Good evening friends. Thank you for taking the time to vote for tonight’s story. Tonight we take it back to 1982 when I was 12 years old.
I grew up in Great Neck, Long Island which as most you know is a place comprised of many suburbia towns that have easy access to NYC through mass transit.
Bottom line I was from Great North and played basketball for them in Junior High. Needless to say our Arch Rivals was Great Neck South on the other side of town. There was this particular boulevard that was kind of the border of Great Neck North and Great Neck South. It was called Norther Boulevard.
One night a friend of mine and myself decided to go get pizza and play video arcade games at a place called; “Napoli’s Pizza & Restaurant on the South Side of Northern Boulevard. Well one night me and my knucklhead friend decided to go in there to get pizza and play arcade games called, “Defender, Asteroids, and Pack-Man. So my friend is playing of those 3 arcade games while we are waiting for our pizza and I am kind of leaning on the side watching him play.
Next you thing you know three older and bigger teenagers from South grabbed my head and slammed it against the arcade game my friend was playing. So my friend and I said to these thugs, what the hell do you think you’re doing ? The thugs turned to me and said “you are wearing a Great Neck North Basketball Jacket on the South Side of town. So my friend and I said, “we are here to pick up some pizza and then just leave”
The South kids said its too late for that. We want your North Jacket, so my friend said to me, “give them the jacket and lets get out of here” So i gave them my jacket and we started to leave the pizza parlor. Then they chased us outside and said; “What do you expect us to do with a Great Neck North Basketball Jacket?” — I said I have no idea, then why did you ask for it ? So the three South kids said; “We want you to buy your jacket back from us for 20 dollars” Either that or we are going to beat the _hit out of two of you. So we handed them 20 bucks and they let us go.
When I got home, my father saw I looked white as a Ghost and asked me what happened. So either I told him or I would pay the price.
So for the next 5 nights in a row, my father and I went to Napoli’s Pizza hoping these 3 South Kids walked in, let me rephrase that, my father was hoping they were going to come in. I was praying to God each of those 5 nights that the 3 South kids would not show up because my father was going to pulverize them and then I would have 20 of them after me. My father was taking no chances, he had no clue how big or tough they really were. He just knew his son was very nervous. So he carried a hammer in his sweatpants. I said to him, “dad that seems a little extreme” — He said to me “It seems extreme what they did to you and your friend last week” — So that ended that argument on the spot. And I knew that if one of the three South Kids showed up, he was going to break a couple of one of teenagers bones in front of the other two to send a message to the rest of the South kids not to _uck with his son. Thank God over the 5 nights we went there, spending 2 hours each visit, none of them showed up.
Nonetheless I guess the pizza employee or owner told those South kids to be on the lookout because they never bothered me again even when I had seen them in other establishments.
Now friends I share a lot of my families stories with you over the years to entertain you despite how off the wall some of them seem. But these stories did happen and, 30 years later they’re entertaining looking back. Clearly at the time of these incidents they did not seem funny at all.
OK folks, that concludes another Smith Family Saga from the 1982. See you tomorrow friends.
