A History of Violence

When I was a kid I had a bit of a temper.  I think the only thing that kept me from being a bully was probably the fact that I preferred to be mostly left alone and that trying to intimidate other kids would have taken too much effort on my part.  But I was usually bigger than a lot of kids my age and I was pretty quiet, and from time to time, that would attract attention from others... unwanted attention... unjust attention.  Attention that made Hulk want to smash.
By about 8th grade or so, I had managed to get my rage under control enough to largely avoid frequent suspensions and detentions, but it was not easy.  The urge to punch obnoxious kids in the face was more or less a daily struggle, especially since I had been in enough fights and altercations over the years to know (sort of) how to do it.  Don't get me wrong, I was not Chuck Norris just waiting to lay a beating down on some unsuspecting kid.  I knew that fights hurt, and that, even in the best of circumstances you were going to take a shot or two.
Here are some other things I have learned:

1. Never underestimate an opponent. I learned this from picking a fight with a girl in first grade, an age where girls and boys are pretty much on equal footing physically and if the girl in question happens to be a tomboy with several older brothers, you just bought yourself face full of snow on the playground. I have to say, to the girl's credit, she just took me down, shamefully quickly, pushed snow in my face, and said, "had enough?"  I said, "Yes" and it was done.  That was it, to this day that's about all I remember about the whole thing, no idea what started it, only that it was done without so much as a whimper, no teachers got involved, I'm not even sure any of the other kids even noticed it, which is kind of hard to believe, but then I remember, we were six, six-year-old kids are pretty clueless.
2. If you're going to fight, don't talk first, just fight.  I learned this from the first and last fight of my high school career, which oddly enough was not of my own doing, but rather the result of some misplaced jealousy and really shady teenage drama making.  I confronted a kid in my homeroom.  Through what I considered to be a wild rumor, I had heard that he wanted to fight me for something I had never done.  I was like, "Hey Joey, what's this I hear about..." and that's when I saw the fist coming.  The bruise on my jaw was testament to the fact that diplomacy had failed, and I suppose to the fact that I can take a punch.
3. If you're going to use violence, you really need to commit to it.  In the above mentioned fight, during the grappling and pushing phase, I remember pretty much my only conscious thought was whether or not to smash Joey's testicles into a pulp, I had a clear shot for a nice swift knee to the groin and was actually weighing that option when a couple of other boys pulled us apart. Had I been slightly more ruthless, and decisive that kid would have been the last of his bloodline, and I probably would have been in considerably more trouble.  Joey to this day has no idea that, A. I was fully capable of squashing his grapes and B. was just about to do it, viciously. To this day, there is is this part of me that wishes I had pulled the trigger on that knee to the groin.  He totally deserved it, and it would have probably put me on the list of people not to be messed with in my high school.  But at the same time, while it may have "taught him a lesson," I know it probably would not have taught me the lesson that I needed to learn, which is:
4. Violence never solves anything. If I had taken that swing, it would have made the next few weeks, more pleasant.  I would have had the "honor" of reducing a kid who sucker-punched me to a crying pile of Def-Leppard clad goo, and I would not have had to "watch my back."  As it was though, he thought the whole thing was more or less a draw, and still had the illusion that he could beat me up.  He was not the sharpest knife in the drawer, and tended to announce things, like the fact that he was going to ambush me when I got off the bus after school.  I wasn't about to relive the unsuspected punch to the jaw this time, this time I was ready, I had back up, and I was going to hurt this slime ball.  Sure enough here he came, in the parking lot of the bank near my bus stop, his arms were out to his side and all his really tender bits were just begging to be kicked, I was being given a second chance to live out my violence.  I can still remember it pretty vividly, my best friend was with me, there was this lady in a minivan saying, "hey you boys, stop it," but making no move to get out of her car, she was afraid of us.  And she was probably right, he wanted to fight, and honestly, I wanted to fight, and I could see the opening, guts begging to be punched, a nose in the middle of pugnacious face just begging to be smashed, a stupid, worthless waste of human flesh that I wanted to stomp into the asphalt, this time there would be no hesitation and no mercy, and I was just about to do it, and feel utterly justified, but then here came my Dad.  Ostensibly just going to the post office, at a time of day when he never went to the post office, but since my antagonist had been so very public about his intentions, even my Dad knew something was going down. Dad did the grown up thing and mentioned that if this sort of teenage nonsense didn't end here and now, police would be getting involved.  I have no idea what went through Joey's head, probably not much, but in mine it was like the end of The Lord of the Flies, where the kids come out on to the beach and there's an adult, and the savagery of the world they had been living in comes crashing down around them.  Now I couldn't, even though I wanted to, even though I had been primed for days by anxiety and hatred, even though I could envision Joey bleeding on the pavement, I was not going to be allowed to live that through.

Over the years, I hold my head higher when I think of the times that I prevented a fight or walked away from a fight, than on the fights I was in.  The fights, even the ones I won, are embarrassing.  I would rather really tell you about the one with the girl in first grade, which I totally and unequivocally lost, than the ones that I remember in more detail, especially the one with Joey. I really wish I could say it was my last one, but it was just the last one in school.  And that's really the worst part of it, none of that really taught me that violence is not the answer, if I was back in that bank parking lot now, I would still feel that rage and that desire to inflict violence.
This is the place I find myself in with regard to many sins and virtues, I only understand the virtue if I have been afflicted by the sin.  I only understand the power and the worth of peace because I have been through violence, I have felt it's rush and I have experienced it's weight, I have walked up to the edge of inflicting serious harm and have backed away.  I have learned that security through violence is folly.  Violence does not make the world safer, it only spawns and brings forth more violence.
But in the moment, it's hard to see that.  When we feel threatened and wronged, our impulse is to fight.  Oddly enough, we can twist the virtues of righteousness and justice to the extent where our own violence seems ultimately justified.  You need to be aware though, when you do that, your "enemy" probably is as well.  Neither one of you is correct, and you are both lesser for allowing yourself to get trapped in that web.  That is true if you are kids on the playground or nation states, violence erodes our humanity.
I don't know what ever happened to Joey, I suspect his life has been hard, since while my part in our little fracas cost me a three day suspension, his lead to 10 and an eventual expulsion (it wasn't his first trip to the principals office). It was, however, my last, except if you count the times I got called there to win an award. At the time of our fight, we were roughly the same size, when I saw him next, three years later, while I was working at a supermarket, I was at least four or five inches taller than him.  He kind of sneered at me, and I more or less pretended he didn't exist.  We never did make peace, but I learned a lot about why nonviolence is really our only hope from my history of violence.