Five Rules according to Mr. Vengeance

 By S.E. Schaible

If you are anything like me, you believe that transgressions large and small deserve more than the so-called punishment that school principals, the courts or HR department hacks dispense. I was always protective of my family and friends, and myself. It only took a few instances of being told to shake the hand of a tormenting bully or being sent home from school after responding in kind to having the collar ripped off my shirt during recess to realize that the systems in place to make things right often make them worse. The forgive-and-forget caravan came to town and determined that conflicts are “no-fault” incidents. I quickly learned to skip the official channels and take care of things on my own terms.

To be clear, this isn’t about fighting. It certainly isn’t about murder – although truthfully nobody I love has been murdered so I don’t know what I might do if something like this transpired. And it isn’t about petty road rage or the nonsense some people consider defending their territory. With a few notable exceptions, I stopped throwing fists when I was in junior high – after my growth rate dropped abruptly and I became diminutive relative to my peers. My specialty is old-school retribution, creative and commensurate to the offense, which I stumbled into as a vertically challenged kid and later honed into something of a lifelong code. More on that to come in the memoir, but for now I offer a primer on some of the basics anyone can put into practice immediately.

Try Not to Speak. Sir John Gielgud said it best to an unshaven Barney Martin in Arthur. This should be obvious, yet your doomscroll shows daily examples of people getting it wrong. Just as the first rule of Fight Club is, “You don’t talk about Fight Club,” the first rule of vengeance is you don’t talk about getting vengeance. Only a fool in a bar that lost a scrape with an enemy says out loud what they plan to do in return. “Next time I see you, you’re dead.” Nice work, Spanky. Now all he needs to do is punch himself in the face a few times and call the police and have you arrested for assault and battery – maybe even attempted murder, since most of the 24 witnesses can affirm that they heard you threaten his life like a blabbering fool. This is a hypothetical to emphasize a point – but you see enough examples in the news, proving that both intelligent and not-very-smart people get this wrong. Your plan may be to spray the word “Douche” in herbicide on someone’s perfectly manicured front lawn or leave a Starbucks cup with a strange name on it (with lipstick on the rim) in the top of the trash bin for a spouse to find – but you never tell anyone you’re planning to do it. Never tell anyone anything.

Don’t Be A Rat. If someone bullies you at school, screws with you at work, or whatever fuckery is happening (with obvious exceptions of serious harassment or abuse, which you’ll recognize if you encounter them), don’t involve the authorities. While theoretically there to help, the person you implicate will deny everything, and then file some bogus countercharges against you. You’ll be compelled to shake hands and apologize, both will receive an HR incident report in their folders, and both will be more likely to be passed over for promotions or fired for cause. If you think you have moral high ground or have witnesses who might back you up (don’t count on that), you are misinformed: You will be equally tainted or worse. The shit-heels win or at least break even in a system that puts the plaintiff in the position of being the visiting team. Don’t take the bait – and regardless, nobody likes a rat. Even if you somehow prevail, you lose.

Resist Escalation. Retribution must be in line with the slight you received. This is gospel. When a classmate told my girlfriend she looked like a Canal Street hooker on the morning bus in high school, I later asked him what he’d said that upset her. He repeated the insult to me verbatim, suppressed a giggle, and I opted for a single, vigorous punch that stunned him and knocked him to the ground. It didn’t warrant a brawl because he was socially awkward, mostly harmless, and I believe he was trying to be funny and went about it all wrong. A response was justified; a savage beat-down was not. Similarly, if a neighbor four houses away curiously parks their car in front of your house from May through July – presumably because your mature Silver Maple offers better shelter from summer hailstorms – they don’t deserve to have their car keyed, or a for sale sign planted in their front yard. It isn’t worth trying to explain to people like this that it would be easier to carry your two toddlers and groceries into the house if they would please park where they live. They know exactly what they are doing and simply don’t care that you might have beef about it. What they need is to associate the offending activity with something negative. Hanging a couple bird seed blocks from that tree, the neighbor will quickly discover a vast quantity of debris and bird shit blanketing their M-Class and revert to parking in front of their place. They might even get with the program and plant a nice Linden or Ash tree on their front strip. This shows how vengeance, served properly, can (theoretically) improve your neighborhood.

Take Precautions. There is only one path toward the satisfaction of payback, and that is the disciplined, considered one – where nobody catches you in the act, and no technology captures your likeness. First, I’ve seen enough footage to know that if you pull a ballcap down low and wear sunglasses, you can walk right onto a porch and not be identifiable on a doorbell camera. Driving your own car up to the target property is an inexcusable but common error – your license plate could be legible on a camera and you’d be toast. The experienced avenger parks a dozen blocks away and walks or skateboards the final mile to the address. Seems like a lot to think about in order to smash a pumpkin or TP a house with a 30-roll pack of Charmin, but if it is worth doing, it is worth doing right. Pro tip: I grow and shave beards so regularly that even my wife can’t keep track of it. Do the job, get home, shave off the beard, and go out to the pub for an easy credit card and camera alibi.

Subscribe. I know, I only gave four rules, but algorithms and eyeballs prefer lists with odd numbers, and three felt a bit light. Five felt Goldilocks. If I included a fifth rule, it would have been about gear and preparation. I keep a go-bag with contents like small magnets, random license plates from other states, disposable gloves, caps, Gorilla Tape and more. It isn’t Jason Bourne, but it isn’t Barney Fife either. I was concerned that if you hadn’t read any of my posts you might think I was off my rocker. I concede that I’m not like the other kids, but I am not crazy and I’m serious about vengeance being superior to the alternatives, most of which involve swallowing pride and faux forgiveness. Let’s save the forgive and forget routine for the HR conferences and TED Talks. Look around and thank you for subscribing and following.