Column: Dear Donny, Bring your Golden Sneakers and meet me in the schoolyard

I’ve finally figured out who you remind me of. It clicked after processing your (mis)behavior in the Courtroom in front of the judge and one of your sexual abuse victims, Ms. E. Jean Carroll. You’re the Schoolyard Bully.

You’re big, you’re loud, you don’t care that you got an F in Comportment. You make ugly not-funny jokes in Civics class in front of sweet old Mrs. Delahanty, who is just two years short of retirement.

When the shy student teacher interning in English is reading a poem by Keats, you brazenly fart, bray like a jackass, and blame it on the boy sitting next to you. All your frightened little cronies nervously giggle so you don’t pick on them next time around.

The cute girl you’ve been stalking all through your junior year finally gets worn down enough to let you take her to the movies, hoping that concession will be enough to get you off her back.

Donny, you’re stupid, you’re lazy, and you just can’t shut your big fat mouth.

Oh, but what good is name-calling at this point in time? As Frank Bruni explained, “Trump tests more than our sanity and surviving optimism. He tests the very limits of language. Demagogue, autocrat, dictator, tyrant … what’s left to say that hasn’t been said before? . ..his superpower is his shamelessness.”

We’ve all heard your shtick, Donny, the 5-year-old’s playground response to callouts: “I’m rubber, you’re glue, it bounces off me and sticks to you.” Reflexive projection. Are you truly deaf to the embarrassing lameness of that? Or do you just trust to the sycophantic witlessness of your deplorables?

So, all right then. Words are futile and rational dialogue is foreclosed. What’s left? How can I engage you on a level you find comprehensible?

Let me offer “A Modest Proposal” in the spirit of an Irish clergyman named Jonathan Swift: When classes get out next week, I will fight you in the schoolyard of your choice.

Tell your Security Suits to take the day off. No cameras. No press of any kind. Just you and me, you tub of lard. (I spot you at least a hundred pounds at your true weight.) One favor. Wear your comical new $400 Golden Sneakers. I long to kick dirt all over them.

And Donny, don’t let your innate cowardice get the better of you. For the record, I’m older than you are. That’s right. I haven’t thrown a punch in anger for about 60 years. But for you I’m ready to rumble. Just for the chance to land one on your lying piehole.

The way you treat women and veterans and the disabled — in fact, anybody who won’t get down on their knees and lick your jackboots? You need a swift kick, Donny, and I’m your man.

You and your fellow traitors tried to throw out my vote, mine and 81,000,000 others. Just because you lost. And, oh yes, you know darn well you did. “I can’t believe I lost to that guy.” Quote, unquote. You lost by 7 million citizens, big boy. And now you want a do-over? Seriously?

The mind boggles. As my girlfriend Maureen put it, “Why should I have to make the case that a man who tried to overthrow the government should not be president again?” But your cult of neo-secessionists is determined to give us democracy fans another chance to humiliate you on Nov. 5, and we will do our duty, rest assured.

Unfortunately the damage you’ve done will live on. I mean, look at me, a quiet law-abiding somewhat reclusive and indisputably old man publicly begging for a chance to beat you up. I myself have now become a tiny part of the evil malignancy you’ve inflicted upon us all from sea to shining sea.

Take a bow, Donny. You’ve cheapened us, coarsened us, and sold us out to the sleaziest scumbags in Washington. You and your putsch go to bed dreaming of a Fourth Reich, starting with the betrayal of Ukraine and NATO itself, ending with the elimination of “vermin” like me. You know, Liberals?

But your Putin-loving clenched fist posturing as you exit our courts of law will someday be just a tawdry memory. Future generations will look back with bewilderment and horror, shuddering at how close we came to blowing up everything we cherish.

But right now my challenge stands: Pick your schoolyard, Tough Guy. Remember to wear those ludicrous Golden High Top ‘Never Surrender’ sneakers. I’ll be there. You won’t be the first bully I’ve faced down.

Dennis J. Reardon served as a Specialist 5th Class in the U.S. Army from 1968-1970. He resides in Bloomington.

This article originally appeared on The Herald-Times: Columnist challenges Donald Trump to an old-man schoolyard fight