The first thing that comes to my mind when anyone says “Boxing Day” is my maternal grandad. My grandad who, of course, never heard of the concept of “Boxing Day”, not as understood by English speakers. But he’s the first thing that comes to my mind, for my grandad was in his youth an amateur boxer.
I owe it to him that he got me started in this most noble but brutal of sports. When I was around five or six, he stitched together a bag and a pair of gloves with leatherette, stuffed the bag with a mix of rags and sand, and hung it from a beam in the front garage. He taught me how to keep a guard up and how to throw jabs, crosses, hooks and uppercuts. He taught me how to skip, how to dodge, how to move my legs with grace, how a punch starts from the floor, travels up your leg, passes by the hips, then the torso, the shoulder and only then the arm, the wrist, the hand, to finally — if successful — land on the target. By age seven I was already quite good a boxer and was punishing that heavy bag daily, much to his pride.
This early acquisition of a toxic male skillset came handy for a childhood that took place in a post-dictatorship society, where many a trivial difference was resolved through violence. Especially in the state school I went to, which more than a school felt like a gladiator training camp. There would be a playground fight almost every day, and although as a rule I tried to stay away from them, I wasn’t able to avoid a fisticuff forever.