March 21, 2008
Dear Clusterflock,
Did you get in fights as a kid? As an adult?
Kristin Hersh says in this week’s e-mail,
I wish I could still hit as hard as I did when I was a little kid. That’d make it more okay to be a nice loser. I never lost a fight when I was little. Not a fist fight, anyway. Here are some of the issues that were settled in grade school with sudden, severe blows to someone’s solar plexus:
Women can be elected president.
A southern accent does not (necessarily) mean a low IQ.
Some rats are nice.
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PART ONE: A few. Not too many at all.
PART TWO: No.
I busted my hand up pretty good on the back of a friend’s head in elementary school. I think that was pretty much it.
I was in a fight once in third grade. It was with a fourth grader name Casmir. We got busted by the prinicpal. I think Casmir won, but it was close.
In the ultimate irony, Casmir later beat up a kid in junior high gym class who kept kicking and hitting me after he discovered I wouldn’t fight back. My only opponent defended me. Strange.
I like that story, Mark.
I feel sure that Daryl will have something to say on this, given his misspent youth and near-misspent adulthood. But I can’t let him out the restraints just yet, lest he bolt for the shed.
I once got “jumped” by two former friends, in high school. They didn’t throw a punch, but it was clear they wanted me to fight back. I merely walked down the hall as they took turns shoving me toward solid objects.
One of our teachers appeared out of nowhere, obviously feeling that he was witnessing the begining of a fight, he looked at me and said, “what’s going on, boys?”
My harrassers both looked at me, to see what I would say and I merely looked at the teacher and said, “we’re just messing around.”
The teacher walked off around the corner and the shoving began again, but the teacher returned, and grabbed the other two of us by the arm and said let’s go, I shook him off, “I’ve got to get to class.” I still don’t know what happened with the other two.
I let my best friend beat me up in 6th grade or so. He was hanging on me for a while, and when I finally let his weight bring me to the ground, it did something to my back that has affected me into adulthood. Guess I should have gone with the “shove my fingers as deeply into his eyes as possible” option I was contemplating while he hung there. But then that might have affected me into adulthood too.
What really sucked was it made it nearly impossible for me to do things on a trampoline. But back in those days, you didn’t let on something like that bothered you, so I basically participated with everyone else on the trampoline in “phy ed”, even though every time I landed it took my breath away.
I still remember his friggin’ birthday….
For some reason people were afraid to fight me in high school–and believe me there were plenty of opportunities–which doesn’t really make sense. I am/wasn’t all that buff and I was never known for my athletic prowess. And I don’t think I am scary.
I would just stare them down.
One kid, however, when I was in the 8th grade had been harassing for weeks. One day I had enough and slugged him in the shoulder. He smacked me square in the jaw and I saw red. Last thing I remember he was on the ground and I was on top of him letting him have. To this day I am thankful a baseball couch stopped me, Lord knows what would have happened to me and that kid.
I think it’s interesting that no chicks here got in fights.
Me, I never had to, because
a. I have a much bigger brother who went to all the same grade schools (not that he would have defended me, probably, but he was known to exist),
b. I was taller than most of my classmates until some time in junior high,
c. when everybody else caught up with and outgrew me, I failed to notice and continued acting like I was Godzilla.
To this day, some people persist in believing that I’m very tall. I’m 5′7″ and have been pretty much since high school. Only slightly above average.
I shoved a girl in preschool once; I got in a lot of trouble. In elementary school, all I had to do was go “boo” in a boy’s general direction, and he would run away. In my junior high school, which was slightly rough, a girl in my homeroom told me she was going to kick my ass if I called her again by the name that I’d thought was her name—it was what the teacher read out when taking attendance—but which I guess she didn’t like. I didn’t address her again at all; therefore, no ass-kicking was attempted. And though I’ve been harrassed on the streets and subway from time to time, it’s always been verbal, and not very persistent. I must look pretty mean; people just do not tangle with me.
The one fight I wish I’d had? The fucking motherfucker who stole my eyeglasses and denied it. I wish I’d offered him fifty bucks to give them back, handed him the money, put the glasses in my pocket, and then totally stomped him into a pulp and taken my money back. I could totally have taken him, the fucking skinny-ass junkie. Instead I walked away, even though I felt in my bones that he had them, and blew $200 on another pair.
In fourth grade I punched this kid, John, because he scratched me for whatever reason.
Fast forward about 15 years - he knocked over a convenience store last year. That’s right, I punched a felon!
I also think it’s interesting that several of the fights reported above involve friends or former friends. One of my ex-boyfriends used to get into drunken fights with his best friend all the time. The most spectacular of these resulted in a broken collarbone for the former and a broken nose for the latter. Friends are quite a hazard, it seems. Also: I sure can pick ‘em.
The fight I didn’t get in probably affected me more.
I was just out of college, living with friends in Denver, playing pool. This guy came up and said the table was his next, even though it was clear that our quarters were laid out in a row, marking ownership.
He was bigger than us. Older than us. Meaner than us. He pushed us aside, and just started to play.
I said, “Fuck you,” but my voice cracked.
It took me ten years to forgive myself.
Effect and affect are often confused because of their similar spelling and pronunciation. The verb 2affect usually has to do with pretense . The more common 3affect denotes having an effect or influence . The verb effect goes beyond mere influence; it refers to actual achievement of a final result . The uncommon noun affect, which has a meaning relating to psychology, is also sometimes mistakenly used for the very common effect. In ordinary use, the noun you will want is effect .
It’s a good thing you corrected yourself there, Deron. Because I didn’t want to have to come down there and kick your ass.
Andrew’s recollection of his ’stare-down’ response to provocation is interesting to me, especially in light of India’s noting that (so far) none of us chicks has reported mixing it up with anyone.
I recall (dimly) assorted childhood episodes of harmless punching and shoving and of lobbing missiles and being struck by lobbed missiles, but not till I was an adult did I learn what it was to be punched good and hard. And on those rare occasions, I adopted the stare-down. I was dealing with people who were (at least temporarily) well and truly crazy — and bigger and stronger than me. Had I been so ill-advised as to ‘hit back’, I expect I would have gotten the bejesus knocked out of me. The stare-down worked insofar as it stopped the hitting.
In retrospect, I do wish, however, that I’d had the mother wit and the training and experience to turn my antagonists’ own blows against them so that at least they lost balance and maybe crashed into or through something hard and painful.
I confess. India, Deron — I jumped in and corrected Deron’s spelling. I didn’t want to have to stare down the both of y’all.
Is that the online equivalent of having your friends grab your arms while you yell, “Hold me back! Hold me back!”?
Something like that.
I think confrontation is part of the male experience. Even if you’re a wuss, you know you have to present yourself as someone who will fight (or not). It’s a choice you have to make whether you want to or not.
Do women have to make this choice?
No.
Sometimes I think a lot of male aggression comes from the anxiety of having to make that decision. Or at least from the anxiety of having to prove that you’ve made that decision, and if someone calls your bluff, you’re fucked, so you just go ahead and start swinging before you have to get to that point.
And a lot of it comes from testosterone.
Women don’t have to make that choice among ourselves, as far as I’ve noticed. We do have to decide how we’re going to respond to men who have testosterone poisoning, though—ignore, or confront?
I used to confront a lot more often, turning around and yelling at guys who hey-babied me on the street. Sometimes, “Would you say that to your mother? Your sister? What if somebody said that to your girlfriend?” but more often, “Fuck off!” Now I usually ignore. It helps that I don’t get hey-babied much nowadays.
See, this is interesting. I’ve always found all the hey-baby stuff funny rather than threatening. Like being followed around by Beavis and Butthead. It makes me smile.
Of course, these days I’d pay for a hey-baby.
act 1 scene 1 - endless missile hurling, punching, pinching, biting, shin smashing hockey sticks, afghani versions of polo at pony clubs
scene2 or curtain: 3 boys on the back of a baby donkey hitting it over the head and ears with a stick, i, donkey heroine, ruffian of 13 yrs pull the last one off and he swung a punch that dislocated my jaw.
meek as a mouse ever since [well sort of]
Some guys are funny about hey-babying; others are just plain rude. Pretty much all of them, however, I think, say it with the assumption that you’ll be too intimidated to answer. And it’s that which pisses me right off. Not to get too Women’s Studies 101, but it’s an assertion of dominance, usually made by men who ain’t dominant over shit.
Cindy, yes, testosterone is the fuel for the anxiety.
Alek: Were the boys . . . well, you know . . . those dirty you-know-what boys who lived on the outskirts — up on the hills above Sarajevo? (Aside: I hope that we can pull off this 2009 clusterflock gathering and that we can figure out how to transport you to Texas — because then we can drive from north central Texas way out west to Marfa and meet my friend Lee’s friend “Tigie”, who takes care of horses and donkeys that people have abused.)
Deron: I do think that insofar as men and women live with fear, they live with fear that is qualitatively different. But be that as it may — fear kills the soul.
Okay, I have a good male aggression/hey-baby story. Many years ago, when I worked in the library at UT-Dallas, Daryl showed up at my office to give me the bad news that his cancer had recurred. I was in my 20s, he in his 30s. We decided to take a walk around campus. At one point a groundskeeper I knew–a huge, muscular Black man who never missed an opportunity to comment on my form–walked past and said, “Hey, baby, you looking good today!” Daryl–who generally wants to fight anyone who might be thinking something disrespectful about me–turned to me and asked, “Do you know this person?” Oh, yeah, I told him, that’s so-and-so. We looked at each and broke up laughing, and from that point on the day seemed much brighter.
Sheila, yes.
Cindy, you done opened up a can of worms.
Worms! Did I ever tell y’all my worm story? It involves accents, so you need to do your best to hear it right.
So I was walking into work one morning, my usual glum self. I turned the corner and found, on the sidewalk in front of me, about 1,000 dead earthworms. Not in a pile, but in the same general vicinity. I’d never seen that many earthworms in my life. I stopped and looked, then looked around to see why they might be there. It hadn’t rained. They hadn’t gone all lemming and jumped, because the roof was several feet away. They were just lying there in the middle of the sidewalk.
I determined that I was not going to go inside until I figured out how those earthworms got there. This involved a long period of standing and staring. I was soon joined–wordlessly–by a doctor I know–a man from India–who was apparently as intent on figuring out what caused this phenomenon as I was. We stood side by side for a long time. Finally he turned to me and said, in his heavy Indian accent, “Looks like somebody opened a can of worms!”
We laughed ourselves silly and went inside.
No, thank God. I find fighting terrifying and will run away at full speed if I need to.
Cindy, do I get it? I love the story regardless of whether I’m hearing it correctly.
Hearing the Indian accent is necessary for a full appreciation.
By the way, I found out how the earthworms got there. Someone power-washed the roof and apparently washed all the worms into a corner. At some point they got expelled with some force in one big wad, landing on the sidewalk several feet away.
I always surprise myself that I’ve never come to blows. Just a few minutes ago I was at Fairway in the front of a long line and this guy walks in front of me and puts his 6-pac on the conveyor. I said, “hey, what do you think we’re all doing here?” and he told me to relax. I wanted to punch him but I didn’t. This happens on a daily basis in New York and I’ve never punched someone past the fourth grade. In that case this kid with glasses was really bugging me and wouldn’t stop. So I told him to take his glasses off, and he did. And then I punched him in the eye. I always ask this question to guys I know, and find that 97% of guys (in my circles anyway) have never been in fights as adults, and the other 3% are doing all the fighting for us.
Cindy, okay. Good.
Derek: LOL! Or, rather, LWOL! [Loud Whooping Out Loud]
Oh, but yeah—people who cut ahead in lines get my blood up, instantly. Relax, my ass. People cut at Whole Foods all the time, pretending they don’t understand the automatic line-managing TV-screen thingy. It’s color-coded and numbered, you microcephs! Even idiots like you should be able to decipher that! That’s what I get for shopping at Whole Foods, I guess.
What was the guy doing buying a six-pack at Fairway, anyhow?!?
When I was 19, a group of 4 people took turns hitting me in the head. They didn’t knock me down so I kind of feel like I won.
Aaron: You won. (”You never got me down, Ray!”)
What a grand string this is! It’s sometimes fun to be away for a big part of the day, and then look in on all that has been missed, and realize just how essential it has all become.
About the question: Part one– Oh yes ; Part two– Oddly, in spite of teaching martial arts for fifteen years, I never got into a fight outside of the karate school / tournament setting. Of course there were plenty of times in the school that things went over that line between disciplined practice and competition, and “bring it, motherfucker.” You would be surprised to know how many big guys with barbed wire tats on the biceps will have a few beers and then decide to step in for a free lesson (read give a lesson). Once they had signed the liability waiver, the next step was to have somebody standing by to call the ambulance. This happened a few times, and it was never anybody from the school who needed the ambulance.
About the difference between male and female views of the “hey baby” encounter: I have tried to explain this to Cindy for years: when a man is walking with a woman and she gets a “hey baby” form one or more guys, they are often doing it as much because they want to try to provoke or humiliate the man as for the other reasons (and both reasons may be in place at the same time). It’s that “I’m looking at your woman and what are you going to do about it?” look. Women seem to never understand that men often have to respond to this situation even when they, the women, are happy to laugh it off. Can any of you men out there confirm this for me? Let me say that I have sent Cindy on a time or two and gone back. I have discovered that it is possible to look a person in the eyes without blinking, and tell them very calmly what you are about to do to them, and suddenly they are the ones laughing it off. But, of course, you don’t want to do this unless you have every intention of doing exactly what you said you would if things go the other way.
Derek, you should take Daryl to store with you next time.
But, of course, you don’t want to do this unless you have every intention of doing exactly what you said you would if things go the other way.
And just what might that be, Daryl?
India: cutting in line at Whole Foods? Wow, think what’s going on down at the Whip In. You know what chaps my ass is when there is a long line waiting at the one register that’s open, and suddenly another employee opens another register and says “I can help the next person in line”–and the fucker at the end of the line says “Oh thank you” and zips right over there. This is the point at which Cindy’s sweet little hand is showing all of its white knuckles down where it’s holding my arm, and she will put her hand over my mouth if she sees me thinking about saying “In Texas, the next person in line means the one who has waited a shitload longer than anybody else.”
And just what might that be, Daryl?
“Do you know that it is possible, with the use of a thumb and two fingers, to pull a person’s windpipe out so far that nobody will hear a sound from them when a finger of the other hand goes through an eyeball and on, oh–say two inches into the brain?”
Of course you don’t have to do exactly what you mentioned as long as the sudden cessation of hostilities is effected.
Note the correct usage of “effect” in its verb form.
Actually, I suspect that people are a lot ruder at Whole Foods than they are at the Whip In (which I’m guessing is cheaper? never been, obviously). Something about how when people are paying such high prices, they suddenly think they have a right to act as if they really are filthy-rich lords of the universe, instead of poor schlubs who work in offices or have signed away their firstborn so they can attend NYU but who don’t have much choice but to pay too much for their groceries.
The Whole Foods in question is located in a very rapidly changing neighborhood, which has gone from being mostly tenements, unbelievably seedy residential hotels, and high-density apartment buildings, to being a nascent luxury district. There weren’t any amenities there before, and the Whole Foods was dropped into what was basically a no-groceries zone. The two nearest supermarkets are several blocks to the east and west, with none that I know of to the north or south for maybe a mile. The one to the west is pretty small and keeps rearranging itself and stocking more high-end products, in an effort to compete. The one to the east just had a horrible stabbing a few weeks ago.
Not a lot of consumer choice, so people compensate by being assholes.
I beat up a kid named Brad Ham in front of the trophy case in Jr. High school in 7th grade. I don’t know what came over me, but violence welled up in me like never before. To this day it is a mystery and I feel horrible about it.
Back when Michael and I were in the pro sound and lighting business I duct-taped two roadies’ hands to their legs on the stage during a load-out. They didn’t see it coming. They never used crappy cheap duct tape on our cables after that either. I don’t feel bad about that one. Assholes.
Once in a non-violent, ‘kill ‘em with crazy’ mood I stared someone down while letting beer run out of my mouth onto the floor. I don’t remember who it was or why, but I don’t remember them bothering me anymore either. It’s always been easier for me to look crazy than to look dangerous. Michael? Do you remember what that was all about?
I don’t remember either, Honey, but I remember I apologized to you afterwards.
One time in high school a guy threatened to beat me up just for looking at him wrong. Can you believe that? What the hell? I’m guilty of observation. Guilty of simply looking. Luckily nothing happened, but whenever I tell this story to friends they all laugh really hard.
You guys are impossible to keep up with! Beats me why the guy was buying a 6-pac at fairway. Some fratboy type with his girlfriend like they were on their way to a dinner party or something, straight out of a beer commercial. I really have to want something specific to brave the depths of fairway, in this case NZ Cockles for vongole. The only thing I get at wholefoods is the huevos rancheros sauce (yes, you texans, that’s how bad it is here..) And just to set the record straight, the guy didn’t ring up his stuff for me, if that was the case I definitely would’ve clocked him.
I’m late to the party! What a great thread! I think I can honestly say I’ve never engaged in one-on-one fisticuffs. One of the most frightening things that came to mind however. Once, Danny glanced over at another driver in a traffic-thick, moving fast, outskirts-of-the-city-freeway-driving situation. He glanced over, and somehow offended the young driver of another car, who immediately began honking and weaving amongst the cars around us. Rushing upon us, coming up beside us, swerving toward us. Danny said, “What should we do?” I said, “Look straight ahead, don’t acknowledge they’re there.” They moved off at the next exit. Even though [I believe my face and demeanor gave not a clue] I was terrified, I drove the car straight on, not wavering for a moment.
XOR
[...] his accent at all like this . . . [...]