Men have egos. And like certain other things they require stroking. We prefer to have it done by a female rather than doing it ourselves. Every man has had his ass beat at least once in his life. If he says otherwise he is probably lying. My first experience with this was rather life changing in its own way.
To explore this we need to go back to 7th grade. Now i was fresh out of catholic school. Defiance really wasnt something you did just because. I was amazed at the amount of "naughty" kids in my school now. Who would have thought public school could be so undiciplined? I hadnt yet learned that even what you say can have consequences. After all we were all pretty controlled in catholic school. So I had no fear of shooting my mouth off. How different could it possibly be? I would quite regularly do this to a particular short wanna be badass puck kid. He was trying to be like his older high school brother. You know, the go nowhere in life...ever...types.
Its worth noting that in 7th grade was my first fight. Not with the kid mentioned above. In this case i didnt get beat up. Though it did take several blows to the face to realize i had to reciprocate. When there is a fight the ring of people develops surrounding the fight area. After a min or so he backed up too far and one of the kids shoved him and he came flying toward me. The only reaction I could think of was to raise my knee. This then went straight into his stomach and more or less simply knocked the wind out of him. He fell down, fight over.
Now summer of 8th grade karma would catch up to me. The bike trails in my town run on the back sides of farm land. Not a lot of spectators out there. My friend and i were riding our bike back home from getting some McDonalds. Coming toward us were 5 figures. As we got closer i identified the short one and proceeded to go around. They recognized me too and managed to get a hand on my friend and stop him. I stopped about 100 feet and turned around. They had seperated my friend from his bike. They were hurting him or anything but it was definately bait to get to me. My friend really wasnt much of anything, a stiff breeze would blow him over. So i had to make a choice. I could leave and hope they lost intrest and let him go or i could go back and try and resolve the situation. Well even at that age i had a sense of loyalty to my friends so i went back. No sooner did i get close enough they threw him and his bike aside and knocked me off mine. My friend got on his bike and rode to a safe distance.
Now one of these 5 people was the one short punk kid from school. The other 4 were his brother (junior in high school) and his 3 friends. I dont need to go into much detail to say what happened next. Once i fell down all 5 took there turns, sometimes all at once. They kicked me and hit me for what seemed like forever. The stomach, my head, they didnt miss much. The amazing thing was i didnt cry. It hurt and hurt bad but i didnt have the urge to cry. Once they were satisfied they continued on their way. My friend came over to me once they were a safe distance away. He helped me get up and walk our bike back home.
In catholic school if there is fight you tell someone and things happen. But this was different. I wasnt in school and there was no one to see and no one to tell. It hit me (literally) that there was no real recourse. I wasnt going to take on 5 people. I couldnt tell my mom and have her talk to their parents. That would have been social suicide before i knew what social was. The only choice was to let it slide and just deal with it. However, I did decide that it was never going to happen again. Ah thank you U.S. Army. As of today history has not repeated itself. And while that may sound like a statement of arrogance, the truth is that confrontations have been rather minimal since then.
you must pay for everything you say....
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