* * *

I was still a runt when the incident happened, a fifteen year old punk. Little Rick was only thirteen. We were neighbors. He lived in the foster home about six or seven doors down from my house. Little Rick was a studious fellow. Unlike me he took school seriously. His dream was to be a doctor like his dad, the dad he never really got to know. I suppose that’s what we had in common, other than that there wasn’t much else. He was Jewish, I wasn’t. He was academic, not this guy. He had common sense; I didn’t have a lick of it. But we each had a mutual emptiness we could share in and that seemed to be enough.

Little Rick and I hadn’t ventured too far from our street; we were just a few blocks away in the industrial area. We always met interesting people and found peculiar stuff when we combed the alleys. It was a scavenger’s paradise, a galleria of sorts for junk collectors. One could always count on Redkin’s Laboratory to throw out a lot of foul smelling hair products. Then there was the place that packaged dehydrated foods like the astronauts eat; their dumpster offered a lovely array of edibles. One time we found an entire load of defective Bennelli Motorcycle gas tanks, they were free for the taking! Pro surfer Ernie Tanaka manufactured surfboards and Grand Prix legend Bruce MacLaren built his race car in the alleys of Van Nuys. This is how we spent our time as kids; if we weren’t cruising the boulevard we were roaming the alleys.

We had just come out of an alley onto the sidewalk when calamity came to greet us. Little Rick had already finished his soda and was wearing the empty can under his shoe. I was still sipping on my pop as the delightful sound of tin scraping on cement trailed behind me. It wasn’t long before the racket ceased. The abused can clutching to the sole of Rick’s sneaker finally broke free. It remained just steps behind him as he proceeded forward. There the lonely and wrinkled container lay in front of Hoffman VW Auto Repair. That’s when the angry grease monkey appeared from behind the hood of a Volkswagen Bug. Before we could say, “Estut mir leid!” he came out screaming like a banshee. In a loud German accent the mechanic tore into Little Rick with words I shant repeat. I will only say that I did not like the tone he took with my little friend. Something had to be done.

I quickly guzzled down the rest of my soda, yelled a few choice words back at the creep then tossed my empty tin can onto his immaculately clean lot. This did not please the temperamental auto technician; he came tearing after us like a rabid pit bull. My advice to Little Rick was, “Run!” He heeded my counsel without hesitation and we took off toward our street with a madman hot on our tails. Once we lost Mr. Goodwrench we hid behind a large bush, hyperventilating like two scared rabbits. “If he sees us you run home,” I instructed Rick between heavy gasps for breath, “I’ll head for the alley.” We both knew who this maniac would come running after once we separated. Being the more mature one the martyr would have to be me. Perhaps it was a rare moment of nobility on my part or maybe I was just used to getting my butt kicked. Whatever the case, this was how it had to go down. Little Rick would not suffer the consequences of my dastardly deed.

Within seconds we were spotted and our plan was executed immediately. As predicted the chase continued without Little Rick. My heart was pounding with fear as I poured every ounce of energy I had into my flight. I bolted for the alley with my pursuer tailing close behind. Weaving back and forth between parked vehicles I stayed ahead of him by several paces. But then… a car came driving toward me from the opposite end of the alley. It was another mechanic from the garage. I was rapidly being boxed in from both sides with nowhere to run. Finally I stopped in my tracks, threw up my scrawny little arms and cried, “I surrender!” I’ve seen this work on spaghetti westerns but it didn’t change my luck any. The crazed mechanic continued to charge at me full speed ahead then, KAPOW! With the force of his entire bodyweight behind him he landed a punch to my face which sent me sailing. I crashed to the ground with a painful thud. He then picked me up by the scruff of the neck and slammed my forehead into the hard asphalt. That’s when I saw pretty stars swirling in my head, the ones Wiley Coyote sees when he takes a terrible spill. Once I came to, my assailant dragged me by the shirt back to Hoffman VW Auto Repair to pick up the soda can I threw.

By the time I returned home I was a bloody mess. My mom freaked when she saw me and wanted fast answers so I recounted the whole tragic story. It is true that certain words were omitted when quoting myself but I did not want to shock my mother as when I had cussed out her beau. That notwithstanding, Mom didn’t hesitate to call the police. They came, took a statement and shot some lovely pictures of my battered face and the big greasy handprint on the back of my new denim shirt which, by the way, was quite torn up after the scuffle. My pictorial would appear in a civil court hearing a couple years later and help me in my plight for procuring more reliable transportation.

It turned out that the two mechanics responsible for my misfortune were both brothers and business partners by the name of Hoffman. They weren’t as big as I remembered when we met up again at the courthouse. In the two years it took for my civil case to be heard by an L.A. County judge I had gone through a drastic growth spurt. Actually I stretched like a rubber band to nearly six feet tall but my weight remained around one-hundred and thirty pounds. Nevertheless, I was now taller than the Hoffman brothers and Mom was concerned that I might not be able to convince a judge that the one brother had kicked the crud out of me. Their defense was that I tripped and fell but, thankfully, the judge didn’t buy it. When the settlement finally came I went car shopping and I owe it all to the Hoffman’s for giving me the ‘Bird. And a bird in the garage is better than two dodos in the bush!

* * *

I was playing around with my Bible software program recently and was amazed to discover that the word ‘fool’ is used thirty-nine times in the book of Proverbs. This prompted me to do a little further investigation so I searched the term ‘foolish’ which is used eleven times. Then I looked up ‘foolishness’ and found nine uses of that expression. Rounding the list was ‘folly’ which has thirteen occurrences in Solomon’s book of wisdom. If you do the math with me you’ll discover that variations of the word ‘fool’ are used a total of seventy-two times in Proverbs, a book which is only thirty-two chapters long. Many of these proverbs connect foolishness with a loose tongue, which was certainly true in my case.

Proverbs goes on record to state that many of man’s troubles can be avoided through sound wisdom. The other side of that is we can expect misfortune when we choose the way of a fool. I’m not suggesting that I deserved getting my rear whipped by Mr. Goodwrench but the truth is I certainly could have avoided it. This was a pattern in my life; my mouth got me into a heap of trouble over and over again. Just as the Proverbs say, “As a dog returns to his vomit, so a fool repeats to his own folly.” (See Proverbs 26:11) Solomon also wrote that it is better to meet a bear robbed of her cubs than to cross the path of a fool. Now; you’d have to be a pretty big fool to go up against a mother grizzly wouldn’t you? The problem with fools is they go up against each other which can be even scarier. At least mama bear is in a protective mode but fools are just plain reckless. Mr. Hoffman and I were worse than two grizzlies going at it. And both of us brought calamity upon ourselves which potentially could have harmed others, like Little Rick for example.

The good news is that no one has to be a fool. Please do not think that some are destined to be that way while others are naturally wise. As a matter of fact, folly is what comes most natural to people while wisdom cries out in the streets, “Take me, I’m yours!” If you don’t believe me just read the first chapter of Proverbs. James also tells us that God is quite generous with wisdom and will give it to anyone who asks for it. Sadly, wisdom has very few takers. My hope is that you’ll take God up on his generous offer if you haven’t already. Wisdom begins when we respectfully look up to Him.