CHAPTER FIVE
Ok. If I was going to be successful, the first thing I had to do was to get my story together and make sure no one was watching me. From my previous observations, I knew exactly where to go and what to do.
I went to the aisle with the DVD players and took one from near the end that was closest to the return desk. This made my trip as short as possible.
I’m sure it would have looked odd to the store clerks to see a young boy in the return line, so I waited until the store was very busy to try this. I figured I’d be less noticeable that way. I also made sure to get in line near some adults. That way, it would look like I was with them.
So, everything went smoothly. I walked up to the counter and gave the clerk my story, about how my mom was at work and couldn’t bring the player back herself. The clerk was very nice and fortunately for me, she bought my story. I can imagine what she must have thought, “Surely this little angel would never steal a thing.”
Little did she know the direction that my life was going to take that was already in motion.
I was great at shoplifting, but I realized that there was too much risk and not enough reward. I almost got caught several times, but my sixth sense always warned me just in time. So I pretty much limited my lifting to things I needed—mainly food and clothes. I would usually bring the food back to the house and pack it away in the cupboards and refrigerator so that my mother would not have to do without so much.
Now, back to my martial arts training.
I was about fourteen, a freshman in high school and had been training for about two, two and a half years. My instructor wanted me to test for my black belt.
He doesn’t ask me this because he knows I’m ready. I’ve been fighting at a black belt level for the past year, but what convinced him was when he learned about a fight I was involved in at my new high school.
The fight was against two guys, one a freshman like me and the other was a junior who played on the football team.
It was all started by the freshman, a guy who I remembered from my old middle school. I vaguely remembered him as someone who had picked on me back then. I guess he thought he’d try to impress some of his new friends by picking on me during lunch that day.
Unfortunately for him, I was not the same weak kid I’d been back then. Before he could get his mouth going too much or stir up too much attention, I stood up and popped him.
I connected perfectly on his jaw. My arm snapped, his jaw cracked, and down he went like a sack of potatoes. I didn’t have much time to admire my work because as soon as he hit the floor, one of his new buddies, the football player jumped up and came at me. I guess he thought he was coming to the guy’s rescue.
My size was still not very large or intimidating, so I guess the football player was pretty confident that he was going to hurt me. He had this stupid grin on his face and look in his eyes. I could tell immediately that he was a bully.
A lot of things went through my head in the second or two it took for him to get close enough for me to engage him. Pictures of all the children who’d tormented me in the past flashed in my head; the laughing, leering, jokes that made fun of me, my family, my heritage. Everything boiled up inside me, and when the football player got close enough, I let that anger over flow and hit him with everything I had right on the chin.
Man, you should have seen it! He fell backwards, tripped over a chair, and landed on the table. Food flew everywhere; a lot of it landed on the group of friends of the guy and the football player.
When I saw the mess, I laughed in my head, but kept a stern look on my face, daring anyone else to step up. No one did, and from that moment forward, I never had any more problems at school.
I’m pretty sure that that incident is what made my instructor feel I was ready to move up to black belt rank, which would then mean that I would have my hands registered as lethal weapons with the F.B.I.
Well, I wasn’t ready for that. I wasn’t going to voluntarily put my face or my fingerprints on the F.B.I.’s National Database. That was not going to happen!
So, the time had come for me to leave that martial arts school, time for me to find a new style and a dojo to workout in. I gave my instructor of nearly two and a half years a made up excuse as to why I had to leave, which he believed, and I moved on.
The students from my old school knew me either by my nickname, Malefic, or my given name, Michael. My full name is Michael Lee Putin, and with a name like Putin, you become a target for every fart joke imaginable.
Kids would say things like, ‘are you Putin?’ Then they would wait for me to say yes and respond with, ‘I thought it smelled in here!’
Man, kids can clown and hurt you without really knowing the depths of those wounds.
So, the kids at my new martial arts school, those that I talked to, came to know me as Malefic. I told them it was a family nickname, but it was really the name of a powerful sorcerer from Russian folklore.
It was said that this sorcerer was one of the most powerful practitioners of magic and that he was also immortal. It was also said that he was able to stop time and that he could defeat entire armies singlehandedly.
Legend has it that Malefic still roams the Earth, in search of someone he deems worthy, to pass on his abilities and immortality.
I personally thought the story and name were really cool. So, when my new martial arts instructor told me to pick a cool nickname, I didn’t go with the usual names like little dragon, or tiger, or others that came from the oriental world, but instead chose that which came from mine.
So, from day one, everyone at my new martial arts school came to know me as Malefic, and the name, Michael Putin, would eventually become nothing more than a distant memory.