Peter David managed to spoil this week's plotline of the "Get Fuzzy" comic strip for me, as I hadn't read Monday's paper when I read his Blog about the strip. It's fair, since I spoiled the news of Aquaman "dying" in Our Worlds At War for him a couple of years ago at San Diego.
The storyline in "Get Fuzzy" reminds me of an event, no doubt embellished by the years, that happened to my big brother. My brother David was always a teddy-bear of a guy growing up. Everyone knew he was harmless. No one thought much about it, I guess, until the day my brother got in a fight.
I'm sure I've got my facts wrong, but as I recall, I was told this story by the librarian at the middle school David went to when I went to the same school the next year. Apparently, the librarian had heard David talking about a book, and had asked if she could see it. It was one of my Mom's rare books, so David was being very careful with it. As he was walking down a hallway to show it to the librarian, another kid grabbed it from his hands and swung it around, and threatened to rip it in half.
Do you remember the old Hulk TV series? From the third-hand reports I had of the incident, David basically hulked out on the kid and decked him. He was caught in the act of beating the kid to smithereens by a teacher, and both boys were hauled in front of the principal, who was about to bring down a heavy sentence on their heads for fighting. But he was interrupted by the librarian, who had heard about the fight from another student and rushed to my brother's aid. She pulled the principal out of his office and told him that she would resign on the spot if David was punished for defending that rare book.
David got off free, and the other boy was punished for stealing the book. At least, that's how I heard the story, both from the librarian and from my classmates who had older brothers or sisters in the same class as David. Indeed, after that event, none of them ever said an unkind word about David in my presence again. He became something of a legend, being a kid who could beat up somebody and not get punished.
Reading back over this, I wonder if this story is true, or something I've completely misremembered?
Still, it makes for a good story.
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