Teeter-Totter

The childhood teeter-totter wars between Rob and Doug Ford, as recollected by Doug:

To this day, he never’s beat me. I always dominated Rob on the teeter-totter. Sometimes my mother would ask me to ease up, to let him win one, but I wouldn’t. That’s not the way life works. You gotta suck it up and be tough, and when it’s time to go to rehab, you go to rehab, that’s what it is to be a man. I never gave him a win and I like to think that’s part of what made him the man he is today.

1. Although it doesn’t look like it, I’m nearly 5 years older than Rob, so when we were young I used to command him with my size and strength. I’m a very powerful man. I used to do the shot put in high school.

You might think that’s all about arm strength, but it’s not, it’s core and leg strength, which are a couple of my natural gifts. Anyway, so little Robbie would be on his end, and try as he might, he couldn’t lift me off the ground. His face would be red and he’d be kicking his legs swearing, and then I’d just step off the teeter-totter and the little bastard would break his ass on the ground at a million miles an hour! It was awesome, and it never failed, just like with Lucy getting Charlie Brown to kick the football.

2. Rob was always a pretty chubby kid, so I liked to take off my shirt when I got on the teeter-totter, just to intimidate him. I have to say it worked like a charm because you’d just see this look of defeat, shame and anger wash over his face, and then he never seemed to try as hard.

3. One time, and this was priceless, I was pretending to let Rob beat me, just to get his hopes up. It had been years, he’d lost hundreds of dollars to me, and still, he’d never won. Just as he’s all excited that he’s FINALLY gonna win one, this kid I hired came up behind him and whipped a basketball into the back of his head. Taught him a lesson that day. Your enemies can come from anywhere.

4. When I was a senior in high school and Rob was just a minor niner he had a boner for a girl named Kelly.

One day we went to the park to do some teeter-totter but when I got on “The Plank of Doom,” (that’s what we used to call it) I called Kelly over and got her to sit on my lap. Made out with her. Stuck my hand up her shirt and felt around, too. Rob just forgot about the match and ran over and tried to join in, but I wouldn’t let him, and then he cried and beat up some fairy Chinese kid. It’s the day Rob became a man, I think.