Re: Who decided that fighting is bad?
Bullying is all the talk now in Mass, and how lawmakers are trying to stop it. I believe they even passed a few laws about it.
I grew up in a tough burb just out of Boston.
Growing up my dad taught me "Walk away first if you can. If you can't, don't throw the first punch, try not to get hit by the first punch, and always make sure you throw the last." He also said it was okay to kick a man while he's down, because you never know if he'll get back up with a knife or worse. He also said it's okay if you throw the first punch if your sticking up for somebody who isn't capable of sticking up for themselves.
I got into a bunch of fights as a kid. Got my butt handed to me a few times, but handed many another their own ***. Sent a few kids to the hospital as a teenager. Like DJ, i'm big and have size on my side so I was always genetically luckier than some.
Looking back on it, now that i'm the somewhat adult age of 32, it's all dumb, but still all part of growing up. I haven't been in an actual fight fight in probably 10 + years, but I've been in few altercations over the years and have learned its better to walk away.
A few years ago I was driving by a gas station of all places and happened to see a crowd of 6 or 7 high school kids all in a circle beating the crap out of another kid. I was sitting there at the stop light debateing to stop it or not, light turned green I still sat there, people behind me started honking at me and I said screw it and drove in to the gas station. I pulled in around the corner, behind the gas station attendents building, popped my trunk and grabbed my tire iron. I tapped on the attendents window and told him to call the cops. Then I walked straight into the crowd, grabbed 1 kid by the neck and threw him to the ground, kicked another in the side of his knee so hard it buckled and he fell. Now I was down to 5 kids but their attention was on me and not the poor kid bleeding on the ground. Sure as sh!t 1 kid pulled a little buck knife on me and yelled to his buddy (who must have been 100lbs lighter than me) to hold me so he could stick me. I don't know what the kid was thinking but he threw a swing at me, and I smashed his hand/wrist/forearm with the tire iron and broke something pretty hard.
Now there are 3 kids on the ground all in tears, their 4 friends including the kid with the knife all ran off, (leaving their friends). I grabbed the kid who was getting his butt kicked and brought him to my car, grabbed him some paper towels for his face, and drove him a few blocks back to his house. He thanked me inbetween his tears. But also said "he was going to get it when he went back to school tomorrow".
That whole altercation was over in 30 seconds by the time I got involved. What kills me about it all, was I noticed it at least a full 3 minutes before I got involved in it. There were tons of people around, kids to other adults. Nobody else got involved, tried to stop it, or even called the police, as they never showed (I didn't exactly wait around for them though).
As an adult, fighting is a normal behavior if your an uneducated, uncivilized moron. As to the rest of us we know better.
As a kid, fighting is somewhat normal to the kids (bullys) who are trying to establish their social dominance through violence, just like a wild animal would do. The problem with the non-bully normal kids is that they are not mature enough to know what to do, how to handle it, and are afraid and scared both physically because of possible pain and mentally because they don't know how others will percieve them in their handleing of the situation.
Long story short, passing all these anti bully laws isn't going to do squat except for put kids who really need just a little guidence and better parenting in jail.
Whats going to happen in 10 years to a kid who grows up in an anti-bully school enviroment? A kid who has every bully taken care of for him by school administrators. By the time this kid is older and goes off to college where there is nobody to take care of bullies for him, he's not going to know what to do.
We all have bullys in our lives. Physicall bullys, emotional bullys, people at work, bosses, co-workers, minions.... You need to learn how to deal with them. Because they will always be there.
