Furious Fisticuffs: Fact, Fiction & the Line in Between

 How is it nearly Halloween?

Hey, and Happy Nearly November! 

Last time we met, I gave you some thoughts on writing realistic fight scenes. And for this go-round I promised to talk about the weirdest fights I had ever broken up. So without further ado, here a few quick honorable mentions:

Just like one of these.

The Cocktail Napkin

Back in college, I once helped break up a fight between two brothers (yes, they were both drunk). They were coming to blows over a cocktail napkin.

That's it. Cocktail napkin. Nothing more. No phone number written on it. No directions for a hook-up. No crudely drawn map to a gold mine.

A cocktail napkin.

No subtext or hidden meaning here, either. Except for the fact that these two loved to scrap at a level that might Oasis's Gallagher brothers blush.

The Solvent

This one hearkens back to my time spent in the Navy.

I helped break up a fight on the mess decks (where the ship's crew ate meals) between a couple of guys who worked in Engineering. One of them accused the other one of stealing solvent from the supply locker in his engineering station (he was responsible for keeping track of and order more supplies). These guys duked it out right there in the middle of mid rats ("midnight rations": a meal prepared for watchstanders either coming off of or going on watch at midnight.).

Just like this one.

Both guys got written up and likely would have lost rank and pay and been restricted to the ship had tragedy not struck.

As it turned out, the guy accused of stealing solvent was in fact guilty of stealing solvent. Apparently unaware of how dangerous the fumes given off by this substance could be in an enclosed space, he stored it in his locker, which was right beneath his bunk (a "rack" in Navy parlance. And that type of locker? Appropriately enough, in this instance: a "coffin locker."). The guy liked to use solvent to get the combined oil and grease off his hands after a day's work.

And it killed him. The fumes from the solvent asphyxiated him in his sleep.

(I used this incident as the germ of an idea for my short story "Show Biz Kids," featured in the crime fiction anthology Die Behind the Wheel.)

Unsurprisingly, the charges against the other fellow were dropped after the autopsy confirmed cause of death. 

Sooooo....solvent.

The above are two of the weirdest ones, now let me tell you about the three most violent ones I helped break up. All of them took place at a school where I was working as a teacher. Two of them at the middle school where I currently teach, and one at a high school where I worked over two decades ago. First up: middle school.

The Language Barrier

Ever seen a human reenactment of the story of the Mouse that Roared?

I have.

A student of mine, always in trouble, always smiling, never letting anything get to him, picked a fight with a newly arrived Pacific Islander who spoke nearly no English and stood literally head and shoulders above him.

The mouse in this instance picked his fight by sucker punching the big man in the back of his head (apparently the big guy had pushed a lady friend of the brave mouse in the hall, and he could not let that pass).

Needless to say, this enraged the Pacific Islander giant, and he turned on the mouse. I and two other teachers (both male) got between the two combatants before blood could be shed, and I grabbed the mouse and pulled him into a classroom, locking out the enraged islander before he could get his hands on the smaller kid.

Thank God the door I locked was two-inch thick solid oak.

The entire school went into lock-down while this modern-day South Seas Hercules took out his rage on the lockers in the hallway (the dents he put in the top of one row are still there). Eventually the police arrived and sorted things out. No charges filed, but....phew....

A Tale of Two Amazons

Now, I am six feet tall and not at all a small person. But when two 14 year-old lady athletes took a beef that started at basketball practice to the hall outside of my classroom and I went charging in to try and stop it, I felt tiny. And weak.

Both of these young women were physical specimens: taller than my six feet, strong and athletic, and they were waling on each other. Let me take a moment also to let the uninitiated in on a salient fact of life: the most violent fights tend to be between women.

There are lots of theories about why this is, and I'm not interested in advancing one of my own. I am just going to say that my own experience bears it out.

None moreso than during this fight. I got between them first and immediately regretted that move, as I quickly got bounced off a locker as if I were a rubber ball.

Other teachers stepped in (female and male) and helped quell the battle royale. I will say that one of my fondest memories from my teaching career is of when one of the girls said to me, "Let me go, Teach! I don't want to hurt you! I like you!" (I did not have a hold of her. I was simply interposing my body between her and the other young woman. As were about six of my colleagues).

It's Always the Quiet Ones

This final example comes from a brief stint I did teaching high school English at a school in a neighboring district. 

It was passing period and I was standing outside of my classroom (it was my third year of teaching) greeting students, and several kids ran up and breathlessly told me about a fight involving a couple of girls in the hall around the corner. One of the names I recognized as a small, quiet, fairly shy Latina student of mine. So I went tearing down the hall trying to keep this kid from getting hurt.

I needn't have worried.

I turned the corner to see another girl (Pacific Islander and strong) standing, bent at the waist over the first girl, with her long hair hanging down nearly to the floor, and shaking rhythmically, as if at the footfalls of a giant.

As it turns out the quiet girl knew how to brawl. Flat on her back, she had gotten a deep solid grip on the other girl's hair at the nape of her neck, and was holding her in place while repeatedly punching her in the face.

I only discovered this when I attempted to pull the taller girl off of the one of the floor (a move I have not attempted since, as the memory of the sore back I nursed for weeks after has turned out to be very instructive.).

I never saw the taller girl after we broke that fight up.

The quiet one tracked me down and invited me to her wedding years later.

And I went! A great time! Her father and I laughed and laughed over that fight. 

Last I heard this young lady was a mother of three and teaching middle school math. And boy do I pity the student who gets on her bad side.

And on that uplifting note, that's it for me this go-round.

Tune in next time to hear about "Firing Bob" and why every writer ought to do it.

See you in two weeks!