"I'm a fighter," says the sixty-one year old who took boxing lessons at the YMCA for part of a summer when he was twelve. "It's in my blood."
The educator, who feels he "might have been a pretty good boxer and definitely would have been bullied less" if his mom hadn't stopped his lessons because she was scared of him getting hit in the head, has a plan.
"How do you avoid getting hit in the ring? You keep moving," he tells us, doing his best to sound like Rocky, the title character from the 1976 classic "Rocky" about a down-on-his-luck fighter from Philadelphia who gets a once-in-a-lifetime shot at the heavyweight championship.
His plan involves constantly moving the word to a new location within the pledge. Every morning, a student is chosen to recite the patriotic sentence at the front of the classroom. The child will receive a sheet from which to read, not unlike the method former Vice President Joe Biden would use to recite a full sentence verbatim in front of a small crowd. The word "God" will be in a different spot each time.
"If they can't find it, they can't catch it," Hollaway says. "And if they can't catch it, they can't remove it."
This morning, Daniel McEnny, who is currently repeating third-grade as Joe Biden did, recited "I pledge allegiance God the flag..."
Yesterday, Jenny Wilson's pledge began with the words "I God allegiance..."
Where the word will be tomorrow is anyone's guess.
"I'm just gonna keep it ducking and weaving," Hollaway said as he ducked and weaved, before throwing a few shadow jabs.
Students are divided on whether the strategy will work.
"It's really confusing," McEnny said, not looking up from his phone as he texted. "So, maybe it will work. Or maybe it won't. What do I know? I'm eight."
But McEnny's classmate, Xiuying Chen, isn't convinced. Since the "Pledge of Allegiance" is so short, he feels there aren't enough places to move "God" to.
"Just 31 words in the pledge," said the only child. "Not enough variation. Better to move 'God' to another speech. Even the relatively short 'Gettysburg Address' has 272 words, which creates an 870 percent increase in permutations."
