When's the Last Time You Were in an Actual Fight?

The Barstool thread and a possible book idea got me thinking...

I have a complicated history with violence. I know it's mostly wrong, and I know I'll usually regret having been in an altercation—I still feel terrible for fighting a nice kid named Terry Cook in Grade 7—but some bad, primitive part of me still thinks that violence is sometimes the answer: I still believe that some people need to get punched. Nazis, for instance. Nazis deserve to get punched.

I fought a lot as a late-teen and in my 20s, less in my 30s but often enough, rarely in my 40s. My last fight was in the summer of 2016, when I would have been 42, and I think that might actually prove to be my last fight, which is a weird thing for me to think about. I came close in the spring of 2017 in a bar in New York (the other guy backed down, and I am grateful to him for that), but haven't come close lately. Three years is probably the longest I've gone without getting punched since I was a kid. I think I'm done with what had been a semi-defining part of my existence.

Watch now someone will deeply offend me today and I'll lose my mind.

Anyway: When was the last time any of you were in a fight? I wonder whether I fought more than most because I'm a temperamental idiot, but also because I'm a small-town Canadian, and that's how things get settled up here, and you know nobody has a gun. Or maybe everybody fights. I have no idea. I also don't know whether fighting less is a natural part of aging, which makes sense to me—I'm better at brushing things off now, and I have no desire for physical injury, because my body hurts on its own enough—or whether there are fighters and non-fighters, and you're meant to stay one or the other forever.

 

My only two fights were in bars in, co-incidentally enough, small town Canada. First one I was 19, last one was at age 22 or 23. So, 1993 and 1997 or 1998. I am told I won the first one handily. The other one consisted of me just catching the guy’s two fists as he tried to punch me, and holding on until his buddy dragged him away.

I like to think my size alone (6’4”, 260) would help me out in a fight now, although there are almost no things that would make me want to fight another human. So my heart wouldn’t be in it, and I’d probably get cleaned out pretty good.

 

Do you remember why either fight happened? Other than "drunk"?

 

Who else would post this on SJ? Bravo, typefitter.

 

I laughed at the first part because, jesus, that's a good rate. I haven't punched someone in at least a decade. Last fight I was in was when me and a buddy got jumped by four guys who were just driving around drunk, itching for a fight near last call. Purposely pulled in front of us and when I slapped the hood and said wtf, they were out of the car and ready to roll, one with a lacrosse stick pole, which he swung at my head to open a nice four inch scar over my left eye, which was tough to explain at work. Was a pretty good tussle; I got two guys to the ground but didn't knock 'em out. Luckily I never hit the ground myself bc I probably would have gotten stomped. I managed to rip one guy's Rolex off and throw it on top of a building. Said so in the police report. Anyone who saw me afterwards would have thought I lost because of the cut over my eye, but I wasn't swinging a fucking metal pole. The other four got arrested for assault, thanks to witnesses who said they started it, unprovoked.

Physical fighting is dumb bc it's usually alcohol-related, as mine was. But I was in plenty of fights in grammar school, high school, college and later to at least have a reputation as someone who will fight you if need be. You might get the steak, but I'm gonna at least take a burger off ya.

 

The first one, it was the after party of my buddy’s high school commencement. At a bar in Brampton. I didn’t go to the school and didn’t know many people there. I chirped my buddy for puking in the bathroom, and a friend of his (who didn’t know me and didn’t realize I was joking) started charging at me. It was mostly a blur but I remember dropping the guy.

The second one, I was actually sober. A woman was literally falling down drunk and was about to hit her head on the table I was standing at. I caught her and lifted her back to her feet. Her husband saw the lifting back up part and got the wrong idea. So he came at me fists cocked, but didn’t actually land either punch he tried to throw. I didn’t hit back, it wouldn’t have been a fair fight.

 

This is one of my favourite sentences in the history of the written English.

 

I used to call these "Three's Company Fights," after the shitty TV show. They're the result of a catastrophic misunderstanding, usually over something misheard.

I once got into it with three guys at a screening of The Straight Story—of all the movies—after my then-girlfriend asked them to be quiet and one turned around and apologized. I somehow thought he'd said "Go fuck yourself," and I was over the seats without even thinking. She was mad for a month. Poor old Richard Farnsworth has no idea the chaos he wrought that day.

 

Well? Answer the goddamn question.

 

Eighth grade.

 

What grade are you in now?

 

Funny thing is that this weekend in my weekly hoops game which I've run for past 12 years or so one of who I thought was my buddy thought I was pushing him in the post too hard and taking cheap shots (I'm freaking 148, 5'9", he's 5'11, 200, who's pushing who?) and he first throws a forearm behind him into my chest and then when I call him on it he calls me a p*ssy and says "you want to come up on me, I'll take you down" and my response was "I'm 56, I don't care what you call me and I don't care if you beat me up, I've got a career and family to think about, I could give a f*ck" then another buddy separates us and we guard others for the rest of the night. I'm not going to fight anyone. And, my most recent fist fight was when I was 11 or 12.