Well, although I'm sure some folks around here will be into this thread, I'm also sure that it is politically incorrect: perfect! Anyway, this thread is inspired by a recent OP I created based on a current event and some of the resulting responses surprised me. *** #1 I've been in a very few fights in my life. There were a couple of kids around the corner from me when I was around 6 that I got into two or three fights with. There was one kid that lived across the street and about 3 doors down named Chucky. As it so happened he was also a Ginger. Chucky the Ginger. Kid was a dick. Used to pick on me all the time, but I couldn't do anything about it because my Mom refused to allow me to fight. A very strict rule that I abided by. Finally about the third time I walked in the door after school crying about Chucky and explaining the latest crap I had to put up with my Mom gave me permission to fight. She had talked to his Mom several times, and my Mom was fed up too, I guess. So, I was amazed when she told me to punch him back. I was like, what!? Mom was like, I've had enough, I've talked to his Mom and I've told her that you are not allowed to fight and that she needs to set the same rule for him and she hasn't, so you can go punch him. I'm paraphrasing obviously, but I was like, what?, you mean now? Mom said yes. Now I'd been living with this for what seemed like an eternity at this point and I was at my limit so this was like a gift from God. And so I asked her, you mean that I can go punch him right now? Yes. I can knock on his door and punch him? Yes. Woosh! I practically skipped hopped and jumped over to Chucky's house. No, wait, actually I walked over there kinda slow I think. I knocked on his front door and his Mom answered and I asked if Chucky was home. His Mom said yes and after about ten seconds or so Chucky walked up to the door and sneered at me, "What do you want?" I can't remember the details after this. I think there was a screen door that took a bit more interaction to clear out of my way to the punch that I wanted to throw to his nose. Heck, I think it was my Mom that told me to punch him in the nose! Anyway, I landed a wicked punch on Chucky's nose that resulted in immediate blood. It felt great and I turned around and ran like hell as he turned around and went crying to his Mom: for a change. I never had a problem with Chucky again. I've got a few more fight stories and maybe some auxiliary anecdotes if this post grows any legs. Anyone wanna join in?
Luckily in school I never had to deal with any bullies. When I was stationed in Japan back in the 50's I became heavily involved in the sport of Judo. What I especially enjoyed was how it had such a positive impact on my relationship with the Japanese people. After about a year my Sensi had three instructors from the Kodakan College of Judo in Tokyo come down to Bepu to judge my skills. I ended up with my first degree black belt (shodan). Now move ahead in time about five years. I'm a cop in the suburbs of Detroit and my partner pulls over this car and two of the baddest m.f's in town are in the car and they want a piece of me and my partner. After a little bit of a stand off the passenger makes a move on me and I use what was called an ipon-saionagi (?) and in attempting the hip throw the butt of my pistol tangles in his rain coat and we both go down on the highway. (that was not the plan) Luckily I landed on top and my startled opponent suddenly became co-operative. That was the only physical encounter I had in seven years on the job. The training I had in Japan gave me the confidence that prevented several other possible encounters.
I have no good first-person fight stories but I saw plenty of WOW! fights in school, especially when black girls were going after each other. They have no sense of fairplay or rules of engagement when they are throwing down. I really think they would have killed each other many times had they not been pulled apart. Hair and blood everywhere.
~ I was a stick skinny 17-year-old when some goofed up tough guy wanted to fight with me. I kicked him in the balls and ran like Hell. He went down like a rock. That's my fight experience.
Ippon Seoi Nage, apparently, The Seoi Nage is very similar to the fireman's carry in G/R style. Sweet move, the fireman's carry was one of my favorites in high school. 7 years a cop in Detroit, I bet you have some other great stories! Share Please!
The only way you can make me fight is put your hands on me first, then I will assume you mean to at least cause great bodily harm and fight dirty as hell.
Good find! The Seoi Nage is an over the shoulder throw. The Ipon Seoi Nage (I never knew the spelling before ) is an over the hip throw. Not too many stories that I have for sharing. It was a totally different world then than we have now. The gun had not gained the popularity it has these last few decades.
I was also very respectful of the rules, as a child. In first grade, my friend Eddie wanted us to, "fight," during recess, just for fun. I refused, since it was against the rules. So I stood still, with my arms crossed while he picked me up from behind to throw me on the ground. I looked around for a teacher to help me. Eventually, one saw what was going on, & came over to stop us. She gave us BOTH detention for fighting. Not a very exciting story, but it seemed somewhat similar to yours. I did grow out of my prissiness. As a teen, me & another friend used to wrestle in the stairwell in the church's school, after our weekly, "religious instruction," until the teacher found out & stopped us. I was still a bit naive, though. Doug was an athlete (a pitcher) and a pretty good match for me, but I could usually struggle my way to the top. Then he would say he gave up, so I'd let him free, only for him to immediately attack again. Don't give up on me; I do have a couple of good ones.
This thread is going nowhere, so they don't have to be fight stories, do they? I'd be interested to hear any stories about being a cop in Detroit back in the Ike Era. Reminds me of Porky's!
I was bullied in school. In 4th grade, I got in trouble when another student kicked over my books. We were cleaning out our desks for the end of the school year so they were stacked on the floor. I went to pick them up and this girl tried to punch me. I stopped her arm mid-swing and held it tightly. She went crying to the teacher and I was sent to the Principal's office. My father beat me so badly for that. He compounded it by doing it in front of my whole class. That just made the bullying worse because everyone knew I had no "back up" at home. After that, I just had to tolerate the bullying because the beating wasn't worth defending (or blocking) myself.
There are a couple *******s on our local group FB page that if we meet in a not so public area (say the boat ramp) a fight is most likely.
I've noticed your relationship with your parents in a few of your posts, there was one in particular that was difficult to even begin to understand. I couldn't figure out the right words to even begin to post about my thoughts on being raised under such circumstances. Still can't.
I got my stamina from the visits of my uncle, throughout my youth. He was just 3 years older than me, so he was the playmate, more like a cousin, for me & my brother, who was just a year younger than me. Whenever my uncle visited, we'd all play football together, in our big back yard. For some reason, the teams were always him & my brother, against me. They always won, but I always made a game of it...I think I may have mistaken this for the victimization thread.
It's hard for me to understand and I live it. No worries. What they did made me strong, resilient and empathetic.
My most interesting fight story, albeit not my best fight, happened on a New Year's day, like this one, back in the early 1990s. I was living in Utica, NY, which is in the center of the very rural, upstate region, with the enchantingly unspoiled Adirondacks to the east, and the lovely Finger Lakes, to the west. I was staying in the concrete city, which made up for, in dinginess, what it lacked in size. It was a shell of the city it once was, when the Erie Canal had the area booming. But I liked the feel of the area, anyway. I was only a few blocks away from the city's main drag, but it felt very suburban, partly because of all the abandoned, fire-ravaged houses (and yet, I would still hear the fire-trucks scream by, all the time). My apartment was in a house that had cherry trees in back, as well as large trees to listen to in strong winds, and was adjacent to a fenced-in, grassy churchyard. My roomy 1st floor apartment was $250 a month, a third of what I'd paid a couple of years earlier in Connecticut. Since I was trying to save money, it suited me fine. This was not just the low-rent part of town, but also the predominently minority area; I was w/in walking distance of an establishment called, "Black Man's World," (though I never found out what they sold). Anyway, on New Year's day, I wanted to go to the supermarket for something. Since it was a mild day, & I prefer not to drive my car unnecessarily, I decided to walk the half-dozen blocks to the store. Leaving my place, I entertained myself with my sarcastic thoughts about how NEW everything seemed. As I headed down the deserted street, a group of 8 to 10 young black men walked in the opposite direction, on the other side. Back then, it was my practice to say, "hello," to people I saw on the street, when we made eye-contact. The problem was that I am near-sighted, so have trouble with details, at a distance. So I had to make a conspicuous effort to try to discern whether the approaching group were looking my way. I finally gave up trying, and we all walked past each other (on opposite sides of the street), but I could now hear them talking about me, catching, " No, don't take his glasses--." A minute later, I sensed someone approaching from behind. I turned around to a tall young man in the last step of running up to me. He asked if I had the time. I apologized that I did not have a watch. Then he introduced himself, and extended his hand. I shook it and told him my name. He asked where I lived, acting as if I was out of my element. I told him I lived, "right there," & pointing at my nearby house. As he continued to make chit-chat, I noticed that he was not releasing my hand from our overly-long shaking. Simultaneously, I caught his eyes, darting to something over my shoulder, so twisted to look behind myself, and saw another youth jumping out from around the corner of a building. At that point, it was too late. Out of nowhere I felt a tremendous blow to the right side of my jaw by a moving assailant, knocking off my glasses. I was immediately swarmed, and surrounded by young men, throwing punches. As my right hand was still immobile, in the grasp of my erstwhile conversant, I just covered up, as best I could. I experienced a real clarity of thought, oddly calm, though not unconcerned. I had recently moved there from Louisville, KY, where the news in the local paper was about several, "wilding," incidents, of black on white violence, in which I'd read of one of the victims being in critical condition. I recalled this and thought, calmly, to myself, "I hope I don't end up in the hospital." Realizing I had no chance of escape, and that trying to fight back with one hand was pointless, I did not physically provoke them. Nor did I yell racial epithets at them, which would not help my situation, or even just utter the kind of curses one makes, to oneself, when one bangs their toes or elbows. Instead, I tried to offer nourishment for their hungry minds, calling out things like, "What did I ever do to you guys?" and, "Happy New Year to you all, too!" Eventually, all the punching brought me to my knees, where, expecting the rib-kicks to, momentarily, begin, I gave them a the suggestion, " Why don't you just take my wallet, from my back pocket? There's only a dollar in it, anyway!" The idea of robbery had either not occurred to them, or else had been forgotten in the free-for-all, but as soon as I said that, the punching stopped, & someone started digging my wallet out. And suddenly, they were all walking away, & the assault was over. I started feeling around the street, looking for my, now broken, glasses. But, next thing I knew, one of the group was back. Either I had reached them to be able to feel sympathy, when they found that I had been honest about the amount in my wallet, or they couldn't figure out how to split a buck eight ways, but the kid was returning my wallet. "Everything's still in it," he assured me, adding, "I don't even know why they did that," as if he'd not taken part (of course, without my glasses, & w/ my face buried in my chest & arms, I really couldn't know). As he ran back to the rest of the group, they all yelled, "HAPPY NEW YEAR!" back to me. So the consequences could have been much worse. The results were just a sore jaw for a few days, a broken pair of eyeglasses, and an interesting story.
I was in Seoul, South Korea back when I was a young Navy scamp. I was with a friend of mine and I guess we wandered into a section of town where the 'round eye' weren't supposed to go. I guess the locals hated the US Army guys(do you blame them?) who were stationed there and certain areas of the town were "off limits" to soldiers. I was a squidly sailor who had been in town for two days, what the heck did I know about the local customs and 'no go' zones? So me and my bud wander down a street, and all of a sudden three Korean guys come up and they start giving us the business. They were acting seriously pissed, and shouting in broken English like "No soldier! No Army! Korea guy only! We kick ass! We kick ass!" I was all "Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! No need to be getting testy, gentlemen. Honest mistake. If you point me in the right direction, I'll tip my hat, say good morrow, and take my leave of you fine fellows." I was all smiles and sunshine, but the kimchiheads were having none of it, and they proceeded to start shoving and throwing hands at us, like poorly. They were such incompetent fighters, for a minute I seriously thought they were just messing with us. I thought like maybe they were going to start laughing, and pat us on the back, and then buy us a beer and laugh at funny joke joke they make at our expense. But then one of them connected with a solid shot to my ear, and that got the message across, they weren't fooling around. So then I started scrapping in earnest. Now, I'm not a fighter by any stretch, and I certainly didn't have any formal training or ninja skills, but I sure as heck wasn't going to just lay down like a punk a take a beating. I started throwing haymakers and straight kicks and jamming my knee into any abdomen that came near me. What I lacked in skill, I made up for in enthusiasm. I was all flying elbows and knees. I remember grabbing bodies, and just tossing them like sacks of flour. Musta been like the shanty Irish in my DNA channeling the generations of drunken Irish brawlers in my family tree. It was all a blur. The whole scrap probably lasted a total of five minutes, but it felt like a week-long siege from where I was standing. The next thing I know, I'm standing there, and all three of the Koreans are laid out on the pavement in front of me looking like squirrels that had been shaken by a terrier and tossed aside. I hear my friend laughing hysterically behind me and I turn around and look at him. The bastard never threw a punch. He had just stood there laughing the whole time. I was like, "Holy fudge! We're in the forbidden zone, I just laid out three locals, and now the whole neighborhood is going to pounce on me and tear me limb from limb." But I looked around, and all of the Koreans standing around were laughing their asses off too. I was like, WTF? My friend grabbed me and pulled me down the street and we just walked away. The crowd was still laughing behind us as we got gone. My friend took me to a bar and explained what had happened. He said it was the most hilarious thing he had ever seen. Apparently, I was like Andre the Giant in the ring with three midget wrestlers. At one point, I had a guy hanging onto each arm and the other had hold of one of my legs and I kicked and threw them off one by one. He said that there was a part of the fight were the Korean dudes lined up and come at me one at a time, in single file, like they watched too many Kung Fu movies where the ninjas all wait there turn to get their asses kicked by Bruce Lee. At one point, I picked one dude up, and tossed him, and he went flying and knocked the other two dudes over like bowling pins. That was about the time when the entire crowd joined my friend in laughing hysterically at the antics From my point of view it was an epic contest, a mighty battle for the ages. But for the onlookers it went down more like a Three Stooges skit. I like to think back on the experience and consider myself a total badass who whooped up on three warriors at once, but I think it was probably more a matter of me mixing it up with three knuckleheads who were drunk as monkeys. Or maybe Koreans are just useless in a fight. Whatever, that was a wicked weird fight either way.
Nice, such a classic sentence structure, well done. The 'Ville, my hometown.... HNY indeed, what a crazy NY story from your past living in NY. Very happy to hear that they didn't go further than they did. So did you finish your walk to the grocery and back? Or did you go home and drive? Did you have a backup pair of specs?
You're not making fun of my writing, are you, cause them would be fightin' words! I'm glad you liked the story. Your hometown was Louisville (Luavull)? I'm surprised, then, that I don't recall your input in the thread I did on Brionna Taylor; did I just miss it? I had been thinking of including this story there, but there was already too great of a slant, by some, towards what seemed a prejudiced view, for me to want to add material that could be used in that way. I don't remember if I skipped the store. But I'm pretty sure I had no spare specs, so I probably just twisted & taped them together, as best I could, until I could get a temporary fix/replacement. The one thing I know for sure, though, is that New Year's Day did bring a very new experience.
Between age 4 and 15 I was forced to fight other boys forced to fight. Mittens duct taped on to stop eye gouging, a heavy leather strap around the neck to protect against neck punches and somewhat like shoulder pads to protect the collar bones. No ground fighting/grappling or wrestling allowed, no kicking the other when down - but kicking allowed while fighting - and a few other prohibitions. When one of the two went down, the other had to back off immediately until the one down got back up. Men would whip, kick, burn, scream at the one down to get up. It went on until one of us two just couldn't get back up. The men made petty bets on the fighters. No breaks. On dirt. It continued until one couldn't get back up. Sort of like pitbull fights other than rarely lethal. What happened next to the loser often was worse than the fight beating. I figure I was in 800 to 1000 such fights over a decade or so. I won more often than lost, but did lose too. Escaped at age 15. Fought my way out. The kids were so conditioned against any defiance it seems it never occurred to them that they might be making kids that were much tougher than they were. A few had tried to sneak off at night. None made it and would be made an example of. I don't think it ever occurred to them that any kid would assume the predator role rather than the prey roll. They never knew what hit them. Other kids saw the example - and not to tell the story it all came to an end about a year after I escaped. I was given immunity from prosecution years later in exchange for my statement of events. Seems like a million years ago. Where I grew up has no relevancy to any society people on this forum did so won't go into that.
I reckon giving your "fight story" a like is inappropriate in this case, but I did it anyway. You're kidding us all here at PF with this one I hope. Please tell me that after drinking Absinthe, you just finished binge watching True Blood and imagined yourself to have been a forced to fight shape-shifter. Where did you go when you escaped?
I certainly agree there is no reason to believe a word of it nor reason to try to prove it. Generally most Americans who grew up in what I call "white middle America" and of particularly sheltered carefree lives only believe the realities of their own life and what they see on television. No other realities possibly exist to their mind. My recount does not fit your allowed range of what being in fights means. Ended up in Chicago for the next 14 or so years.
