Baby pictures of Superman. Not something you see everyday. So it was with great excitement that I recovered this diamond from the dustbin of my personal history. Exhibit A: The young men of Camp Mendocino’s Cheyenne Cabin, Second Session, Summer 1986. Also pictured: Young Grip in a b-boy stance. Further proof that I was hip-hop when you were still in diapers.
For those who don’t know (and I’m assuming that’s everyone who isn’t in this picture), Camp Mendocino is a summer camp run by the Boy’s Club (now the Boy’s & Girl’s Club) of San Francisco. The camp had a lot of low-cost/no-cost programs for “disadvantaged” youth (much like PAL, or the Police Athletic League, a kiddie-sports gang of which I was also a member), and (in what I’m sure is a giant coincidence and not some kind of socioeconomic statistic) many of the campers were future Juvenile Hall alumni. Camp Mendocino is the last place I got punched in the face.
Somewhere in this picture is the kid who hit me. I think his name was Zane. Or Zan. Something like that. He was a twin. You know how sometimes there’s like a good twin and an evil twin? I think both these twins were evil. Our fight started, as so many do at that tender age, when douche-in-training Zane insulted my mom. So I did what any good son of a single working mother would do–I socked him in the gut.
Now, I’m far from a violent person, and that was probably the first (and certainly the last) time I ever hit anyone. The “fight” ended seconds later, when Zane broke the rules of schoolyard scrapping (at least as I understood them at that time) and went straight for the face. I think I just gave up at that point, because I’m not that dude. Sorry, Mom. I did what I could.
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