Reply #28: Hrrrmmm ...

[RoyGBiv]

I started to blow this off, thinking I don't have any as I am heavily into self-preservation, but then some synapses opened up, and I realized I do. Your final comment means more than it says. You don't know how you'll react in any given situation. In fact, you most likely react in a way that runs counter to every outer manifestation of your personality with which you or anyone else is familiar. Most incidents like this in which I've been involved I never think about because it doesn't seem like me.

Hell, just writing that small paragraph I thought of half a dozen. I'll just mention two, in the order they came to me.

When I was a kid (about 14 I think) I was riding my bike down a street and saw the neighborhood bully holding a kitten by the neck and spinning around in a circle, I supposed trying to break the cat's neck. I was probably 100 yard away from him when I realized what he was doing, and I have no current recollection of how I traversed the distance to him or how long it took. In my mind, it was instantaneous. This was a big kid, probably about six inches taller than me and bulking, who outwardly seemed to feel no pain. He'd beat up half the neighborhood at one time or another despite having bricks and even trashcans thrown at him in self-defense, and I was terrified of him. I also wasn't the best bike rider in the world, which seems irrelevant, but that bike was in fact my first weapon.

The phrase "fair fight" only applies to boxing and other organized sporting events where beating someone to a pulp is the goal. In these situations, the only "fair" is what lets you survive the encounter.

I remember only the end as my bike, with me on it, seemed to come out of the air and land with the front wheel smashing into his side. He went down. The cat went flying (and then ran off), while I jumped up off the ground where I landed, grabbed this kid by the neck and started flinging him around as best as I could ... serious adrenaline high. I then picked up a nearby 2x4 and commenced to beating him, at which point the kid's equally terrifying father came barreling out of the house to see who was wailing on his little monster. Seeing him coming, I grabbed my bike, immediately sped off, went searching for the cat (and didn't find it), and then sped home. I ran to my room, crashed hard from the adrenaline, and cried for a solid hour.

Tough-guy moments rarely end as such.

(The kitten did eventually show up at one of my friend's house, who brought it to my house, and it lived with either me or my mother for the next 16 years. Her name was Pepper.)

The other moment was more traditional. I ran a liquor store for a number of years, and there was this guy we called Crazy Harry who would haunt the place now and again. He was crazy for all kinds of reasons, which I won't go into, but he was best known for his sexual verbal abuse of young women. He walked into my store one evening. I'd had a particularly bad day with a number of run-ins with drunks and underaged kids, and my patience had reached its absolute limit.

Harry walked over to the shelf with the Crown Royal where also stood a collection of college-aged girls. (I immediately called the cops. He wasn't supposed to be in there and knew it, but he was known to be violent and carry knives in his boots.) I watched him closely. He seemed to be talking to them under his breath, so they quickly started to exit. He followed.

About the time the group got to where my counter was, he uttered something disgustingly profane, which inspired the girl to to turn around and say something profane back at him, at which point he called her a stinky ... use your imagination ... and grabbed for her shoulder. Then I snapped. I grabbed the baseball bat I kept behind the counter, launched *over* the counter, and whacked the fucker in the knees. He went down. The girls ran out and quickly came back in with a boyfriend who was probably underage and also probably a linebacker. He and I picked Harry up and threw him into the parking lot about the time the cops showed up.

I imagine the cops saved Harry several broken bones.

And I'm not proud of having to say that.