The Fight Chronicles

Recently, I was having quiet drinks with friends when after a little while, two girls came and asked if they could sit at our table. Looks wise, on a scale of 1 to 10, one of them was about a 6. I’d had a few beers which bumped her number up a little so of course, I let them take the seat. Her mate was about a 0/1. She looked vaguely like this... 

A huge amount of alcohol was needed to help her looks.

So of course I cracked on to the more attractive one of the two. Running my game for a little while as the drinks flowed. At one point the more attractive one gets up to use the washroom. She had to walk around to my side of the table to get there. She took the opportunity to whisper in my ear “I like you. I think we should be friends on facebook” That was a weird thing to say, I thought, as she slipped me her business card. She continued “...and by the way, my friend thinks your cute” Suddenly fear shot through my body. This was not what I was expecting, nor what I had planned.

My attitude had completely changed by the time the girl had got back from the washroom. I showed disinterest to them both and started acting slightly anti-social. Panic started to kick in when the more attractive girl left the bar in a taxi, leaving her ugly mate with me and my friends. Oh no, what had I got myself into now?

Embarrassingly she started to act flirty toward me in front of my friends. A particular low point for me was when my friends tried distracting her. Whilst she pretended to listen to them talk she rubbed her foot up and down my leg until finally finding my crotch. I felt a tingle, well, more of a shiver down my spine. I had to stop this.

Eventually my friends gave up trying to distract her and we went back into our own conversation. She asked me a simple question ‘So what’s your perfect girl?’ I suddenly saw an opportunity to end this nonsense so I had to pick my words carefully. With a straight face and totally deadpan I answer “One that can take a punch”

Now,

I can’t tell you whether it was the Jaeger bombs she kept buying me or my endless quest for self amusement that made me say this. What I can tell you is I don’t really believe in hitting girls and that’s what this ridiculously long introduction has been leading up to.

I’ve not been in many fights in my life. The ones I have been in also barely count as fights.  My first was when I was eleven. I watched my friend get beaten up in a park by a kid called James, who used to practice judo. I watched my friend get knocked over and punched time and time again until I couldn’t watch anymore. I stepped in to help him out only to get taken to the ground myself. I distinctly remember watching my friend running into the distance crying as James sat on my head.

My next fight, aged thirteen, a friend and I were play wrestling on his front lawn. A kid that used to bully me at school was walking past, came over and joined in. Of course, he started to get rough and it soon ended up in a real fight. I was all over him, despite his friend shooting at me with a potato gun.

Another time I had got into a little argument with some lippy kid called Billy. He was always starting fights with people as his brother was supposed to be one of the toughest in my school. We tussled on the pavement not really hurting each other until I ended it by hitting his head against the curb. He ran off crying but soon found me later that day with a huge group of his mates. I was climbing a tree with my friends when they all showed up. Of course my friends got out of the tree and walked away leaving me to fend for myself.  (There seems to be a theme here?) Billy and all his mates waited for me at the bottom of the tree until his tougher, older brother turned up. Billy explained the story to his brother, I was convinced I was going to get my head kicked in. That was until the brother told Billy “Good, you’re a little prick and you deserve it”

The last fight I ever had was my most humiliating. When I was fifteen I took up boxing.  I loved it and took to it like a duck to water. After a few weeks of training they started to let me spar. I loved that too. The majority of other kids they put me up against I dominated. This is until they put me up against a girl that had been training at the gym for years. Despite my little joke about hitting women, I really do hate it and was quick to protest against it to my trainer. He didn’t want to hear it and talked me into getting into the ring with her. The sparring match started and we both put our guards up. She edged toward me, I stood rooted to the spot. I really didn’t feel comfortable hitting her so I did the next best thing and just tried to dodge every punch she threw. Not an easy thing to do when you’re not so agile and you’re a rookie fighting somebody so experienced.

After a few minutes of this girl raining punches on me the trainer stopped the sparring match out of pity.  I was quick to leave the ring, I just wanted to bury my head in the sand. She was quite humble about it, I was  surprised. That is until the next day, when I discovered she had told her mates and word had spread around the whole school. You can imagine the abuse I got for that.

 It took a long time to live that one down.