“Are you ready for the final exam, Jahlil?”
Jahlil and his therapist were standing outside a Boston sports bar. Knowledge of Jahlil’s fight with a Celtics fan was far-spread at this point, and he had already been the target of some unsavory remarks just walking on the street. Now they were about to enter a drinking establishment full of drunkards, and Jahlil was supposed to be polite and well-mannered even if they started heckling him about how bad the Sixers were. “Their words will never erode my pacifism,” he said proudly, having learned long ago that this kind of pointless self-reinforcing talk was exactly what his therapist wanted to hear.
He entered alone and sat down at a table. A minute later, the therapist walked in and chose a seat in the corner where she could observe and take notes. There was a Celtics game playing on all the TV’s, a fact that would only further inflame the anger directed towards Jahlil; after all, why would a 76ers player go to Boston during a Celtics game other than to provoke another confrontation?
It didn’t take long for the other bar patrons to recognize who was sitting in their midst, but they didn’t immediately begin harrassing him. His reputation had preceded him, and nobody seemed to want to be the one to get singled out as a target for punching. Jahlil knew that as the game continued and more and more beers were consumed, a tipping point would be reached where everybody felt invincible.
With nobody to talk to, Jahlil patiently watched the game until the middle of the third quarter, when the Celtics gave up ten points in a row. This made the fans in the bar uneasy, and finally, one of them turned to Jahlil and said, “at least we’re not the Sixers!”
Jahlil smiled a little to himself and popped a french fry into his mouth. Now he could show off how effective his weeks of anger management therapy had been. The courage of one man to talk trash set off a cascade of similar sentiments from other patrons: “You suck donkey dick”, “Don’t punch anybody bro”, and “You’re a bigger bust than the Kandi Man” were just some of the insults yelled at him.
Jahlil didn’t have to try to contain his anger, because there was no anger to be found, only a cool realization that he was standing solidly on the moral high ground. When an advertisement for some Shrek-related promotion at a fast-food chain came on the TV, one of the men at the bar exclaimed, “Hey everyone! It’s Okafor’s mom!”
This was the opportunity Jahlil had been waiting for. Not feeling even a slight annoyance at the attack on his mother’s appearance, he stood up from his seat and approached the man. “Did you say something about my mom?”
There was legitimate fear in the man’s eyes as he realized he may have taken the joke too far. “Hey man, I was just kid-” His words were unceremoniously interrupted by the contact of Jahlil’s fist with his face. He dropped off his barstool and limply smacked the floor, where he didn’t move. Everybody in the bar was watching in silence.
“Jahlil, stop!” his therapist yelled as she ran over. “You weren’t supposed to punch anybody! What about the therapy?”
“The therapy didn’t work,” Jahlil answered. Then, without thinking, he punched his therapist as well. She went out like a light, glasses flying off her face and pen dropping out of her hand. Knocking out a woman had the effect unfreezing the stunned onlookers, many of whom charged at Jahlil to bring him under control.
That was when the full fury of Jahlil’s fists was unleashed. He turned this way and that, swinging his fists at anybody who dared to come close. His immense size meant that even when somebody managed to latch on to his back and land a feeble punch in his side, he was able to shrug them off. As the collection of unconscious bodies grew around him, Jahlil’s only became more violent; one man, he picked up and threw into a table; another had a beer glass smashed over his head. There was blood on Jahlil’s shirt and hands, but from which victim it was from, or if it was from more than one of the moaning, injured people around him, he didn’t know. Distant sirens echoed down the street, growing steadily louder.
After taking a few seconds to stomp on the head of the man who had insulted his mother, Jahlil bolted out the door of the establishment. He knew there was very little chance of him avoiding arrest, but when he was finally cornered, the cops wouldn’t know what had hit them.
Actually, they would.
It would be Jahlil’s fists.