Q: If Paper covers Rock, Scissors cut Paper, and Rock breaks Scissors, what defeats a Switchblade pulled on you by the school bully?
A: A Slush Puppie.

“Hit me, hit me,” Dukey screamed as he raced down court.

Arm cocked, I froze at the sight of Royal Eaton pawing through my gym bag at the far end of the Briggs Street court.

Royal had been held back so many grades no one knew his real age. He went by the name of Kong, probably because it sounded way tougher than Royal—and more flattering than the one that kids uttered behind his back. When teachers called “Eaton” during roll call, some of the braver boys whispered, “Turds.”

Kong pulled something out of my gym bag, held it up over his head, and shouted, “Hey, Parker, ya think you’re some hot shit or something?” As I got closer, I realized he was holding up an Ace bandage rolled up, the brand name Ace neatly framed between the two metal tabs securing it.

“Just give it back, Kong,” I said, hoping to distract him from my fourteen-dollar fortune. He hadn’t yet noticed the wallet among the sweatshirt, candy wrappers, dirty socks, and peanut butter sandwich.

“What, ya think you’re such a hot shit, you write Ace on your stuff?” Kong asked.

What an idiot this guy is, I thought. “That’s the brand name, Kong. Hey, if you’re going to keep my gym bag, at least give me my dirty socks out of it.”

“I’m not interested in no dirty socks,” Kong snarled as he slammed the bag into my chest, knocking the wind out of me. “But I’m keeping this — Ace,” holding up the rolled bandage as his prize.

Locating my wallet in the bag, I fished out the remainder of my sandwich as a decoy, and stuffed half of it into my mouth. Kong stared at me while I chewed. He held out his hand and said, “Let’s see what else ya got in the bag, Ace.”

I calmly walked away, grabbed my basketball, stuffed it in the bag, and zipped it shut. As I picked up my bike, Kong bellowed, “Hey, I’m talkin’ to you, Ace!”

Without saying a word, Dondi nonchalantly jaywalked, positioning himself in a way that blocked Kong from me. I took several quick strides, jumped on my bike and pedaled off. “I’d love to stick around, Kong, but I have to go,” I called back over my shoulder, standing up on my pedals to accelerate.

Kong made his move to the left of Dondi. As he did, Dondi maneuvered to block his path. When Kong reversed course to veer around behind him, Dondi moved again. By then, I was safely out of reach.

Kong glared at Dondi through the thick lenses of his black-framed glasses. Standing there with his jaw jutting out, he looked a lot like one of the Marquis Chimps on The Ed Sullivan Show. They put the same glasses on some of them to make them look more human. “You know, Kong, there’s no name for that,” Dondi said.

“The hell you talking about?” Kong asked, backing off slightly from his attack-mode pose.

“It’s like when you meet someone in the hall in school and you block each others’ paths. One guy jogs one way, but the other guy accidentally goes the same way, so they’re still blocked. There’s no name for that maneuver,” Dondi replied.

“Yeah, right, like you didn’t do that on purpose, so your faggot friend could get away.”

“There’s no name for this, either,” Dondi rambled on, pointing with his forefinger to the spot between his nose and upper lip.

“You’re a real dipshit, you know that?” Kong leaned forward and placed his finger in the cleft above Dondi’s lip and twisted it back and forth, like his finger was a cigarette he was grinding out. “And it has a name. It’s called your mustache!” With that he jabbed him so savagely he snapped Dondi’s head back, drawing a faint line of blood with his fingernail.

Dondi interpreted Kong’s threat as permission to leave. He grabbed his bike and pedaled out Briggs Street, across The Arterial Highway to the Dairy Queen, where we always went after playing hoops. I sat on one of the picnic tables on the side of the building in the shade. Dondi walked out of the Dairy Queen carrying two drinks and joined me.

“Here, this one’s for you,” he said, handing me one of the cups.

I took it and stared at its bright-blue contents. “What is it?”

“It’s a Slush Puppie. It’s new. Just don’t drink it too fast,” he warned.

“Sorry to leave you hanging back there,” I said, noticing the red mark above Dondi’s lip. “Thanks for covering my escape.”

“That dumb ape…” Dondi started to say and then stopped. I followed his gaze to the other side of the parking lot. Locked in on us like a heat-seeking missile, Kong walked straight up to me with murder in his eyes. “Give me the gym bag,” he demanded.

I went as icy-cold as my drink when I noticed the unopened switchblade in his hand. I raised my cup to him in a friendly, toast-like gesture. “Hey, Kong,” I said in a voice that even to me sounded far away, like someone else had said the words.

“I’ll take this first,” Kong said, as he reached out slowly and took the slush from my hand. He looked at me accusingly. “Dirty socks, my ass. Let’s see what else ya got in the bag.”

Instinctively I closed my hand on the loop handles of the bag sitting next to me, never taking my eyes off of Kong.

“We’ll give it to you without a fight on one condition,” Dondi said.

“One condition? That’s a laugh,” Kong said. He flicked the switchblade open.

Even though I thought the blade was mainly for show, I dug my elbows into my knees to stop my legs from shaking. Kong flashed a crazy smile, drunk on his powers of intimidation.

“If you can down that Slush Puppie in under a minute,” Dondi said, “we’ll give you the gym bag and everything in it.”

I shot Dondi a skeptical look.

Kong straightened up, puffed out his chest and smirked. “I can suck down a beer in ten seconds. Why would this candy-ass little drink take me a minute?”

“It’s not as easy as you think,” Dondi warned him.

Kong slowed down, thinking hard. “Tell you what,” he said. “Throw in a dollar with the bag if I win, and you’re on.”

Dondi fished a dollar bill out of the front pocket of his jeans and placed it under my gym bag. “Okay, you win the bag and a buck if you can down that slush in sixty seconds or less. But if you can’t do it, we have to get something in return.”

Kong looked at Dondi warily. “Yeah, what’s that?”.

“If you lose, we get to call you by your other nickname — the one you don’t like,” Dondi said. “And you can’t get pissed at us when we do,” he added.

Kong inhaled noisily through flared nostrils, glaring first at Dondi, then me. “Okay. That’s fair, especially since I get to call you assholes whatever I want all the time.”

Dondi studied his watch, waiting for the second hand to come around. “You ready then? Five, four, three, two, one, go.”

Kong leered at us, scribing small circles in the air with his switchblade and paying no attention to the drink in his other hand.

Dondi counted down the seconds. With twenty seconds remaining, Kong tilted his head back and dumped half the contents of the cup into his gaping mouth. His Adam’s apple danced up and down like the bobber on a fish line when a little sunny hits the hook and struggles to pull the bobber under. Swallowing that first huge gulp, he poured the remainder of the drink into his upturned mouth.

Dondi watched Kong intently, glanced down at his watch and softly said, “Ten seconds left, Turd.”

That’s exactly when Kong emitted a thunderous, enraged bellow. I raised my arms instinctively, to protect myself. Instead, Kong sank to his knees, lowered his forehead to the ground, and let out a deep, vibrating moan. I turned back to Dondi looking baffled. He smiled at me, shrugged, and said, “Brain freeze — I tried to warn him.” I picked up my gym bag and Dondi pocketed his dollar bill and we rode away on our bikes before Turd’s brain thawed out.