Take Me Out

[Jared Handley]

1

After Columbine, there was a certain unwritten list (maybe the faculty's version was actually written, come to think of it) of candidates for Most Likely to Take Us All With Him.

Atop my list was Keller.

Keller and I had a few of the same bullies but I had a best friend, Henry, who at almost 15 in 8th grade, was a 6'2" black dude and I was in rural Alabama, so no one was really fucking with me. White dudes were scared of all black dudes, and all the black dudes were scared of Henry specifically. If I'd been more aware at the time, it might have occurred to me that I was also very large, pushing 6' at 13, whereas Keller was like an anorexic Ethiopian pigmy, but aren't we all too small at 13?

I'd heard that Keller agreed to meet K-Roc (is that sillier than Kryss, his birth name?) between periods for a "thow down"--wrestling was hot then--and though I hated to miss our Roman rite of spectating the slaughter, I took a route I figured to likely be less bulletty.

2

I believe that there are parts of this story that are untrue, but I like the legend. And since I heard the legend on its day of birth, I feel that makes it more valid, or at least more mine.

So the story goes: Keller never even dropped his bag, just punched K-Roc in the mouth, then headbutted his nose into a mush that I wouldn't see until he returned to school several days later. Then like Bruce Stalone Shwarzenegger, silhouetting from the explosion, he quipped: Next time, I'll put my foot so far up your ass it'll quench your thirst like Gatorade.

Keller was suspended long enough for the story to grow a bit, which I think may have saved him ultimately.

The tough guys kind of slowed their shit after that, and Keller, indeed, took us all with him.

[Brittany]

from the never dropping his bag, to the cool as a cucumber line about the foot and Gatorade, who wouldn't have followed him? 

Always like your style Jared, fave'd.

[Bill Floyd]

That final line delivers like the fabled head-butt, and recasts all that came before.  Fine work.

[Jadie Jones]

FIrst of all, favorited. Out-effing-standing. And if I hadn't gone to an Atlanta public high school I would swear I went to school with you. this is my favorite part: but aren't we all too small at 13.

[Mike Handley]

And to think, back in my day, all a kid had to do was smoke and say "goddamn" to be respected; "fuck" to be truly badass. I love this story.

[Robert Crisman]

Top flight, man. I like Keller. Fave.

[Gita]

Son (and I use the term loosely), you may have been gone from here a while, but you return a conquering hero with this. Damn, what a tale. The stuff of legends. fave.