My Grandma Taught Me How to Street Fight

“You punch with your right hand, while you protect your face with your left fist.” I was eight years old and my grandmother was teaching me how to street fight. I was being bullied at school and this was her answer. It had worked for her, except, when she was in school during the Great Depression, she and her many brothers were part of a street gang, who roamed North Philadelphia. They were Italian-American, and they would often get into confrontations with the Irish-American group of siblings down the street. Catholic families, especially at this time, didn’t use birth control and the result in Philly was families with enough children to form their own troupe of hoodlums. Once, my great-uncles got into a scuffle with their Irish rivals and boasted, “Youse guys think ya tough? We’s got a sista who can beat yas up!” The Irish brothers laughed, but when they put forth their best fighter against my young grandmother – who might have been about thirteen at the time – they weren’t laughing anymore. She kicked his butt.

I loved this story as a little girl, and I still do into my thirties. I should say that I’ve never actually thrown a punch (at least not at a person or living thing), and I’m glad that I’ve never been in a situation where I have needed to. Nevertheless, those third-grade bullies were not the last bullies I would encounter – even into my adult years, I’ve encountered my fair share of monsters. From relationships to bad bosses, I’ve been bullied in one form or another, as many others have. I’ve learned to deal with it in all nonviolent ways, and I’ve become quite good at handling these situations, and I’ve gained a reputation as someone who can even stand up for other people who are being bullied – even online. My nickname among my friends on social media is “Troll Slayer” – they know that if someone is giving them a hard time in their comments section, they can tag me, and, through a series of counter-tactics, the bully will be neutralized by humor, pushback, or even kindness. As the years have gone by, however, I have gotten so good at standing up for other people, that sometimes I forget to stand up for myself. My grandmother has been gone for almost twenty years, and without the boxing champion of North Philly to remind me to punch with my right and defend with my left, I’ve often let bullies take advantage of my time, energy, emotions, creativity, and labor – all while making me feel stupid, less-than, or bad at what I do.

There was this one woman, in particular, who really tested me. She was directing a theatrical production that I was a scenic designer for, and she wasn’t necessarily good at being specific about what she wanted. Now, under normal circumstances, the director articulates a general vison for a production and designers, make their work reflect that. Different directors will want different levels of contribution from their designers and even let them make big decisions or allow them to express their own personal vision. Some directors know exactly what they want and will not hesitate to ask for it. As a designer I appreciate both approaches from time to time. It’s nice to have a range of creativity and personal expression, and it’s also nice to know what is expected of you. In essence, the key is teamwork. This woman fell into the latter category: she had a very specific idea of what she wanted, but wouldn’t communicate it. It was a constant guessing game, where the answer was always “no”, and each “no” was met with a slew of rude comments along the lines of “what kind of a designer are you?” and “I just need you to be an artist?” One time she used the word “cheap” to describe my work three times in one email. And when she would make suggestions, they would be things that were virtually impossible: things that were beyond our budget, manpower, or available materials.

I had been in challenging artistic situations before and had always found ways to overcome them. Once I had to build an entire red truck for a musical, and with some help I was able to make this happen. This is a story for another chapter, however. In the meantime, I had never been accused of having a bad attitude before. In fact, when I was in my Master’s program in theatre, I was given a special award for service to the department – I was literally given a medal for professionalism and having a good attitude. When I explained why some of the things she was asking for were impossible, I was told that I just needed to have a “can do” attitude – in other words, it was my fault that we didn’t have an unlimited budget or laborers. While I was able to defend my art and my creative choices – to no avail – I somehow forgot to defend myself as a person. For all of my “Troll Slayer” powers, these exchanges caused me to doubt myself.

The worst thing a bully can do, is have you believe that what they say about you is true. This is not the first time in my career that this had happened though – and that is also another story for another chapter. However, at this point in my career, I knew, on the one hand that I was good at what I did, and that I was a professional with a good attitude. I had designed and built theatrical scenery professionally for years, at this point in Philadelphia and New York City. I had directed an award-winning Off-Broadway musical, which I had also done scenic and lighting design for. I was, arguably, an artist, even though this woman insisted that I was not, and she needed me to just be one. I also built scenery as well and I am very handy with power tools.

I get this from my grandmother as well. One time, my mother tells me, the washing machine broke, and my grandmother called the repair man. He showed up, told her the machine was broken and suggested she buy a new one. She didn’t have the money for that, so she took the whole thing apart and put it back together again, and, in the meantime, figured out what was wrong with it and fixed it. There was another situation where she taught herself how to re-upholster furniture, bought a pneumatic stapler and did it herself. Today, I have the benefit of having YouTube tutorials teach me how to do things, fix things, build things, or problem solve. Just because this woman didn’t like my ideas – which were all guesses as to what she wanted – didn’t mean that I was bad at what I did anymore than my grandmother’s washing machine was broken beyond repair. The repair man was wrong, and if my grandmother had listened to him, she would have had to have spent several hundred dollars for a new one. This director lady was also wrong. I was – and am – good at what I do. I am an artist.

I was going to stand up for myself. After all, I wasn’t the only person she was torturing. She was treating the entire team like garbage and we had pages and pages of emails and text messages, where she bombards us with unprofessional insults. “She doesn’t know who she’s dealing with,” told the rest of the team. “I am Yolanda’s granddaughter.” It wasn’t just a declaration; it was a summoning. I was summoning her spirit, her courage, and her strength. I wasn’t going to punch this woman, but I was going to hand over these nasty emails to the establishment’s Human Resources department when the production was finished. I had never taken anyone to HR in my entire life. To this day, this is the only time I’ve had to do this, but the situation kept getting worse and worse. By this point, the mean director told me she was even going around to her friends in the theatre community and telling them how bad a designer I am. That’s a problem. That’s an escalation of the situation from her asking “what kind of a designer are you” to her basically telling me, “you’ll never work in this town again.” What would my grandmother do?

Yolanda was not a woman to be messed with, She was not only equal in strength and capability to her brothers and their rivals – she was their secret weapon: full of surprises. It was easy to underestimate her – not only because she was a girl, but because she was pretty. People assumed she was stupid or dainty – to their own detriment. One of my other favorite stories of my grandmother being full of surprises was when she was in her twenties and worked at the U.S. Mint during WWII. She wanted to be in the WACs but got rejected beause of an inner ear problem, but served her country by working in the factory making currency. One day, this big bully of a woman was giving her a hard time. “Meet me outside after work,” the mean woman said. “Ok,” my grandmother replied, unphased. After work that day, all parties showed up. “You ready to get your ass kicked, princess?” the big woman taunted. My grandmother didn’t say anything. She calmy, but forcefully pulled out a hammer she had grabbed on the way out and went right for the woman’s hefty bosom. Needless to say, no one bothered my grandmother at work again after that, or called her “princess.” They didn’t have HR in those days. In the 21st Century, I needed to find my metaphorical hammer – an element of surprise.

This woman who was bullying me clearly underestimated my abilities. She treated me, and other members of the team as if we were uncultured idiots. “Let her keep thinking that,” I said to myself and to the rest of the creative team, where were being persecuted as well. “We’ll keep doing our jobs to the best of our ability, and when it is all over, we will take everything she’s said to us and take it to HR. We won’t provoke her. We must be as nice as we possibly can, even when she is mean to us. I want us to go into the rest of this project with a… Donny Osmond level of positivity! Big smiles. Say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ and when she responds with disdain and insults, as we know she will, write it all down and add it to the file for HR.”

Thus, it went on like this for the final weeks of the project. One Friday, she insisted that the team needed to build her samples of what certain parts of the set would look like by the next rehearsal or she would cancel the show. I wanted to say, “Promise?” but I, and the other members of the team, cancelled our respective Friday night plans to make an emergency trip to Walmart and build her some samples. As the final days continued, her condescension got worse. One piece of the scenery was a 20’x8’ backdrop of the Alps, which took my team an entire evening to paint. She hated it. She wanted a photograph, which, at that size, would be quite impossible to print out without looking pixelated – not to mention it would be well over-budget.

“We can print out the picture on a hundred 8”x11” pieces of paper and tape them together,” she demanded. We were perplexed, trying to imagine what that would even look like. “We would still have the pixilation problem,” I explain, “It would look like when you try to enlarge a picture on your computer and it gets all jumbled. We don’t have a picture of the Alps that is high enough resolution that we could print it out to be 20’x8’ without it looking pixelated. What you’re asking for would cost tens of thousands of dollars and we don’t have that kind of budget. What’s wrong with the painted version?” It was three days until the show opened, and I and the entire team had explained the need for a painted backdrop to her multiple times, in writing, in the very emails we were collecting. She had suggested that I be more of an “artist”, so I made an executive decision, and the team agreed. “Well, it looks… painted,” she responded. I offered, “Well… yes. It’s a high-quality painting of the Matterhorn that my team spent an entire evening making for you.” “Take it down tomorrow,” she demanded, “I’ll print out a photograph of the Alps myself and tape them all together myself, if I have to since you won’t do your job.” I had to think of something fast to save the work my team had done from being thrown in the trash bin.

During one of the rare breaks of tech rehearsal, I went onstage where some actors were congregating and looked at the beautiful mountain-scape painting. “It’s beautiful,” I said in front of the actors. They agreed. “Too bad tomorrow it’ll be gone,” I sighed. I hoped that if they liked it enough, they could lobby the director to keep it. For all of the director’s abuse towards the creative team, she did want to be liked by the actors. “What!? No!” the actors protested. She heard them.

“FINE! We’ll keep it!” she bellowed, followed by some more passive aggressive comments about how bad I am at my job. I don’t remember what these words were, but they were bad enough that I retreated into the theatre lobby, where I was alone, and began punching the air. I said I never punched a person or living thing, but that doesn’t mean that my grandmother’s boxing lessons went to waste. I had won that small skirmish and had saved my colleagues hours of labor from being thrown away, but she still found a way to make me feel bad. Some people are like that. The world is full of people who will try to just tear other people down unnecessarily. Even if she was continuously unhappy with my work, there was no situation where it had to become personal. Some people just don’t work well together, but there are ways to have creative differences without being insulting, especially when a person is putting hours and hours of work in to making a vision come to life.

My grandmother taught me how to street fight. The fights look different in the 21st Century then they were in the 1930s. We compiled all of this mean director’s insults and abusive emails and texts into a large file. It turns out, she had been pretty rude to quite a few people on that show and there was plenty of evidence to bring to HR. My colleague plopped the file on the counter, and texted me a picture of it. I was out of town, in London, giving gallery talks at the Victoria and Albert Museum where I had done a sound design for a digital representation of Renaissance theatre and performance. I was right. I am an artist. And I won that fight.

While my grandmother has been gone for almost two decades, I find myself thinking about her more and more – thinking about how she was a warrior in her own time, and how I am one in my time. I don’t punch people, or any living thing – and when I get into a metaphorical fighting stance, I always be sure to punch “up” at those who abuse power instead of punch “down” like bullies do. I am the “Troll Slayer” because I am Yolanda’s granddaughter.