I went to a birthday party this past Saturday night and just as I was arriving, several of those in attendance were sweeping up the back patio area of broken beer bottles and ash and soot. It seems that I'd just missed a fight that ended up overturning the barbeque grill before the guys headed into the back alley to finish the tussle and then make their peace. Frankly, I was happy to have avoided the thing. I just don't understand people who fight... or people who WANT to fight.
I've only been in one real fight in my entire life. When I was 13 or 14-years-old my brother and I were over at our friend Chris' house playing Marco Polo in his pool with a few other kids from the neighborhood and when I was "it" Chris kept egging me on -- pushing and shoving me harder than necessary when my eyes were closed. After he'd dunked me a few times, I'd had enough, so I made a move towards him and told him to 'back off'. I had hoped that this simple threat would suffice and we could all continue playing the game, but he viewed it as an invitation to fight so he jumped towards me with fists flying.
It didn't last very long at all... maybe 10 seconds tops... and while he never connected a punch, I hit him hard in the face 2 or 3 times and it was enough to end it. Even though I'd 'won' the fight, I pulled myself out of the pool and went home, humiliated. It was HIS pool after all.
That night when Mom got home from work I overheard my brother telling her that I'd kicked Chris Hardy's ass and although it made me feel good that he was proud that I'd stood up for myself, I didn't really feel like I'd done much good overall... since there was now this weird vibe between Chris and me that would take weeks to dissipate. Through apologies and massaging egos (and with a good word from my brother), I finally got invited back to swim in the pool before summer was over.
Since then, I've always felt as though fighting is an utterly stupid waste of time. I've come close to being in fights since but I've ALWAYS been successful at circumventing them through talking through the conflict and solving the problem. And if you think about it, that's the step in the process that has to eventually happen ANYWAYS. Fighting is just procrastinating the actual "talking through" and "solving the problem" part that must come afterwards if any real progress is to be made. I mean, when we're really, REALLY done with military operations in Iraq, don't we still have to go through a process of diplomacy and negotiations before the issue is finally resolved? And if I seem to remember correctly, 'diplomacy' and 'negotiations' were on the table as options for resolving the conflict BEFORE we pre-emptively declared war and lost 1,700 young men and women. But it seems that some people are just hard-wired to WANT to fight no matter how pointless the exercise or how bad it makes them look in the end, since the aggressor never looks good during a fight. Win or lose, you come across as a moron who has to resort to thuggery. (As an aside, I'm only talking about Iraq here where there was a definite "WANT" to fight -- rather than in Afganistan, where we were working to protect ourselves, just as I had protected myself in the pool against Chris.)
On Saturday night, both guys at the birthday party ended up coming around to everyone afterwards and apologizing for allowing the disruption to happen. They'd argued, then fought, then talked through their disagreement and then reached some sort of resolution, but really, the only thing the fight had accomplished was putting a damper on everyone else's evening.
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