Fighting

As a kid I never got into any real fights. I played rough with my brother and my friends and certainly we hurt each other from time to time. In fact, the first bone I ever broke was in my hand when I collided it into someone's hip-bone in a karate-chop. But I never actually came to blows with anyone. You know, put all my weight in a punch and felt whose ever head it was cave in. Likewise, I've never felt my head get caved in. It's not that I'm particularly eager to but there are a couple of reasons why I'd like to get into a fight.

(1) It sounds stupid and dated, but I feel like it's a right of passage. I don't by into most of the bullshit from 1950's Americana about what it entails to be a man (most of it is just blatant sexism), but I won't deny that some of it has been internalized in me. I have this idea that back then every boy would one day get in a fight at school and be brought to his father, all bruised up. His father would bend down on one knee, put his hand on his shoulder, stare into his eyes and say "Son, you're a man now." It didn't matter if he won or lost, it was just something that he needed to do. Now here I am, 20 years old, and I haven't been in a fight. I feel like I'm depriving myself of an essential experience of growing up.

(2) I'd like to know what I'm made of. I mean this in two ways really. It's a common practice of mine to be walking down the street and imagine "hey, what would happen if I punched that guy?" or "if I jumped that group of guys, I wonder if I could put up a fight?" I think most guys who have never been in a fight secretly imagine they'd be good fighters. It's hard not to when you're such a good fighter in your head. For me it's always a mix of imagining me doing all this cool shit, and trying to convince the rational part of my brain that I could actually do those things. I'm sure for this reason that getting into a fight would be a humbling and disappointing experience; but that's not necessarily a bad thing.

Also, though, I'd like to know what I'm made of in the sense that I want to get a feel for my own durability. I want to know my body's own capacity for damage. It doesn't have to be damage from a fight either. People say that when you're a kid you feel like you're immortal, like nothing can hurt you; I think in a sense it's the opposite. When you're a kid you have a keen sense of your mortality, that is, you know exactly how resilient your body really is. Doing things like wrestling, climbing, generally falling over, hitting each other with sticks will give you that knowledge. A child's blase attitude towards danger isn't because he's careless, but because he does that kind of shit all the time. He knows much more intimately what could happen to him if he fucks up.

I was always fortunate in that I never hurt myself that bad, but this has lead me to a dilemma now. I've gotten in the habit of, whenever I do something marginally dangerous - like run down a flight of stairs - imagining the worst possible outcome of the situation. In the case of the stairs, tripping and flying face first into the ground (it's the worst with concrete). As kids we would do things like ride down the stairs on blankets, climb sheer cliff face, jump off high things for no reason. We weren't afraid because we knew we could handle it and that our bodies could handle it should things go astray. Now, having gone so long without serious injury, I sometimes feel like any little slip up could land me in a morgue. This is where getting into a fight could help me. I feel like being in a real brawl, a true test of my endurance, would let me know exactly how much I could withstand. It would be a moment I could look back on when descending the stairs and think "if my body could handle that, it can handle a little fall down some steps."

Then again, people die from that kind of thing all the time.