They call him Mello Yello -
When your Grandpa was a kid, they had a lot of names for “coward”.
Scaredy-cat, Chicken-liver, Crybaby and Frenchie.
If two 7-year-old boys wanted to fight on the playground, so be it. The teachers looked the other way and all the kids were tougher as a result.
Back then if you knocked a guy down, he usually stayed down. If he got back up, you hit him again until he went down.
Pre-pubescent boys punching each other in the face was a simple rite of passage — like playing mailbox baseball or learning how to spit.
There among the bloody noses and torn knit shirts of yesteryear was one supreme insult to budding manhood. So offensive was this jab that it rose above common noun status.
When they called you “Yellow,” that meant something entirely different. Yellow meant you were afraid. Too afraid. A genuine coward.
Those others were just allusions, suggesting you were a Chicken, metaphorically. Suggesting you were acting like a baby. Or that you refused cheap wine like a Parisian.
When a guy calls you Yellow? Whooeee! Them’s knit shirt-tearin’ words.
What Carmello Anthony did in Madison Square Garden (see video below at 0:44 and 3:07) was cowardice defined. That is to say, Yellow. Sucker punch a man when his head is turned and then run away? Yeah. Downright Yello. Mello Yello, as it were.
I know. Long road, little house. But I’ll tell you what. If a 9-year-old Mello Yello were to pull this on a 1936 playground, some groundskeeper would have beat him senseless with a rake handle.
The coaches and fans did the next best thing and voted him out of this weekend’s All-Star silliness. It’s almost enough to make you invest in the blossoming Colorado rake handle market.
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