I like this one,about the 50 second mark.
Baseball fight
This is going to be a bit long…
… and as far as the OP goes… I didn’t bear witness to it first hand, but I was there.
I’ll explain.
When I was a kid (about 7) we used to camp alot. Any school holidays or long weekends were fair game to load up and spend a few days getting away (which was, and still is, fantastic).
Now, we were at a very familiar camping ground this time., except it wasn’t a public holiday or anything like, so it was very quiet in respect to the amount of bodies occupying the grounds, which my old man would’ve planned just so for the solitude…
Our group on-site consisted of my immediate family(2 adults 2 kids), my fathers mother, one of his mates and an uncle with his wife and kids.
There were two other camps set up, and being a fairly large space there was plenty of room between us.
It must be noted here that one of the campsites residents were kinda biker types, and there was a general grumbling about how they were going to be rowdy/noisy due to the fact that they (from a distance) sounded like they were well into the booze already.
The other campers we hadn’t seen as yet, probably hiking or whatever…
Anyway, It gets later into the evening, the noisy bikers were doing their noisy thing, I had dinner with the other kids,went to bed, and woke up to this story (with vague notions of a massive hullaballoo, but I was asleep, so.)
The uncle decides he need more beer, the shop is about 45 minutes away, it’s not stupidly late, depending on your definitions, so his wife puts her hand up to drive, as he’s lagered.
She gets in the mini, and proceeds to drive up the track that leads to the bitumen.
In doing so she drives over a tarpaulin lying across the track right near the biker types…
… BUMP >> BUMP… stops the car.
My father and my uncle hear some commotion and see the car has stopped, so go to investigate.
They arrive to a group of about 7biker type fellers, one of whom is shouting “That Fucking Bitch just ran over Louis- he’s dead!”
Louis who apparently had been sleeping it off under the tarp.
On the track.
So, the dudes are getting angry, our side is a bit miffed and worried about the fate of Louis… when the tarp moves a little.
The Dude starts up with “You’ve fucken broken his fucken legs! what were you doing running him over” etc etc.
This devolves into my side getting the shits and giving the Dude a bit of “what the hell is this guy doing sleeping under the tarp on the track to the main road” type convo. (maybe not the best idea in hindsight, but who knows how these things pan out in reality)
Loius gets up…
The Dude is SCREAMING by now… "you broke his fucken toes!!
Not to sure what happens next., all I can say is the next morning my father is back from the hospital with 7 different sets of stitches in his chrome dome from a crowbar, my uncle has a broken arm, the biker types are gone and the hero’s were the other campers, who it turns out where park rangers of some description, one of whom had a deep cut on his upper lip from narrowly avoiding a swinging axe.
Badass? My fathers mother (who it must be said, is no spring chicken) who apparently jumped onto and headlocked the Biker Dude with the crowbar in the middle of him beating my old man over the head.
good times :dubious:
Then I am very glad to have posted it 
Since most people are talking about physical prowess…the closest I’ve come to it has been a fencing match where my opponent and I were tied on the match point, and I took the seconde position (which was highly unusual and not even taught in our school), which threw my opponent completely, so I neatly did a cut-under and thrust to the chest in my opponent’s sixte that scored the winning touch about 3 seconds. It’s was a moment like the crane-kick at the end of Karate Kid.
The sum of which means I am actually light-years away from “bad ass.”
Hey, I had a fencing moment like that once. I’m left-handed, and parried my right-handed opponent’s lunge into sixte and riposted successfully. Because we were so close together, and because I lunged on the riposte (anticipating him drawing back quickly after my parry, which he didn’t do quickly enough), my blade bent nearly to a full U shape on the hit; and because our guards were so nearly in line (due to my being left-handed to his right-handed attack), when I pulled back from the lunge our foil guards locked in such a way as to literally flip his foil right out of his hand and into the air.
It turned end-over-end, to land right into my right (unarmed) hand as I resumed an en garde position. Which I casually flipped over and gallantly handed back to him, hilt-first.
I was about 12 or so, Christmas shopping with my Mom. We were driving around in the Mall, when we found a spot and sat there with our blinker on, waiting for the other car to back out. Just as they drove away a man behind us pulled AROUND my Mom and took her spot. It was screamingly obvious. As it happened there was another spot opening so we took that one, and my Mom got out and double-timed it to the door, so she could get there ahead of the guy that took our spot. He saw us, and as he approached he stiffened up a little, ready to act tough and threatening.
Just before he got within reach, my Mom reached for the door, held it open for him, and said in her sweetest voice with her biggest smile, “You have a Merry Christmas!”
I believe one of the qualities of bad-ass is that you survive it to tell all your friends. I’m sure I’ll continue to take risks in the future though.
Didn’t witness the act, but I met the man. I guy that worked for my dad got in a tractor accident and a disk plow fell on him. It severed his left arm and right leg. He realized that he was about to die from blood loss and the tractor’s fuel had caught fire. He crawled over to the fire and stuck in his stumps to cauterize the wounds. :eek:
Badass Grandma
I was about 6 or 7, so my brother would’ve been 3 or 4. I was with my parents at an auction and my brother had gone with my paternal grandparents to decorate graves. While they were doing their thing, my brother was climbing on headstones. One of the really old ones fell over on top of him. Grandma, who was about 65 at the time, ran over there and flipped the headstone off of him. They came by the auction and Matt was sitting in the back seat, scraped & bruised and had obviously been crying, but the x-rays showed no broken bones. I wish I could’ve seen it happen. She is 94 and still living on her own.
Badass Grandpa
Same grandparents, around 1945. My uncle Danny was 3, Lindy was just born or was about to be. Pa (What we called our grandpa) was working under one of his trucks. They were grain farmers in central IL. The truck was jacked up and he was under the rear tires. The jack slipped and tires came down on his back. He laid there with a broken back for a long time until 3 year old Danny came outside and found him and went inside to tell Grandma. He ended up in a body cast and couldn’t harvest his crops that year. Other farmers from the community teamed up and took out the crops for him. I have pictures displayed in my living room of him in the cast and of the dozens of people with trucks all lined up in the field posing for the picture.
Oh, one more that I forgot: one day, when my brother and I were still very little, my mom killed a rattlesnake on our back porch, using a serving fork. The skin hung on our wall for years.
Now that is cool!
This is wonderful.
Here’s the trailer for the new movie about what Ralston went through.
I know I’ve posted some stuff about my father being a notorious street fighter in his youth but his real bad ass moment came after he retired. He had a Chevrolet that had its gasoline filler cap hidden behind the license plate—so, he’s putting gas in the thing and a kid pulls up behind him only to discover he had no brakes. Hits my father, breaking his leg and pinning him between the two cars. A couple of guys separate the cars, my father stays on his feet, reassures the kid, tells him not to worry, accidents happen and all that. Cops come, ambulance comes, diagnoses broken leg: My father insists he is going to drive his car home so my mother will have transportation before driving himself to the hospital in the car, with my mother in the passenger seat. Bad ass enough for me.
I hated that man but spent a lot of my life trying to emulate him.
Great thread and great stories!
Though this breaks the rules of the thread I love this story about the pilot and navigator of the SR-71 Blackbird. Worlds fastest plane. (Retired)
One day, high above Arizona , we were monitoring the radio traffic of all the mortal airplanes below us. First, a Cessna pilot asked the air traffic controllers to check his ground speed. ‘Ninety knots,’ ATC replied. A twin Bonanza soon made the same request. ‘One-twenty on the ground,’ was the reply. To our surprise, a navy F-18 came over the radio with a ground speed check. I knew exactly what he was doing. Of course, he had a ground speed indicator in his cockpit, but he wanted to let all the bug-smashers in the valley know what real speed was ‘Dusty 52, we show you at 620 on the ground,’ ATC responded. The situation was too ripe. I heard the click of Walter’s mike button in the rear seat. In his most innocent voice, Walter startled the controller by asking for a ground speed check from 81,000 feet, clearly above controlled airspace. In a cool, professional voice, the controller replied, ‘ Aspen 20, I show you at 1,982 knots on the ground.’ We did not hear another transmission on that frequency all the way to the coast.
(1982 knots is 2280 mph / 3669 kph)
Here is one that doesnt break the rules of the thread.
Its 2am on a weekday. My wife and I are in a heated argument fighting like we do. Dont rember what we were fighting about but there was a lot of shouting and trading of curse words. In a moment of lucidity I decided to step out side and calm down. I open the door and slam it. Take a few steps to the drive way and sit on the hood of my car and take a deep breath. A few moments later I turn my head to see a truck fully engulfed in a fire. I think to myself “did I do that with my mind??” Then call 911
Here’s another historical one that I can’t take credit for witnessing, but it’s pretty awesome.
Hugh Glass, Badass
After being wounded in a skirmish with Native Americans, mountain man Glass earned his reputation as the hardest worker on the expedition up the Missouri River. Then he blundered into a bear with cubs, at such close range that she was on him before he could use his rifle.
While the bear was mauling him, he pulled out a knife and killed her. His injuries were so severe he was not expected to survive, and the two companions left behind to look after him took/stole all his survival gear and left him to die.
Glass awoke in the middle of the wilderness, 200 miles from the nearest friendly base, without equipment, with a broken leg and his rib bones exposed by deep slashes; his injuries were beginning to fester.
So he proceeded to set his own broken leg, then laid against a rotting log until maggots ate away his decaying flesh. Deciding that the direct route through hostile territory was too dangerous, he crawled for six weeks through trackless wilderness to reach a river, surviving on roots, berries, and a wolf pack’s kill (the wolves wisely fled when he approached and threatened them). Friendly Native Americans sewed a bear hide to his back to cover his wounds. He made his own raft and floated down the river, eventually reaching Fort Kiowa.
When he recovered, he set out to find the two men who had abandoned him. For various reasons, he did not kill them – but he did get his rifle back.
How’s that for a badass?
Here’s two.
When I and a crew of friends went to the Live 8 concert in Philadelphia, we arrived to find that the crowd was absolutely chokingly thick. The people who’d shown up and camped out for a day or two had staked out spots with towels and blankets. We started walking single-file as we tried to make our way through the crowd. I guess I stepped on the corner of this bitch’s towel or something, because suddenly this girl jumps up in my face, screaming, “Bitch, I’m gonna kick your ass!”
My friend Keith, who’s standing right in front of me, hears and swings around. Keith’s not a huge guy, maybe 6’, but he could have snatched that girl up by the nape of the neck and shaken her like a kitten. He didn’t say a word to her, didn’t threaten her, just gave her this look.
To this day, I have NEVER seen anyone change their entire course of action as fast as that girl did. One moment she was gearing up to kick my ass, and the next, she pivoted on her heel and ran hell for leather. Still brings a tear to my eye thinking of it.
The other story is about my mother.
Years ago, my mother was cooking dinner for her boyfriend at the time, Jerry. He comes home from work, FURIOUS because his dinner isn’t on the table yet. Jerry walks up and smacks my mother across the face. Mama grabs a cast-iron skillet off the stove and beats Jerry in the head with it until he is unconscious.
Thought this was appropriate for this thread: Badass of the Week.
A long time ago, in junior high, I went to school with a kid who lost his hand and wrist in a farm accident. On weekends everyone hung out at the school and played ball. Some high school kids came by, and began giving this kid hell. After about ten minutes, he had enough, and punched the most aggressive kid with his missing fist (stub) right between the eyes. It was the first time I ever saw someone truly knocked out. The rest of the high school bullies stood there in shock, as the kid gave them a pretty evil stare, and then walked home. They never messed with him again.
I’ll add one more.
Todd Beamer. United Flight 93. He leads the counterattack against the terrorists who had hijacked the plane.