Revenge is Sweet.

I'm stubborn. I admit it. I don't like to lose. I don't need to win. I just need to not lose. I wouldn't say I go to crazy lengths to avoid losing (such as my friend's husband who will practice a video game for days on end in order to best his wife [haha Lisa]), but I won't throw my hands in the air and accept defeat. And when I am defeated, I come back swinging. Revenge is sweet and a dish best served hot.

I'm not sure when this desire to not lose began with me. I was very young. Around five or six years old. I remember a time when B.J., a friend who lived a few doors down from me, stole my wind-up walking R2D2 action figure. I told my parents but they wouldn't do anything. I told HIS parents and they wouldn't do anything either. So next time I was invited to B.J.'s house, when he went to the bathroom I stole his entire fucking "The Other World" Zendo castle and a bunch of his The Other World figures. I ditched them at Greg's house, since B.J. and Greg didn't like each other and never talked. Fuck you, B.J.!

Revenge is sweet. Probably the earliest taste of revenge that I remember. But not the last and certainly not the worst.

When I was around nine years old, I had a babysitter in one of the more ghetto 'hoods in Airdrie (Springhaven, for those in the know). Her name was Mary Anne and she was a terrible babysitter. That's why I was able to leave the home at any time and she wouldn't even know. One such day that I left her house unannounced, I went across the cul-de-sac to see some dude with whom I was friends. It was a friendship of convenience seeing as he lived across from my babysitter.
One day, he and I were outside playing cops and robbers. The game was simple. The robber would be placed in a pair of toy handcuffs and would run and hide. After thirty seconds or whatever, the cop would pursue the robber. The robber had to try and escape the handcuffs before the cop found him.
I didn't know it then, but the handcuffs were either trick cuffs or that bastard had the key. But at the time, I was extremely frustrated because when he was the robber he was always able to escape the cuffs but I never could. I didn't like to lose.
The final turn of the game, with him as a robber, saw the tables turn in my favour (at least in my mind). Instead of waiting the obligatory thirty seconds, I followed the prick early. I watched him run into a large two-level shed in his back yard. I went to the door once he had hidden inside the shed and I shut the door. I then proceeded to lock the padlock, ensuring he could not escape.

Revenge is sweet. Especially when he began to cry because he couldn't get out. I could have gone to get his mother but...Nah. I went back to Mary Anne's home and played with toys.
Sadly, I was forced to go back to the kid's house about six hours later. As it turned out, no one found him for about five hours and then when he was found it was discovered that no one had a key for the padlock. They had to call someone in to cut it. He was apparently very upset and cold from being locked in a freezing shed for five hours. I remember standing in front of his family. His mother was enormous and lay across the sofa. His sister sat on the floor in front of the sofa and repeatedly said that her brother could have died. He sat on the arm of the sofa at his mother's feet. An aunt and the father stood at the archway leading to their filthy dining room. I swear that with the mother being so fat, the scene was a lot like that of Jabba the Hutt's palace in Star Wars: The Return of the Jedi.
Anyway, I was cussed out for locking him in, lectured about how things could have turned out badly, and then sent on my way. It was all quite funny to me. I was a bad kid I think.

A very bad kid. You see, only a matter of months later, I was walking with my friend Leo to school. Leo was something a partner in crime (stay tuned for the tale of our daring bowling alley heist). Anyway, he said something that I didn't like so I started picking on him on our walk. As we walked, I took his glasses off of his little ginger face and I threw them up into the air as hard as I could. They came crashing down and one of the lenses shattered. Crying, Leo began to run and said that he was going to tell on me when he got to school.
I didn't like to lose. I chased him. I wouldn't allow him to get me into trouble! I followed him into a townhouse complex (the one in the Springhaven/Big Hill area that backs onto the #2 highway) and watched as he "cleverly" attempted to hide in a garbage dumpster housing. That is, if you are unsure, a wooden shed that was built around a dumpster. There's a large gate that can be opened for access to said dumpster. I guess it was made to keep the smell in or to hide the fact that there was a big ugly dumpster in the parking lot. At any rate, he ran into the shed part and hid behind the dumpster itself.
Much in the fashion of the story of the cheating robber, I ran to the dumpster shed, closed the gate, and locked it. Leo couldn't tell on me if he was locked in with garbage. Brilliant!

Revenge is sweet. Perhaps a little too sweet. Leo was locked in there from around 12:45PM until around 7:00AM the next morning. I remember Mr. Turner taking me into the office the next day and yelling at me. He told me that Leo was very scared and hungry...and that he "soiled himself." I didn't know what "soiled" meant then, so I thought he dug a hole and buried himself in it. No, I didn't laugh while Turner was talking to me. I was too busy trying not to soil MYself from fear.
Needless to say, grounding and lectures followed. I don't think I got a spanking, but I'm sure it was very much on my father's mind. Strangely enough, Leo said that I was the one who locked him in the garbage shed, but didn't mention that I was the one who broke his glasses.

Let this be a lesson to you. Be careful if I end up losing to you. Though I wouldn't be too worried about retaliation. I wouldn't lock you up in a shed for hours or steal your toys nowadays. Well, I probably wouldn't. Actually, best to stay out of sheds and hide your toys so long as you know me.