A little background: I was the most picked on kid in school until I was 14. After that, I had a fairly large chip on my shoulder against bullies. I had a phase for less than a year during 11th grade when I was constantly looking for fights in an attempt to get back at all the bullies in the world who needed an ass whooping. Obviously I became what I hated (that realization, and the longest cry session of my life that ensued is a story for another time). The following happened during this strange year of my life:
My friends and I were hanging out at a girl’s house from a neighboring and rival high school. A boy from the rival school’s football team was also there showing off the Jaguar his parents had bought him. It would appear that somebody said something to slight the rival school so he left to rally his team in order to defend their besmirched honor.
Unaware that we had upset anyone, we got in our car to leave sometime in the late evening. As we were pulling away from the house, 3 cars quickly parked around us, the kids got out of their vehicles and raised their hands in the air in the universal teenage symbol for “let’s fight.” There were 4 of 5 of us in the car and maybe 15-20 angry football players (it’s highly possible that this number has grown with the repeated telling of this story) who were very excited at the opportunity to scare a small group of high school kids into apologizing.
Outnumbered 3 to 1, my friends implored me to stay in the car so that we could quickly drive away and outrun them. My teenage pride had a very different sense about the idea of running away so I jumped out of the car with another friend who shared my feelings and approached the gaggle of testosterone.
I faced them cooly and said, “I have literally no idea why you guys want to fight but how about you pick 2 or 3 of your toughest guys and we will settle this 1 on 3 right now.” I then walked under the street light in front of everyone and started stretching and shadow boxing just to let them know how utterly serious I was about my proposal.
Here’s the thing: I don’t really know how to fight. There isn’t a chance in hell that I would have won a brawl against 3 athletic kids who were practically all my size. I wasn’t bluffing though. I viewed these kids as bullies and I wanted vengeance for all the years I spent being picked on by people like them. I was absolutely positive that they didn’t have a chance against me.
I stared them down, full of focused, irresponsible anger and shouted, “who is it gonna be?!”
The crowd started looking down and shifting their feet awkwardly. Who can blame them? While they had the collective strength to destroy me, nobody wanted to be the one who volunteered. I was like a rabid dog facing down a clump of kittens. They didn’t come to fight, they came to scare. After a moment of awkwardness, someone finally spoke up with, “oh we don’t want to fight, we just want to know who was talking shit about our school” to which I replied, “me. It was me. If that is what it will take for you guys to step up then I will gladly take the blame.”
With that he replied, “no, we are cool. Sorry about the misunderstanding”
If I were a better kid, this would never have happened. I would have been well on my way home. I just wanted them to be the ones who would swallow their pride, not me. I can only imagine how bitter it was to swallow as they all shuffled back into their cars while I stared at them under the street light. Their exit was so swift, their protests so meager, that I actually felt bad for them. I was even disappointed. Unlike them, I actually came to fight, not to banter.
Looking back, there was no bad guy. Just 17 year old boys being 17. While this story doesn’t reflect positively on my character (as with most of my teenage decisions) I still give that kid a high five for what he did that night. Life is much easier when you let the aggression of others flow past you. A polite conversation would have diffused this situation just as easily as bravado. Still, it felt so good. It felt righteous. Within the false narrative in my head, I was a hero and they were the stereotypical asshole jocks. They were every single bully who made me afraid to go to school, who made me pretend to be sick so that I could stay home. Within my rage were all the apologies I made to try and stop other kids from hurting me. They were an adolescence of fear and embarrassment and I was looking at their backs as they walked away. I hate to admit that it still feels good to think about.
