Fights: Fiction Faces Fact

We’re at the tail end of a presidential campaign year, sometimes referred to as "The Silly Season." So isn't it silly that I, a middle school History teacher (day gig) would get to watch a brother secondary-level History guy run for the second-highest office in the land?

Pretty silly, and for me, kinda cool, too.

I was listening to one of Governor Walz's media appearances the other day (forgive me but I can't recall whether it was during the vice-presidential debate or in one of his many interviews), when he referenced serving his time at his school doing things like "cafeteria duty," and that just really made me laugh.

You see, I too have stood my share of cafeteria duty.

At my current day gig (22 years and counting) teachers don't actually stand duty in the cafeteria during lunches. But we are fair game for rotations supervising the cafeteria during the mornings before classes, when so many of our students come in to get some breakfast before going off to 1st period.

And in a lot of ways, the cafeteria is the beating heart of just about any school. Kids do everything here: talk, learn, teach, flirt, learn to flirt, teach how to flirt, and so on. You get it.

One thing they don't too much of in the cafeteria is fight.

That they reserve for the halls.

So, you know...here.

Which would be the other place in any school where some kids come to life far more than in any classroom. The same things happen there that happen in the cafeteria-the flirting/learning/teaching/socializing-just more intensely, because it is all concentrated into four minute bursts known collectively as "passing periods."

Oh, and then there's the fighting.

Most of which makes me want to laugh. 

Not because violence is a joke. Not because I don't take that sort of thing seriously. It's because of the sheer humanity of the experience.

My much-smarter-than-her-spouse wife, an accomplished director of corporate recruiting with decades of experience in the business, is fond of saying to me: "Honey, what you have to understand is that those kids you're teaching? Many of them don't grow up, they only grow taller."

Wise woman, my wife.

(Oh, and by the way, today is our anniversary. So lucky me, I get to be the one to say, “Happy Anniversary, Robyn!”to the most wonderful woman in the world.)

So it's kind of amusing to break down what sort of things cause fights in school hallways: 

First, there's gender to consider.

If the combatants in question are female, odds are their conflict has its roots in any number of potentially combustible social media exchanges. the fights start at places like Instagram, SnapChat and Discord, and end in the hallway right outside my classroom. And that is 9-times-out-of-10 these days. And it's hard not to come to the conclusion that for some of them, "growing taller" will entail learning to keep their drama where they started it: online. Less real world consequences that way. More on that below.

If the would-be pugilists are male, what's most likely to have started the fisticuffs is something infinitesimally small. The other day we had a fight break out while a bunch of friends were "play-fighting," slapping each other (or, "throwing hands" as some of today's youth are wont to say) instead of slugging each other. Things got a little rough, tempers flared, and the game quickly devolved into "throwing fists."

Oh, and one other stark contrast between fights involving young women and young men: any fight involving one or more ladies will be far nastier than anything involving the fellas. And what’s more, there’s a higher likelihood of actual damage in these instances. (A fact I meant to initially mention in this post, and which Friend of Mine and of the Blog David Schlosser reminded me of with his hilarious anecdote in the comments section below. Thanks, David!).

Now these gender demarcations aren't absolute. And I'm not even taking into account non-binary folks for my crude examples. because it's not really the point of this post. And yes, some girls fight because someone bumped someone else in the hall and words turned to blows, and some guys start their beef over Tik-Tok.

Young Chuck "Sideburns" Norris about to get clocked by Bruce Lee

But the point of this post is to underline the difference between choreographed, almost balletic violence as portrayed in both books and film, to say nothing of TV, and the skinned knuckles, bloodied noses, pulled hair and lost shoes (it never ceases to amaze me how many kids lose their shoes in the middle of a hallway brawl).

Real fights are short.

We're talking two, maybe three shots apiece for each modern-day gladiator.

Why? Because fighting is hard work. It involves most of the body, plus, if one's adrenal glands get involved, look out for the cosmic crash that's on the horizon once you begin to tire.

The likes of Alan Ritchson (Reacher) the late, great Bruce Lee, or Tom Cruise in any of his movies (including, oddly enough, two of them about, wait for it...."Jack Reacher"!) are more choreographed than a diplomat being presented at the Mughal imperial court back in the day. 

Uh-HUH. And let me know when ELVIS gets here...

Which, if I'm being honest, sort of leaves me cold these days. It all just begins to look like WWE without the tights or the interesting scripted interviews (soap operas for dudes, no more, no less. Not judging, just observing.). The sort of cartoony violence that takes place in most thrillers these days leaves me cold.

Testosterone? Check. Tights? Check. Mineral Oil? Check. Folding Chair? Check. Hit him, Stone Cold!

And that's likely because I have just seen far too much of the real thing. And the kids wailing on each other in the halls outside my classroom aren't all that demonstrably different than the folks I used to see tearing each other up in bars, club parking lots, and the like.

It's just that, in the latter case, the two bruisers going at it are likely to be taller.

And that's it for me this go-round. Tune in next time when I discuss the strangest fights I have ever broken up. It's a subject not to be missed!

See you in two weeks!