty, hairy, mostly naked men with gaping slashes from razor wire and good ol' fashioned punches to the face surrounded me as I worked long division. It was a sight to behold.
And I'll be damned if the ol' bitch didn't even notice them for a good two weeks or more. I don't know how she missed them- it seems hard to believe- but she had put me back there to get me out of the way and I guess it worked extremely well.
Inevitably, I came in to class one morning and they were gone. It wasn't until that morning when I saw my clean walls and clean desk that it dawned on me: OF COURSE SHE TOOK THEM DOWN, YOU DUMB FUCK! Bloody, gory photos all over the desk and walls of a fourth grade classroom...what was I thinking?!?!

My boots though...
After gym class in 7th grade I was working my ass off, trying to get those damn boots back on. As I pulled on them by the loops, along came Ronson Bush. (Yeah. A Bush, no less.) Ronson was the big, good-looking kid that had it all-too-easy in life and he experienced a great deal of joy in picking on all of the smaller kids; and they were pretty much all smaller than him.
I was pulling and working and he started in.
"What's with those fag boots, Ben?"
I continued to pull. I think we were pretty much alone in the locker room so there wasn't even an audience for this...
"Don't your faggot boots fit any more? Did you grab your boyfriend's instead?"
I had become a seasoned veteran when it came to tuning out the typical schoolyard bullshit. I don't recall it registering too much with me except for maybe the frustrations I was already feeling with trying to get the damn boots on.
Then he put his foot to my shoulder and kicked me from the bench to the floor. Hard.
And that's all it took- I got back up with my boot in my hand and proceeded to beat the mortal shit out of him with it. I hacked and hacked, concentrating as much as possible on his fucking-freak sized head, beating him into a ball on the floor. He SCREAMED and cried a blood-curdling scream that I can still hear in my ears to this day. He sounded like a little girl receiving a live autopsy.
Eventually I stopped and sat back down, going right back to the chore of squeezing my foot into the boot. I got it on, probably with a bit of help from the adrenaline glands and the post-aggression heaving and panting.
I put on my goofy-ass hat and clop-clopped out of there in my fag boots.

Anyways, looking back on how I dressed it's absolutely no surprise why I was such an immediate outcast.
Some people just got it in the chemistry, the genetic make-up, whatever it is...I dunno. It just never occurred to me to not act or dress a certain way because it wasn't the norm. And I surely paid the price more than once.

But it sure felt good to beat the living shit out of Ronson Bush. And I don't recall him ever saying anything to me again.