I was at the counter of my local corner store paying for two Whatchamacallits, my favorite, a Snickers bar, an Almond Joy and a Twix. \u00a0They were forty cents each in those days, and I paid with a ten \u2013 two weeks allowance \u2013 so I had some change coming. \u00a0I stood there, excited, sucking on a Twix, savoring the chocolaty coating, as the cashier placed the change in my hand, counting it out to me. \u00a0Then from the corner of my eye came the shadow of a hand that knocked the bag of candy and change out of my hand and to the ground. \u00a0\u201cSpundal\u00e9!\u201d my older brother, Ugo, said as he proceeded to pick everything up from the floor.<\/p>\n
I stood there, stunned, almost in tears, as my brother slapped the remaining Twix bar out of my other hand. \u00a0He smiled like a proud thief after a smoothly executed morning heist. \u00a0\u201cSpundal\u00e9!\u201d he repeated.<\/p>\n
The cashier had not yet handed me the coins, so I waited until my brother went outside to sift though his spoils. \u00a0The cashier informed me that my brother had gotten someone else yesterday the same way. \u00a0I\u2019d heard about that. It was his nemesis, Boo.\u00a0 He\u2019d taken a bag of Jolly Ranchers from him, which he shared with me that night.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat does spundal\u00e9 mean?\u201d the cashier asked.<\/p>\n
I really didn\u2019t know what it meant, and to tell him the rules wouldn\u2019t have gotten me my stuff back.\u00a0 \u201cI don\u2019t know,\u201d I said and skulked out of the door.<\/p>\n
I met my brother outside.\u00a0 I schemed and plotted a way to get some of my stuff back the whole way home and, later that night, I got back a Whatchamacallit.\u00a0 Everything else was lost, though.\u00a0 The Snickers and Almond Joy were spundal\u00e9d from him by someone else, and he burned through the rest.<\/p>\n
I can\u2019t say who created spundal\u00e9, or what committee implemented the rules, but the rules were specific.\u00a0 Anything that you had in your hand was up for grabs. \u00a0You couldn\u2019t hurt a player when knocking an item out of their hands with a stinging slap.\u00a0 You couldn\u2019t hit above the wrist.\u00a0 If you were going for food then it had to either be packaged, or it had to be something that didn\u2019t pick up dirt.\u00a0 Every item had to hit the ground.\u00a0 If it was caught mid fall then it wasn\u2019t lost.\u00a0 No matter what it was, the item had to be given up.\u00a0 Most importantly, a player couldn\u2019t tell any adults, especially parents.<\/p>\n
At its height there were thirteen of us who played: my brother and me, our next door neighbors, Ken and his brother Roderick, Boo, short for Buford, and his cousin Paul who lived with him, my brother\u2019s best friends Roosevelt and James, my best friend, and the only white kid in the neighborhood, Edmond, my cousins E.J. and Ursula, and my crush, Nicky and her cousin, Tisha.<\/p>\n
We were inner city kids all living in an apartment complex on the outskirts of downtown Houston.\u00a0 It was the summer of \u201983, and a number of us were involved in an intense game of marbles.\u00a0 Ken had come outside with his velvet Crown Royal bag full of new marbles.\u00a0 He\u2019d just added a handful of boulders and wildly colored marbles that looked as if they\u2019d been extracted from the eye sockets of the most exotic animals to his arsenal, and was excited to play when, out of nowhere \u2013 as he leaned in to take his place on the patch of dirt we\u2019d worn into the grass and restructured into the best marble shooting course in the apartments \u2013 Boo slapped the bag out of his hand, knocking his bag to the dirt. \u00a0\u201cSpundal\u00e9!\u201d Boo reveled.<\/p>\n
Ken was mortified, but as his marbles spilled everywhere, he didn\u2019t go for them. No one did but Boo.\u00a0 They belonged to him now.<\/p>\n
That was my first experience with the game.\u00a0 When I found out that my brother played spundal\u00e9, I pleaded with him, \u201cI wanna play, I wanna play,\u201d but he feared including me after his past experiences with my questionable sportsmanship.\u00a0 As far as he was concerned, I was a liability, a tattler.\u00a0 It was only because of his unrestrained selfishness that I was let into the game.<\/p>\n
Our mom had bought each of us gold necklaces \u2013 don\u2019t ask me why we got such an extravagant gift at that age, we just did.\u00a0 My brother, who was four years older, thirteen, managed to get his snatched on his way home from football practice one night.\u00a0 I wasn\u2019t a huge fan of gold, and never wore mine.\u00a0 Naturally, my brother wanted it; and naturally because he wanted it, I wasn\u2019t going to give it to him that easily.<\/p>\n
Then, one day while I was going through the crap on our dresser, he stood over me, and motioned to something.\u00a0 \u201cWhat\u2019s up with that?\u201d I couldn\u2019t tell what he was talking about and picked up a number of things before I gullibly picked up the gold chain.\u00a0 \u201cSpundal\u00e9!\u201d he yelled, knocking the necklace to the ground.<\/p>\n
He didn\u2019t pick it up right away because, technically, I wasn\u2019t playing.\u00a0 So I used the necklace for leverage, and he met me halfway, letting me play on one condition.\u00a0 \u201cDo not tell Mom and Dad.\u201d I swore to him that I wouldn\u2019t.\u00a0 For good measure he made me swear on our dog, Dickens.<\/p>\n
As the game evolved, and more people started to play, the losses mounted fast.\u00a0 What started out with marbles grew to include candy, all kinds of balls, toys, games, a couple of skateboards, a bike wheel, and clothes.\u00a0 Money!\u00a0 Once, Boo swiped a shoe from my brother\u2019s friend James.\u00a0 The battle between Boo and James for the other shoe went on for days, on both sides, until Boo eventually got the other one.<\/p>\n
To keep from slipping into complete thuggery, amendments were added to the game to keep things civil.\u00a0 A major change included no playing after sundown, which benefited players that lived under the same roof.\u00a0 Players could only go for items that fit into the palm of your hand, and you couldn\u2019t spundal\u00e9 property that belonged to anyone other than the player.\u00a0 And there was also no going after breakables such as electronics, bottled drinks and action figure vehicles.<\/p>\n
The game was as much defense as it was offense for some people. \u00a0The kids that were my brother\u2019s age \u2013 Ken, Boo, James, Roosevelt and Paul \u2013 were the fiercest players of all.\u00a0 They were straight up offense, greedy bastards that staked you out until it was the right time to strike.\u00a0 Seldom, as the game progressed, were they ever trying to get things back.\u00a0 Accumulation was their primary objective.<\/p>\n
The kids my age, on the other hand, which was everyone else, were mostly defensive by default.\u00a0 I, personally, was stuck in a vicious cycle of losing something and then spending the rest of my time obsessively trying to get it back.\u00a0 I grew paranoid, constantly looking over my shoulder and sometimes even kicking things of value across the floor if I didn\u2019t have pockets or a backpack to keep them in.\u00a0 If I knew that I was going to find myself in the company of spundal\u00e9 players, I\u2019d make sure to not have anything of value on me.\u00a0 I feared wearing clothes that I liked.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t want to go swimming and have a favorite shirt spundal\u00e9d while getting changed.<\/p>\n
At home, I was always watching my back, waiting for Ugo to strike.\u00a0 He watched my every move like a predator and, if the score was big, he picked at the remains like a vulture.\u00a0 \u201cCan\u2019t you go outside and mess with somebody else?\u201d I\u2019d shout, but he\u2019d only taunt me with his diabolical Eddie Murphy laugh.<\/p>\n
\u201cWork on that grip,\u201d he\u2019d say.<\/p>\n
And I worked on my grip.\u00a0 For a while I was even on the offensive, taking everything that I could from him \u2013 some things noteworthy, other things, utterly useless.\u00a0 I got socks, utensils, the remote control, and even scored his wallet!\u00a0 As I perused through my most significant score to date, my brother jumped from behind the couch like a ninja and knocked the wallet to the floor.\u00a0 \u201cSpundal\u00e9!\u201d he yelled, and he took his wallet back.<\/p>\n
I wanted to believe that he was constantly taking from me to compensate for how much Boo took from him.\u00a0 As hungry as my brother was, he just wasn\u2019t as hungry as Boo, who lived off government help with his aunt.\u00a0 On a walk home from Roosevelt\u2019s, Boo somehow managed to score my brother\u2019s entire backpack, which had the Atari cartridge games Dig Dug and Stargate in it.\u00a0 Ugo was livid.\u00a0 His Karate cartridge was safely in his back pocket when he completely lost it and threw the cartridge at Boo, which missed and broke into pieces against the amber colored bricks of our apartment building.<\/p>\n
Boo especially specialized in terrorizing us younger kids.\u00a0 He hid around corners and behind trees like a criminal.\u00a0 Sometimes, he\u2019d approach us, tricking us into thinking that he was just another friendly face coming up to see what we were up to, and then bam:\u00a0 \u201cSpundal\u00e9!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re a cheater,\u201d I said to him, mad as hell, after he\u2019d stood over my shoulder, pretending to support me, as I aced Defender at the local arcade; and when I died with the opportunity to put in another coin and continue where I\u2019d left off, he spundal\u00e9d my last coin from me just as I went to put it in the slot. \u00a0\u201cYou don\u2019t even know how to spell spundal\u00e9!\u201d I ridiculed.<\/p>\n
\u201cNeither do you,\u201d he said, callously continuing my game for me.<\/p>\n
Tactics like those were too much for the girls, who were the first to drop out.\u00a0 Their psyche at that age wasn\u2019t build for that type of social torment.\u00a0 They were always crying about being singled out and wronged and constantly demanded their things back.\u00a0 When they started threatening to tell on us, everyone decided that we were better off without them and their soft toys.<\/p>\n
Edmond was the only boy to drop out of the game.\u00a0 He\u2019d lost too much and gained nothing.\u00a0 He didn\u2019t even have the initiative to get his things back.\u00a0 It was finally his mother that pulled him out of the game after he returned home without his Empire Strikes Back<\/em> and Return of the Jedi<\/em> Han Solo action figures.\u00a0 That was the downside of having such a young mother who was a huge Star Wars<\/em> fan.<\/p>\n The inner city circumstances under which we played completely desensitized us for a time.\u00a0 The absurdity of knocking food to the ground, and eating it afterwards, didn\u2019t even register in our minds.\u00a0 Before we implemented the rule prohibiting the spundal\u00e9ing of food that could pick up dirt, it wasn\u2019t uncommon to knock down a slice of pizza, a hamburger, fries, or ice cream, then pick it up as quickly as possible, dust it off and make the best of it.<\/p>\n And then there was the loss of money.\u00a0 The potential behind the cash \u2013 the big plans that you might have had \u2013 lost to the lightning fast slap of a hand, never to be spent the way that one would have imagined.\u00a0 With enough determination, there was always the possibility of getting an item back, but cash was going to get spent before you could even shed a tear for it.\u00a0 All one could do was just let it go, and try to walk off with your pride intact, pretending like there was more where that came from.<\/p>\n Towards the end of the summer I\u2019d made it a point to move around empty handed. I\u2019d managed to make it look like I had nothing worth taking, when I\u2019d merely aligned myself with those who had already dropped out.\u00a0 Whenever I knew of players lurking around the apartments, I gave my things to Edmond, or to one of the girls to hold.\u00a0 This gradually downgraded my playing status to \u201cnothing of worth,\u201d a strategic move that positioned me at the bottom of the sharks\u2019 food chain.<\/p>\n But after a couple of weeks of me not losing anything and, feeling overly comfortable, I started to get careless.\u00a0 I started losing music tapes to my brother \u2013 Herbie Hancock\u2019s Rockit<\/em>, \u201cWeird Al\u201d Yankovic, Big Country, and Synchronicity<\/em>, to name a few.\u00a0 Those hurt, but it was Pyromania<\/em> that finally broke me, which he had the audacity to spundal\u00e9 from me when he already had the record!\u00a0 Such greed couldn\u2019t go unregulated.\u00a0 Something had to be done.<\/p>\n It was said that whoever mentioned the game to adults was either ostracized or singled out for free licks \u2013 beat downs, really \u2013 at random.\u00a0 One was supposedly treated like the child equivalent of a mob rat and dealt with accordingly.\u00a0 Only thing was that there was no example of players who\u2019d been banished for doing such a thing to refer to \u2013 only quitters \u2013 so I\u2019d be the first.<\/p>\n I struggled with myself for days over what to do, and even consulted with my counsel, Edmond.\u00a0 \u201cIs anyone going to try to beat you up?\u201d he asked me.<\/p>\n I grew defensive, wishing he hadn\u2019t given me something else to worry about. \u201cIs that all you\u2019re worried about?\u201d I snapped.\u00a0 \u201cEverybody isn\u2019t afraid of getting beat up like you are!\u201d<\/p>\n I quickly apologized, realizing that I\u2019d lost my head.\u00a0 Edmond\u2019s question was valid, and I shouldn\u2019t have taken offense.\u00a0 Ever since his admission of crush for Ursula got him his first fistful from Paul, Ursula\u2019s unrequited suitor, a few months back, getting beat up was all Edmond worried about.<\/p>\n I tried to sleep on it, but woke up with the song \u201cPhotograph\u201d in my head after watching the video on Friday Night Videos<\/em> the night before.\u00a0 I attempted to play my brother\u2019s record on our highly mono Fisher Price record player, but he wouldn\u2019t let me.\u00a0 \u201cKeep your hands off my property,\u201d he warned.<\/p>\n \u201cCan I borrow my tape?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cMy tape,\u201d he corrected. \u201cTwo dollars.\u201d<\/p>\n That was it.<\/p>\n Who knew when he\u2019d even listen to Pyromania<\/em>?\u00a0 He hadn\u2019t yet, not with Run DMC being the only thing that he found significant at the time.\u00a0 If I got more money, he would probably spundal\u00e9 it from me before I could get another tape.\u00a0 If I got another tape, he would spundal\u00e9 it from me just for sport.\u00a0 If I got my tape back from him, then I\u2019d have to live the rest of my life looking over my shoulder, worried that he\u2019d take it from me again.<\/p>\n Stewing, I browsed our room for things that once belonged to me, things that would\u2019ve been a full-time job to get back because he never touched them.\u00a0 There was my Pitfall! and Donkey Kong cartridges, my bike lock, my Houston Astros cap, my red clip-on bow tie that I told Mom I lost at church, a crucial piece to my model Corvette and some Gobots \u2013 one which was unopened and still in the box.\u00a0 I was forced to admit to myself that I wasn\u2019t any good at spundal\u00e9.\u00a0 My stubborn need to be involved had seduced me into playing, and the hole that I wound up in had me working overtime to get my stuff back.\u00a0 I was in a losing situation, and I was running out of things for Ugo to take.\u00a0 Plus, he didn\u2019t really want my stuff anyway.\u00a0 He just wanted to see me suffer.\u00a0 Now, he would have to suffer.<\/p>\n \u201cMommy,\u201d I screamed as my brother stood shocked, wearing an expression on his face that begged to know how I could betray him after I\u2019d played so committed, so fairly, and so nobly.<\/p>\n Mom rushed into the room from who knows where, out of breath, worried that one of us had been hurt.\u00a0 \u201cGini mega?\u201d she wheezed, asking what happened, in her native Igbo.\u00a0 When I explained what happened, her solution was simple.\u00a0 \u201cUgochukwu, give your brother his tape back.\u201d When I pointed out a number of my other things on the dresser, and she saw that my grievance went beyond the tapes, she demanded to know what was going on.<\/p>\n I didn\u2019t care.\u00a0 I\u2019d had enough.\u00a0 I told her about spundal\u00e9, who played, when we started, and all that I had lost.\u00a0 My brother tried to object when I told her how much he had lost, but she smacked him over the head, shutting him up.\u00a0 \u201cDon\u2019t make me handle you properly,\u201d she threatened.\u00a0 Ugo fumed as I gave away insider secrets.\u00a0 Mom listened, teeth clinched, infuriated, when I told her about the terror that Boo had reaped throughout the apartments.<\/p>\n \u201cDid Edmond play?\u201d she asked, as if he represented the final stage of the game\u2019s corruptibility.\u00a0 When I told her that he had indeed played, but dropped out because he\u2019d lost so much, she was livid.\u00a0 \u201cPut on your sneakers,\u201d she demanded; then, when we took too long to move, she barked, \u201cDo you think I am playing a game with you fools?\u201d<\/p>\n In her stylish spaghetti strapped summer dress and buckle open-toed pumps, Mom led us outside and, starting with Ken and Roderick\u2019s apartment, prepared to march us from door to door.\u00a0 It was Saturday so Ken and Roderick were with the rest of the Seventh Day Adventists at church, which gave Ugo cause to celebrate within.\u00a0 \u201cThey ain\u2019t home,\u201d he said with a smirk.<\/p>\n There was nothing that our mom hated more than that smirk than his refusal to speak proper English.\u00a0 She put her hands on her hips and looked him up and down.\u00a0 \u201cThey are<\/em> not home,\u201d she chillingly tried to enunciate, but as it always had and always would, her thick accent still refused her pronunciation of the \u201cr.\u201d\u00a0 She bopped Ugo upside the head again, then yanked him to the front of her like a hostage, and with me following behind, marched us through the courtyard onto our next destination.<\/p>\n Ugo protested indignantly, insisting that spundal\u00e9 was only a game and that he would get his stuff back at the end.\u00a0 Then he turned on her, objecting to her interference, claiming, defiantly, that he didn\u2019t want \u201cthat stupid stuff\u201d back.\u00a0 Provoked by his tone, Mom raised her hand, ready to do damage, but refrained.\u00a0 \u201cUntil you start making money, you have no stuff,\u201d she yelled, getting the attention of neighbors who\u2019d rushed to their windows to catch the crazy little African lady going at it with her boys again.\u00a0 \u201cNow, knock on the door!\u201d<\/p>\n It was Boo\u2019s door that he was forced to knock on.\u00a0 His humiliation was so great that the look that he laid on me was spine tingling.\u00a0 He would have killed me, buried me, and told our parents that I\u2019d run away, if no one were there to witness; I was sure of it.<\/p>\n Boo \u2013 the smell of cooking grease permeating throughout his damp apartment \u2013 brought down a dingy pillowcase full of things he\u2019d taken from my brother and me.\u00a0 Mom immediately forced Ugo to go through the bag to make sure everything was there.\u00a0 \u201cWhen am I going to get my<\/em> stuff back?\u201d Boo quipped.<\/p>\n Mom bristled and replied.\u00a0 \u201cWhen your aunt comes by my home to get it, Buford.\u201d\u00a0 Boo balked at the idea, and defiantly gazed at his feet to get his feelings across.<\/p>\n For the next several days, Boo terrorized my brother with his menacing glare \u2013 a glare that would one day end him up behind bars for robbery and assault with a deadly weapon \u2013 but Ugo never ratted me out.\u00a0 And, when equally punished kids, accompanied by their parents, knocked on our door to return and collect spundal\u00e9d goods, he still didn\u2019t rat me out.\u00a0 His inbred hardwiring still made me his responsibility and no one else\u2019s.<\/p>\n Boo never forgave my brother for bringing down the game, and publicly vilified Ugo, calling him a tattletale and a dirty African.\u00a0 He even went as far as to call him a big baby, something that Ugo had never been called in his life.\u00a0 Boo hoped to defame my brother\u2019s character enough to have him excluded from other apartment activities: stick ball, football, basketball, daredevil trashcan and tire bike jumps, truth or dare, frog hunts after a rainy day, and foolish creations like spundal\u00e9.\u00a0 Ugo caught a break, though, and was able to turn the tables on Boo after he witnessed Boo swipe at his hair and a roach fall to the ground. \u00a0He pointed to the roach as it scurried away, and mockingly pleaded for the kids not to kill it, calling the roach Boo\u2019s pet, and his apartment a roach motel.\u00a0 It didn\u2019t matter that we all had roaches and what happened to Boo could have happened to any of us.<\/p>\n The character assassination on both sides soon led to a string of skirmishes between my brother and Boo that resulted in Boo attacking Ugo from behind and hitting him in the back of the head with a 2×4 the following Thanksgiving holiday.\u00a0 Ugo would need eight stitches, and be scarred for life \u2013 but Boo would later need twelve over Christmas break.\u00a0 Parents and guardians on both sides ultimately got involved, and the two were forced to be cordial, or steer clear of one another, which lasted until our family, fearing the neighborhoods growing crack problem, moved to the suburbs the following summer.<\/p>\n At home, Ugo was too disappointed in me to sustain any level of intimidating fear.\u00a0 He escorted me on his bike to and from school, and watched me when our parents were out, but that was about it for a while.\u00a0 He had nothing to say to me, and he didn\u2019t feel the need to make me laugh, the one thing that he had always prided himself on doing.\u00a0 That hurt the most.<\/p>\n Then, one day after my mom demanded that Ugo take me with him to watch The Outsiders<\/em>, he emphatically told her that he\u2019d rather stay on punishment and ran into our room and slammed the door.\u00a0 When he saw me crying, alone on the top bunk and away from Mom\u2019s coddling, he finally broke his silent treatment.<\/p>\n \u201cYou need to buck up,\u201d he scolded.\u00a0 \u201cThere\u2019s an honorable code of conduct that we have to live by.\u00a0 You can\u2019t just punk out because shit ain\u2019t going your way.\u00a0 You ain\u2019t a baby, so stop acting like one.\u00a0 Hear me?\u00a0 Now get ready so we can hurry up and get there.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cWhat does spundal\u00e9 mean?\u201d the cashier asked. I really didn\u2019t know what it meant, and to tell him the rules wouldn\u2019t have gotten me my stuff back. \u201cI don\u2019t know,\u201d I said and skulked out of the door.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13348,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13306","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction","writer-chuck-nwoke"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13306","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13306"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13306\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13352,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13306\/revisions\/13352"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13348"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}