A TRUE STORY: The Summer of 74’, a bully, a football, Nixon and democracy.

‘And what does that have to do with Ukraine, Trump and European security?’ you ask me. Everything, my friend, everything.

BY MICHAEL ANDERSEN

In my street, when I was nine, we had this big, loud bully. Three or four years older than me, a red-head, physically much bigger than most of my friends, this kid thought himself more important than the rest of us. We all despised the kid, we gave him the nickname 'Fatty' (I know, I know, different times).

‘Fatty’s’ family had once lived for a year in California. Upon returning home to middle-class, social-democratic Denmark, his father drove a gigantic American Buick. Which he always made sure to park in the street, for all to see. At that point, most Danish people ran sensible Volvos, Saabs or Volkswagen cars. My parents had a red Citroën 2CV – which made them the local hippies and intellectuals.

The bully’s dad was some sort of salesman, something to do with hotels and restaurants, I think. At street parties he would always get drunk, and hit on the neigbor wives which would send his own wife home crying. They had the biggest house, they had a color tv before the rest of us, and ‘Fatty’ had his own Gatorade machine, no less. His mother even had one of those mini-solariums, so she would sport a permanent orangy tan. Which was quite something in Denmark 50 years ago, I tell you.

I was a short, clever nine-year-old and totally fascinated by America, cowboy films and astronauts, more than anything. Four years previously, in July 1969, when the Americans first had landed on the moon, my dad had woken me up in the middle of the night to watch Neil Armstrong walking on the moon – “you got to see this, Michael.” The local Chevron petrol station would issue their customers Apollo 11 commemorative ‘gold’ coins, and I persuaded all my uncles and aunts and neighbors to fill up their cars at Chevron, so I could fill my album.

Apparently, ‘Fatty’ had met many astronauts in California. And many cowboys also, he told me. From one of his trips to the U.S., his father brought him home a t-shirt which was basically one big American flag. How I desired that shirt. I wanted to be ‘Fatty’s’ friend, but in the end I simply couldn’t. You know this kind of ‘knowledge’ that a nine-year-old has – intangible, inexplicable but strong, an intuition impossible to ignore.

The Summer of 1974 was one of those endless ones; football and football and football. And Richard Nixon. I would watch my socialist grandmother – who lived with us – screw up her face whenever Dicky was on TV. And he was on TV all the time that summer.

“How could anybody ever vote for that man?”, she would say. “Sometimes people are exactly what they show you – nasty.”

My best friend Lars and I were puzzled.

“But why would the Americans ask Nixon to be their president if he is a bad guy?”Lars asked.

“It’s democracy, guys”, my dad explained to us, “each person has one vote – they vote for whom they want to be their president – and the rest of the people have to accept it. Before we had democracy, people would fight and even kill each other.”

“And nobody has more than one vote?” I asked, “not even cowboys or astronauts or the strongest?”

“Nope, everybody has one vote.”

At that point, we had a Danish prime minister who most people agreed maybe wasn’t the greatest or loudest leader, but an honest man to a fault. Even when her husband took office, his wife Ingrid insisted that they stay in their modest three-bedroom apartment in inner-city Copenhagen, as if nothing had happened. Her husband, an orphan who grew up in great poverty in the 1920s and 30s, became famous – and widely criticized - throughout the world when he, as prime minister, kept wearing his workman clogs, even when meeting important foreign leaders. When asked about it, his wife answered: “I didn’t marry him for his clothes or shoes, but for his heart and courage in his life.”

So, as I said, my friends and I all despised 'Fatty'. But - and here was the thing - the football we played with day in and day out was his, so we had to tolerate him. One of my other friends had previously had a ball, but one day somebody kicked it in the river and that was that. From then on we were dependent on ‘Fatty’ and his ball.

Whenever Fatty’s team was losing, he would always do the same thing; first he would try to cheat, then he’d push you over when you called him on the cheating. If pushing didn’t do the trick, he would all of a sudden turn to crying. And finally, he would take his ball and go home. And our game would be ruined, unfinished. When you are nine and leading 9-7 in a match that goes to 10, that’s a fcuking disaster.

A few days later, my grandmother took me to the shop where she bought me a shiny new leather football - an Adidas ball even. "Made in Germany" it said on it; that summer, Germany had become world champions - I had watched my hero Gerd Müller score in the final with exactly this ball. And all of a sudden, I, the smallest kid on the block, (and the weakest footballer) was the coolest kid.

I remember that for the rest of that summer I even slept with the ball in my bed, and lent it to my best friend Lars and other of my friends, so they could do the same. By the end of the summer, the beautiful Adidas ball sort of belonged to the group. Just still a little more to me, though.

For almost a month, we didn't see much of 'Fatty'. With our new German ball, we quickly forgot about him. I remember exactly what day he reappeared, because that afternoon I had been watching with my family Richard Nixon leave the White House for the last time.

Obviously, I didn’t really understand what was happening, but I do remember thinking that Nixon reminded me of ‘Fatty’, like he seemed nice enough as he was waving and smiling mounting the helicopter, but there was something off about him.

“Why is he smiling if they have told him to leave?” I asked.

“Because they have forgiven him, the fools”, my grandmother said. “Bad men have a lot to answer for in this world.”

“You remember that I explained to you about democracy?”, my dad chimed in, “in a democracy there are certain rules you have to obey, like in school, otherwise it will not work. President Nixon broke those rules – and now the rest of the people have told him to leave, he can’t be the president anymore.”

That evening ‘Fatty’ showed up when we were playing football. Nobody said anything, nobody reacted, for a while we all just ignored him.

“Can I please play?” he asked. Not shouting, not demanding, just quietly asking.

“Let’s have a vote”, I suggested, “like in America.”

I explained to my fellow footballers about democracy, and we voted. Everybody was in favor of letting ‘Fatty’ rejoin the game.

“But you have to obey the rules”, my friend Lars explained to him with a very serious demeanor, “no more pushing or shouting; if you do, we will have another vote, and you will have to leave just like that Nixon guy.”

Then we just quietly let “Fatty’ join one of the teams. But nobody ever took any of his BS and bullying again. It turned out that 'Fatty' wasn't indispensable. And now we had another, even better ball. It was just that nobody had dared explain it to him. And to each other.