What's The Haps?

The taste of my own blood.... Its the last thing I remember of my first fight...

Knuckles hurting, and split up with cuts. Stained with the blood of my hands, mixed with the blood of not my own. Sweat and blood dripping into my eyes I could barely see. I've been in only a few fights in my childhood and won even less. I brace myself up against the brick wall to regain my balance and stumbled to my knees as I stepped forward in attempt to walk away, but at this point, I was struggling just to catch my breath. Because of that, fear build in Me, the fear that my next breath would be my last.

A fight was always about who was the Bully, and who got Bullied. No one ever had to fear for their lives. If you got your ass kicked, or you kicked ass, either way the both of you would still be able to walk away ( carried ) or at least you'd live to talk shit later. Never in my life did I realize that I wasn't fighting to be tough, I was fighting to live.

I hobbled back onto my feet, and felt my body get knocked around, and then I fell back down to the floor. Afterwards they told me I looked like a drunk trying to find the toilet at the end of the night. I just wanted to lie there, pray that I would live, close my eyes and call it a day. God wasn't watching out for me on that day. Turns out though, the other kid was just as beat as I was, but he was still able to get around my back and put me into a headlock.

His arms had a tight grip around my neck. I choked and gagged I knew I was in deep shit. The air to my lungs were completely cut off, panic settled in. Kicking and screaming wasting all my air, was virtually useless, but I had one advantage, he was skinner than me. I tried to keep myself from blacking out. I got to my feet, arched over, carrying him on my back, I staggered over to the brick wall, with my back facing the wall, I arched backwards and slammed him between me and the wall repeatedly. He only loosen up enough so that I could only grasp for moments of air, but then his grip only got tighter. I was thinking I was going to die, I could feel my lungs burn trying to gasp for more air, I thought to myself this is it, I'm never going to see tomorrow, I started to cry and then I got pissed.

Still leaning up against the wall with him on my back, I wheeled a half -turn, and dove backward, and fell with my back pointing to the ground. I heard the hard crack of the back of his skull slamming into the pavement. He didn't move, now free from his hold, I straddled on top of him, and if by pure rage, I can barely remember just beating the fucking shit out of him, but there was not moment of clarity there. I only can think of phrases to remember that moment, " I'm Fucking getting you back bully" and " You Piece of shit, tried to kill me " I know they sound like Eminem song titles, but that’s all I can remember.

Short lived and not even a chance to enjoy beating him up, I completely forgot he wasn't alone, as one basically stopped me from killing the kid, the other tackled us off atop of him. All I can remember is my head being shoved into the mud, and I can faintly hear the other kid trying to figure out if the kid on the ground was still alive and thank god he was, but it still didn't mean I was gonna be able to walk away. The kid just kept on shoving my face into the mud, I could get any strength to kick out or move my head to breathe.

I said Fuck it, That was all I had in me, and as I blacked out I heard my friends yelling in the distance, telling them to get the fuck off me, They picked up the other kid and took off. I looked up and I saw my buddies who I saw as brothers, they picked me up and carried me home. They carried me to my backyard and turned on the garden hose to wash me back into coherence, they said I'm in shick and if I black out, I might go into a coma, hehe, when you're a suburban kid you were paranoid as hell but I never forgot what they did for me back then.

I never knew the true meaning of friends until that moment right there, but I think thats why I expect too much out of people who say they want to be my friend, but honestly I'm too old to get into a fight and too smart to put myself into one, and I also like to think I can take care of myself by now, and if to prove it, I always talk about this fight, because I never got fucked with ever again after that, and the reason I got jumped was that the kid was looking to be apart of the local gang and even though he didn't exactly beat me they took him in and he immediately when into doing their little dirty work, he went to jail because his " boyz " ratted him out and bailed on him, and I guess he called them friends, family even... I remember shortly after that one of the gangs "Lieutenant" heard about how I handled myself and wanted me to join them. I told him my brother was a Police Officer and they respected my answer to say no. I only wished we could of talked to the kid before he tried to jump me things would of been sorely different from now, we could of been friends for all I know, But he chose his path, and I'm still living mine.....