One time in about 7th or 8th grade, I had a revelation. In a confrontation, people will generally back down once the threat becomes physical.
I had spent my first 7 years of School (k-6) as one of the tallest in the class. I was never really bothered by anybody because of my height. I was never a "tough guy" and never pretended to be. I liked to joke around. I liked to laugh. I liked to make fun of people. Back then, I had no idea that those people found it annoying. I thought they must have seen the humor in whatever brilliant thing I was saying at their expense. Of course I was wrong. What I didn't learn until after I left the small elementary school, was that people didn't really get in my face about my mean jokes because they were afraid of me. Learning this surprised me more than the idea that they didn't think it was hilarious how I cleverly made fun of them.
So putting it together - I was bigger than them (though I was unaware of it) and I made fun of them (thinking we were all in on the same joke). They were afraid of me and allowed me to "bully" them for fear of some violent retribution. Wow, you can really learn a lot about yourself by writing it down. So I suggest you do it before I kick your ass! Seriously. I was just kidding. Oh stop crying you big bawl baby! Jeez!
Oh sorry - just slipped into my 5th grade comedy routine for a minute.
Once I got to Jr. High School (Lewis and Clark), there were many bigger kids there. Not only were there kids my age that were bigger than me, but now I was in some classes with older, bigger kids. I was naturally afraid of them, but didn't know yet that my unique brand of ridicule humor was not universally (or otherwise) loved. People were getting mad at my jokes and letting me know about it. There were confrontations where I was not only completely confused about the reason for the aggression, but I was also forced to back down.
This was when I learned I could turn the jokes toward myself and people would be ok with it. I just wanted to make jokes. I was clumsy at first, but after time I was able to smoothly invert my criticism. The first efforts were along the lines of, "Wow - I'm pretty sure I pissed myself on the bus this morning. And by "I" I mean "Todd" and by "myself" I mean "himself." I'm here through Thursday!"
Still - there were people who wanted to fight me. I did not want to fight. It seemed the more I made it known that I had no desire to fight, the more people wanted to fight me. So that was an easy enough equation. I figured that the more willing I was to fight, the less people would want to fight me. This tactic usually worked, but I tried to extend it too far. One day, I was running through the double doors that exited the school gym toward the showers. I threw open the door into a very big, very strong, very mean 9th grader. The man's name was Rufus. I call him a man because to me, he was. He had been held back a couple of years and had a full beard. Rufus looked at me with deadly intent. I was in the 8th grade and was skinny and at least a head shorter than Rufus. I was terrified. I panicked. I said, "Excuse me, I'm sorry." Which made Rufus look even madder. So I figured my only hope was to employ my fake "in your face" approach. I followed my apology up with a brilliant "Mother Fucker!"
For the next couple of days, while I was home from school, recovering from my injuries, I had time to consider where precisely I'd gone wrong. My calling Rufus a "Mother Fucker" had obviously been an error in judgment, but I was not (and still am not) positive it would have gone differently had I not. My opinion is that my apology was sufficient and would have been graciously accepted by Rufus without the "Mother Fucker" appended - but I can't be sure.
So there was still work to do. My goal was to avoid any and all fights. I was beginning to realize that there were times when a clever bluff can work well in your favor, but the slightest misjudgment can exacerbate the problem.
In the end, my usual tactic is back down. Drop it. Walk away amidst considerable derision. Occasionally, the fight seems worth it, and I'll stand up for whatever. But at least 90% of the time fists are in the equation, I will submit.
So the tools at my peacekeeping disposal by the time I was 18 were,
1) making fun of myself instead of others.
2) bluffing that I was interested in fighting.
3) backing down from any actual fights that I may be about to get into.
4) not having a hot girlfriend.
Wait. What was that last one?
One time I was in this bar with a couple of friends that were girls. Not my girlfriends. We were all sitting around having a good little underage (20 was the legal drinking age. At 19, I was the oldest of the 3 of us) time. A big old (35 or so) drunk brute of a guy, who was actually more perceptive than I wanted to give him credit for, walked up to our table. The table with the skinny dorky kid and the 2 hot chicks. Then the guy kind of leaned his shoulder into mine and said, "You don't know how to fuck no pussy!"
At the time, I took offense to it. Looking back on it, he may have just been trying to help. He was right, after all. I was wasting my time with these girls, trying to be their catty friend instead of making known any physical attraction I might have had.
But since I was having fun and feeling confident and trying to be clever, I said something really stupid. I don't mean "stupid" like Oh I shouldn't have said that. I mean "stupid" like I was trying to be funny but it's so dumb I hate to put it down here. I said, "That's a double negative."
"Huh?!?", said the drunk.
"By saying I don't know how to fuck no pussy ..." and so on.
The confused irritated look from the drunk made me realize I was potentially getting into some hot water. The jokester inside me said, "Go ahead Cube. Call him 'Mother Fucker'" But I was wise enough not to listen this time.
Luckily for all of us, one of the girls raised her hand which brought the bartender immediately to her aide. Then he threw the guy out and bought us a round. Ahh, hanging out with hot girls ...
So anyways one time I accidentally bluffed bravado. Actually, I wasn't bluffing at all. I had run out of options and was forced into a confrontation. I was literally at a dead end.
My girlfriend and I were on our way over to another girl's house. I was driving. For some reason that I've never known, two guys in some hot rod Chevelle or GTO or something became angry with me. I honestly don't know what it was, but they were yelling and screaming at me. I was trying to ignore them. They were beside us, saying terribly ungentlemanly things to my girlfriend.
We were near the other girl's house, but I didn't want to lead these assholes there, so I figured I'd drive around for a while until they got bored with the game and stopped following us. I turned off of 72nd street and unfortunately onto an unpaved dead end road. Now I was really panicked. The dust from the road was obscuring the headlights of the car very close behind. There was no room to turn around or back up. They had me. All I could do was put off the beating for as long as possible. No chance of bluffing now. I drove to the end of the road and put the car in park. My girlfriend grabbed my arm as I reached for the door handle. "Just stay in the car" she said. She knew I was no fighter. "I'm going to try and apologize for whatever I've done," I said. The girl and I were in potentially a lot of trouble. Two angry guys and us at the end of a relatively deserted dead end road.
I got out of the car and start walking back to the guys in the car behind me. I was sure that at any moment they would jump out and beat the shit out of me. Then - without warning, the hot rod driver threw the car in reverse and backed out of there in a big hurry, leaving me to stand there confused and dusty. As I watched the receding headlights, I saw the scene from the possible perspective of the people inside the Chevelle/GTO.
This guy deliberately lead us down this dark lonely dead end. Perhaps we should get the fuck out of here.
When I got back in the car, the girl said, mockingly, "My man!"
"That's why people better not fuck with the cube," I said even more ironically, as I lit my cigarette and put my right arm on the seat back, so I could back the car up the cool way. Then we laughed and laughed.
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