The closest you've come to physical violence, lately?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Just got back in from a rather tame night out (it’s results day, but I went out last night too, so was a bit worse for wear, friends went home early - a mix of things to do tomorrow and being under the thumb of the missus for the most part - and generally the music being crap, and finding I just couldn’t get drunk enough to get the usual ‘buzz’).

Anyway, whilst waiting at the bar, I got served before the chap next to me, who happened to have been there a few minutes before me, and this lead him to have a tantrum. He told me he’d been there ‘ages’ before me, and there was no need to be a dickhead about it (bare in mind I hadn’t said a word at this point, I’d just caught the bar maids eye while he wasn’t paying attention). My response? I laughed and said ‘Fine I’ll see you outside, princess’ and walked off to have a fag (cigarette, to the 'mericans) outside. He never appeared.

Thinking about it though, he was at least a foot taller than me, and probably in much better physical shape. It could have turned out nasty for me.
However, and I’m sure at least some Dopers will appreciate this, having done martial arts for over half my life (I’m 20, started TaeKwon Do at 8 years old, and I’ve done Jujitsu, Kobudo and Kickboxing since), I can easily tell when I can ‘handle’ someone. I’m in no way claiming I’m invincible, but there’s a lot to be said for learning how to take a good few hits, and to knowing how to give them back, even if it’s not in the fairest or flashiest way.

And now, after that essay, to the real substance of my pondering; I’m wondering, whats the closest my fellow Dopers have come to violence in the 'recent" past? What happened, and how did you handle it?

(feel free to comment or call me out in any way, I won’t get offended, I promise! - Just in case people think I’m being a bit ‘macho’ or whatever)

2

Why the hell would you do that. If you beat him up, would you feel better? If you hurt him badly ,would you feel worse ? If you did real damage and got sued ,how would you feel about that? What the hell could you possibly have to gain in any part of that scenario?

3

Wow, that’s quite a response! Maybe the the ‘I’ll see you outside, princess’ comment comes off as a bit too aggressive? I assure you, it was tongue in cheek! If I beat him up? I’d equate that to GBH probably, and no, I’d not go that far. I’d be surprised if a fight caused by a situation like this got any further than a bloody nose or being embarrassed in front of strangers. Certainly bouncers would step in before anything serious would happen.

The thing is, I’m reflecting on what could have happened if he had come outside. Personally I feel his response to the situation - calling me a dick head, just because I got served before him was a bit over the top. What do you think?

(Just to add to the atmosphere of the situation, the bar was packed, shoulder to shoulder. Not paying attention does mean you’ll get passed up on to the next person who is being attentive about getting served. It’s nothing out of the ordinary. Surely you’ve been in a situation like this? I certainly don’t think my actions were in anyway rude, given what had preceded them.

4

May 1st, 2008. My mother had died from complications of a brain tumor a few hours before. My younger brother, who doesn’t handle drink or highly emotional events at all well, downed about four martinis in quick succession, then basically lost his mind completely for a while. He ended up screaming abuse at me for about 45 minutes, accusing me of crimes large and small (for example “you think you’re better than everyone else”, “you don’t know anything except what you’ve read in books”, and “you’re paying a hundred bucks a month too much for your mortgage”), gradually escalating to the point where he began to threaten physical harm. When that still didn’t get enough of a rise out of me, he threw a drink in my face. At that point, I left.

That’s the closest to getting physical I’ve been for the ten years preceding and anytime thereafter. Lucky me; I wouldn’t be any good in a tussle anyway.

5

You know what I think? It sounds like the both of you were a couple of blowhards. Realt toughguys don’t talk shit. They just punch you in the face repeatedly.

The last time some idiot talked shit to me in a bar? Had to be about 6 years ago. Some douchebag took exception to me putting a stop to him bothering the girls in our party. After a few pathetic drunken attempted shoves and his idiot friend trying to mediate he sulks off never to be seen again.

Oddly I have to agree with gonzomax. I’ve had a few of those situations and I found the best way to handle them is to stand my ground but not escalate the situation with stupid smack talk. The last thing I want to do is get into a street fight with some drunk lunatic in a bar. And I’m a pretty quick-tempered decent sized guy.

6

I’m feeling what you’re saying. I know if he’d really taken exception to me being served before him he’d have knocked me one before I’d even seen it coming. As it was, I just felt I needed to respond in kind.
Either way, everybody’s got different ways of dealing with different situations, and I do think worse things could have been said by me, or I could have apologised profusely for doing nothing wrong. I think my (to me, at least) nonchalant semi-threat was a good middle ground, I didn’t back down but I don’t think I was overly aggressive, as I’ve seen some people be in that kind of situation.

7

If you really consider insulting someone and challenging them to a fight to be “good middle ground” and not “overly aggressive,” you’re the one with problems.

In your situation, i would have said something like, “Hey, sorry mate. There’s so many people at the bar i can’t even tell who got here first.” Sounds like the guy was a bit of a tool, but you acted like an even bigger one.

8

Last Thursday. A kid wanted to get into my classroom to attack one of my students. I wouldn’t let him. He hit me. Prior to that - about five minutes earlier - two girls fighting. Had to break it up. Got hit. Prior to that - the previous week - two boys fighting. Had to break it up. Prior to that - earlier the previous week - had to pull a kid off another kid on the floor, got hit. Prior to that… oh, it happens a lot.

9

Visited Chocolate World in Hershey, PA recently. We took the trolley ride, which is actually a bus dressed up not very convincingly as a trolley.

Upon boarding the bus I saw sheets of song lyrics on the seats. This was a bad sign, and it got worse. Turns out it’s a sing-along comedy show type of thing, and you’re trapped.

There’s a girl dressed up in some kind of period costume. She is then joined by some idiot pretending to be an incompetent conductor, when he’s really just a high school kid who is an incompetent actor. I was lucky enough to be seated right up front.

The show consists of the guy being an ass, jumping off the bus every so often to change costumes, then coming back on as another character. He invariably wants to sing a song, upon which the passengers are compelled to join in.

As I sat there with my head down, I could actually picture myself doing violence these people. At one point, the guy had a wig and cane for his old man getup. I saw myself taking the cane and forcefully ramming it…

Well, you get the idea. This lasted for nearly an hour. The worst part was, someone else had asked me along and paid for this little excursion. So I had to act as if it had been fun.

10

I was 13, in the school yard, a fist fight, it was a draw, we both ended up crying.

I’m now 52.

:stuck_out_tongue:

11

I was 7, the other kid ran at me, I stuck a fist out and he charged onto it and broke his nose.

I’m now 55.

If I was in a bar and somebody mouthed off, I’d try to defuse the situation.
If you say “'Fine I’ll see you outside, princess”, what do you do if he turns up with three mates? Or a broken bottle? Or produces a knife?

12

Subtract 5 years and that’s my story.

Consider an alternate ending to your story. “Barmaid, this guy has been waiting longer than I have. Can you get him a – dude, what are you having?” For extra karma points, you could have paid for his.

But if you really wanted to fuck with him, “Barmaid, this guy has been waiting longer than I have. Can you get princess here a strawberry colada?”

13

Where about is the school? Do the kids not even wait to get outside to fight these days?!

mhendo, If he hadn’t have directed an insult directly at me, and had just come out with something like ‘wtf, I was here first’ to the bar in general, I would probably have responded how you’d suggest, apologised etc.

glee, it was a student night, not really the demographic that involves glassing and knifing as part of anything that kicks off, if that makes sense? I’ve never seen anything like it on a student night. To be honest, I’ve only ever seen glassing happen in my smaller home town.
The fights I have seen end up being broken up quickly, and if it goes on for long it’s the shirt pulling uneducated grappling kind of thing, just like a school yard fight, if you can imagine what I mean?

Either way, I think a mix of drunken bravado and the above knowledge made me do it.
And I’m glad people have called me out on it! I know I could have handled it a lot worse, but I really wish I had been a bit smoother. Damn you alcohol!

tdn, I realy wish I could be that smooth in the heart of the situation! As for buying him a drink? No chance, it just doesn’t go down well man to man, in the UK. Well, man-stranger to man-stranger.

14

Couple weeks back. I work at a company that makes ink, and run the milling machines that grind pigment and solvents into inky goodness. I happen to look in a container(i forget why) that we use to dump the pigment into the mills, and see what is probably a couple dozen pounds of pigment left inside. No clue what it should have been for, but I guess that its for a particular batch that is running right now. I take a sample, take it into QC, ask the guy to check the solids to see if they are right. Few minutes later, he calls and says yeah, they are fine. So, we take the pigment out of the container(a messy process), put it in a bag, and label it, and put it away.

An hour goes by. Its time to sample the ink to see if it is finished milling. I take a sample into QC and drop it off. 5 minutes later, old boy comes out(same guy as before, mind you) and says the solids are low and we will need to add more pigment.

What. The. Fuck. I just brought a sample into you an hour ago to ask this very same question. You said it was fine, and based on your word I put the stuff away. Dumping it now means its going to be a messy damned job.

I wanted so much to punch him. I had to be content verbally chastising him in front of everyone and asking if he was stupid or just bad at his job.

15

My elderly mom agreed to host my 19 year old niece’s birthday party in her home, since it’s closer to where my SIL’s sisters live. Fine. But one of the sisters has a damn brat of a boy who started messing around with everything in the house–the fan, the cupboards and their contents, mom’s dresser, mom’s walker (she doesn’t use it much, but still), mom’s bed, another bed, and so on.
His mom is a lazy ass who just wants to sit and chat, and her older kids are the same way. So we got stuck telling the brat to leave things alone. I felt like tossing him into one of the trash barrels.
I plan to make it clear to SIL this weekend that her demon nephew is no longer welcome in mom’s house.

16

A couple of weeks ago, me and my 5-year-old son Dash were going into a convenience store to get a soda. Just as I was reaching for the door, a guy slams the door open from the inside and goes stormin’ out without a backward glance. The door missed my son’s face by a mere couple of inches; actually, if I hadn’t snapped my hand out to block it it would have hit Dash in the face.

“Whoa there, Cowboy!” I hollered, “You in a hurry or what?!”

“You a-talkin’ tuh me?!” the guy barks.

“Yeah, I’m talking to you! You almost took my kid’s head off, Pal.” The guy glares at me for a second, flips me off and starts to get in his big, ridiculous, jack-up suspension pickup. With my adrenaline and testosterone mixing into a potent Whup Ass Cocktail, for a split second I almost, almost, ran over to the guy’s truck and punched him in the face.

Then, thankfully, the rational side of my brain kicked in. The guy was easily 20 years younger than me, 8 inches taller than me, probably had an easy 35-50 lbs on me, and most likely would’ve mopped up the floor with my old ass. In front of my son. Then someone would’ve called the cops; if the guy had seriously pummeled me, someone would’ve called an ambulance. Then there would be blood, and sirens, and lights, and guys in uniforms, and panicked witnesses, and a stunned, sobbing little boy, and complete fucking chaos…

I just shrugged and went inside with my boy as the angry young shithead burned rubber and tore out of the parking lot.

17

The last time I did anything violent was with my son, maybe five years ago. He was going through a pain-in-the-ass phase that lasted the entirety of his teenage years, and on this occasion he was outdoing himself. He was on the couch, and I went across and pulled him off onto the floor, and then we proceeded to wrestle. Neither of us had the slightest desire to hit each other, or hurt each other, but it was one of those alpha male challenge things. I finally got him in a position where he couldn’t move, and let him strain for a couple of minutes till he finally gave it up for lost. That was the first time we’d ever done that sort of thing, and presumably the last.

Had it been a real fight, I have a feeling he would have beaten me. I’ve never been in a real fistfight, and he has, more than once. But that wasn’t what it was about.

18

About three weeks ago, I’m walking down Addison in Wrigleyville (as a Sox fan that was my first mistake but I was going to meet up with a female acquaintance at the Cubby Bear) when some random dude walks up to me and asks if I know where to get some MJ. I told him, ‘Sorry, don’t have any,’ and keep walking… next thing I know he’s halfway sprinting up the sidewalk until he’s right next to me and starts leaning on my left arm.

So I chucked him. Not very hard, but hard enough to get him a good distance away from me. That set him off. He starts barking about what he was going to do to me, that he was going to steal off me (consult your AAVE Dictionary, 1994 ed. if you have to) and we’re only about ten feet from Clark Street, where it was, of course, very crowded with drunken people. So I kept walking but my face felt like it was on fire. He was about two inches taller than me and I’d say about thirty pounds lighter… in a fair fight I’m pretty sure I would have hospitalized him… but rule number one is that there’s no such thing as a fair fight. Besides, I hate violence.

The capper is he tried to shove me. But it was a half-hearted thing, and I’d like to think he backed off because he saw that I was not intimidated by him at all. He retreated once he saw that we were getting toward a more lighted area. Looking back he really seemed like a rookie drinker who was feeling his oats… probably just turned 21. I’m glad I didn’t do anything but keep on moving… but ohhhhh was I pissed! One wrong move and one or both of us would have gotten hurt, or in jail, or worse.

19

Yesterday evening, I, intentionally and with malice aforethought, assaulted a pair of vandal/theives. With no thought for my own safety, I fearlessly cursed them with vigor, and then threw things at them.
Well, ok…they were squirrels, dumping all the seed out of my birdfeeder again, and I pelted them with stale bread…but that’s about as violent as I get these days.

20

This will probably get me flamed, but…

The person I’ve been most tempted to hit recently is my now-three-year-old son. I would never actually hit him; however, the night I cut off a bit of my pinky finger (a whole different story involving a chunk of chocolate and a long, new knife) was the closest I’ve ever come.

So, during a ridiculous kitchen accident, I noticed that the tip of my pinky, normally on my pinky, was stuck to the edge of the rather large knife I’d been using to cut up a block of chocolate. After calling our insurance nurse hotline, I determined that I should go the ER and get a tetanus shot. The bit I had cut off was too small to bother re-stitching, really, so they didn’t bother. Instead, they deliberately caused my pinky to bleed more, then put a large bandage on my pinky and told me not to take it off. The idea was that they would let it bleed out into the bandage enough that the pressure of the blood outside the wound would equalize the pressure within and it would stop bleeding. Fine.

So I go home, shoulder aching from my tetanus shot, pinky throbbing from the inhumanly thorough scrubbing they’d given it to make it bleed until the pressure equalized and the bandage so large and really just there that it was irresistable to a toddler. The first thing my son did when he saw it (after crowing, “Mommy!” really loudly) was come over and attempt to rip it off. I fended him off and patiently explained to him that I was really hurting and he should leave the bandage off, but he smiled and attempted to rip it off yet again.

He’s old enough to follow direction (and was at the time, when he was about 2 and 1/2, though less so than now), but I get that some things are just too damn interesting and direction goes out the window. So, while I was sleeping, he developed an evil plot to get the bandage.

I had finally managed to fall asleep (even though I hadn’t cut off much of my pinky, it’s amazing how much it does hurt when you cut any of it off at all) when I vaguely heard the door open to the bedroom, then soft muttering from my son, who has no internal monologue. The last thing I felt before my world was splintered by pain was a soft little hand, then his back against my shoulder as he attempted to gain better leverage. Then he wrapped his tiny fingers around my pinky and ripped the bandage off.

I released a howl loud enough to wake everyone in a 10-mile radius and grabbed him firmly with my free hand by the back of the neck as though he were one of my cats. I had been about to whallop whoever had dared get near my hand, but I realized who it was and managed not to.

The pinky, of course, began to bleed everywhere. My son was shrieking because I rarely ever raise my voice and, after that first scream, I was now yelling because my freakin’ hand hurt. My husband was also yelling, at first because he was certain someone must be dying, then because he’s annoyed at our son for having hurt me. Oh, and he’s really anal, so the blood all over the bed (and the fact that it was 2 a.m. and we had to deal with it) wasn’t helping.