The Last Ride of the Lazott Brothers
I don’t cotton to bullies.
I learned resilience early in life. The hard way.
I don’t cotton to bullies.
I learned resilience early in life. The hard way.
Before I ever understood fairness or forgiveness, I understood this: you stand by your own.
My brother, Ken, and I were abandoned as babies and raised by our paternal grandparents—Grampa and Gramma. And we were the better for it. Still, our parents, long divorced, popped in and out of our lives like unreliable weather.
Our mother would blow in unexpectedly and take us a on shopping sprees—which was code for bar hopping—then disappear again for years.
Our father arrived more reliably: Thanksgiving, Christmas, and two weeks every summer. He sent money to our grandparents, allowances to us kids, and taught us how to fish, play pool, and shoot beer cans off fence posts with BB guns. He brought rock-star presents and big energy.
Twice, he tried to assemble a “real” family with a new wife. Both attempts failed. Each time our evil stepmother and her hulking bully of a daughter left us behind—no goodbye, no explanation—just the quiet lesson that nothing was permanent.
Which is one reason Ken and I are so close. That, and being ricocheted through a giant familial pinball machine from infancy onward.
Loyalty seeped into my bones early—back when I was still running around on the short, fat legs of a three-year-old.
One summer afternoon at Gramma and Grampa’s house, Ken was riding his skateboard down our long walkway to the sideway below, reveling in the beauty of gravity.
Green lawns lined the cracked sidewalks of this quiet neighborhood, where Ken and I learned to skate, ride bikes, make friends, and belong. Everything in our small universe looked right—until the Lazott brothers showed up.
Not nice boys, the Lazotts. A pack of trouble on bikes, riding the sidewalk like they owned the neighborhood. Rough jeans, plaid shirts, hair cut flat and short. They pointed and jeered, laughing among themselves, daring anyone to come close—as if the air around them bit back.
Ken grew up to be a full-bird colonel in the Marine Corps—lean as a bullwhip, jumping out of helicopters over Cuba, teaching physics at West Point, and running marathons well into his sixties. A badass with a good heart.
But at four years of age, he was a quiet, skinny kid, content inside his own imagination. The youngest Lazott had two years and five pounds on him, and they all grew bigger and meaner with time.
That summer day, when the Lazotts pulled up in front of Ken and dropped their bikes to the ground, the story would unfold quite differently than they expected.
I had been watching my brother from the living room window, curious at first.
But then the boys enclosed my brother in a circle. And then, the middle brother shoved Ken’s shoulder, knocking him off his skateboard.
And then, my curiosity shot into rage.
I ran outside, grabbed the nearest stick, and charged them. “Don’t you hurt my Kennis,” I lisped, raising the weapon over my head. “Don’t you dawe!”
I didn’t know it then, but Gramma stood on the front porch—ready to unleash her own wrath if things went sideways.
She understood what Ken and I didn’t at the time: That we must take care of each other to withstand a family that was unstable and a world that was often unkind.
The brothers just laughed, mounted their bikes, and rode off.
But by God, that was the end of the Lazotts. From that day on, they kept to their own side of the street.
Looking back, I wonder what their home life was like. Bullies aren’t born; they’re made. I wonder if they ever learned the great task of being kind.
My great task in life has been to learn this:
When to stand my ground,
when to come out swinging,
and when to drop my stick and walk away.
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P.S. Stay tuned for Part 2: The story of my hulking bully of a stepsister, the day she dropped me on my head, and how Gramma—who didn’t cotton to bullies either—responded in a way that made me feel seen, and loved completely.
P.P.S. Excerpted from my forthcoming memoir Nobody’s Child.
P.P.P.S. I would love it if you would follow me on Substack. All my content is free and you don’t have to jump through a bunch up hoops to find me! Thank you. ❤️
Kyla Merwin 
Funny, I don’t remember this incident with Wes and Dave. I do remember we got off to a rough start – like when they threw mudpies on us. I suspect that, being new kids on the block, they had to prove themselves. Wes, Dave, and I became good friends through the years. Dave was a true artist when it came to bicycles and cars. I haven’t seen either one for over forty years, and I wonder what they are up to.
They lived in a house smaller than ours, along with their sisters. Their father was a rockhound, and he had his rock saw in the living room. You can imagine how cramped that was.
I also have memories of the evil stepsister. For me, going from the oldest to the middle child was tough. But I fought back as best as I could. We were thick as thieves before those four years in a poorly named “Brady Bunch” family. What I hated the most was the wedge she drove between the two of us. I look forward to part two.
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P.S. I love the skateboard picture. I haven’t seen it in a half-century or more.