Hm yeah so...
I'm picking up my girlfriend last night from her friend's house. She often does these political wingdings, especially as we get closer to an election (Trump makes it worse). Yes, I try to tell her, she won't listen :D
ANYWAY...
I drive a stick-shift (manual) car. Second gear is my downshift control gear. When I rev up in second it gets me up to 30 miles an hour max. Once I let go of the gas the car breaks automatically and perfectly due to the mechanical compression of the engine (I swear this is relevant). Obviously this is a safe speed in residential (25 MPH limit) and I would never get a ticket for making this maneuver.
The turn I need to make (from a stop sign) is a left and then another left, but the two streets are so close together it's more like making a gradual 180 degree U-turn into a court. So yeah I'm making this turn and I see a dad, mom, and a kid in training wheels in the street so I lay on the break.
Not good enough
You know how blowhard dads are about overprotecting their kids. Well this guy was pissed. Throws his arms up in the air like I almost hit his kid. Fully outraged. As "luck" would have it, this guy lived right next door to the house I was visiting. So I park my car, get out, and he's just standing on the curb staring down daggers.
Is there a problem?
Yeah there's a problem!
You're taking that turn way to fast!
You need to slow down!
Okay, whatever you say.
What's this guy look like?
This guy had major cop face.
You know what I mean right?
You can imagine it, oh wait you don't have to.
All ya gotta do is search Google for "cop face"
There he is, they all look the same.
Balding, Stalky, Short-Man's Complex, insecure, power tripping, Bud Light drinking, America Loving, ego-driven, racist, wife beating, coward piece of shit. At least those are the vibes I was getting from our time together.
I always knew Redacted didn't like one of her neighbors,
but she was too polite to say who. I bet I found him.
This guy expected me to cower in fear from his unchecked aggression, but I wasn't in the surrendering mood. I stood my ground and let him know he didn't deserve any respect from me. I wish I could remember the exact dialog. I know the phrase "bitch please" came out of my mouth, which was kinda funny to me (who says that?). He did not take kindly.
I tried to explain how I drive a manual and I was downshifted into second gear. This causes the engine to rev and it might sound like I'm accelerating when I'm actually doing the opposite. He cut me off mid sentence with,
I DONT FUCKING CARE!!!!111
Uh huh, message received.
At several points during this interaction he menacingly stepped toward me like it was fighting time. Let me tell you, I was ready to GO! I entered a full-on battle stance with my back foot angled sideways for balance and I bent my knees a bit to lower my center of gravity. I took an extremely defensive stance with my right foot forward. This puts my right arm on the front line, which means I can't throw any power punches but I can control a grappling situation a bit better. Or if he tries to rush and tackle me I can bury my elbow onto his neck and try to sprawl.
Meanwhile, his body language is very telling. He's either a fucking blowhard idiot or simply peacocking. His shoulders are squared up to me as he puffs his chest out and his knees remain straight. Might as well been standing on his tiptoes. If he had come at me like that I would have fucked him up so bad.
Again, this guy is like 5 foot 7, max. I'm 6 foot 3. Most of my length is in my core. I have a really long back (thanks dad). This has given both of us back issues in the past, but in a fight this gives me a lot of leverage. To give some context my 5 foot 6 girlfriend and I both have a pants length of 32, which is super weird. I basically have a 3-6 inch lift in my core alone.
Fighting is all core strength, balance, and precision. You ever watch those old ultimate fighting competitions? It's pretty satisfying to watch 250 pound body builders getting their asses kicked by 150 pound Jiu-Jitsu Black Belts and girls.
This is one of the more famous fights. The bout starts at 1:30 with the Jui-Jitsu fighter taking the same stance I took; a defensive one with the right foot right arm forward. The body builder takes the opposite stance with the right hand back ready to swing a strong right cross.
He begins by testing the waters and throwing out light kicks into the body-builder's knee. This doesn't do a whole lot in terms of outright winning, but it baits the frustrated opponent into doing something stupid. The Jui-Jitsu fighter knows the body-builder doesn't have enough balance to kick, so this gives him the ultimate range advantage. It's only a matter of time before his opponent becomes enraged and overextends his position.
After getting kicked nine times and thirty seconds later, the body builder grabs a foot/ankle for a quarter of a second and figures this is the time to move in with a power punch right cross. Unfortunately for him, his left arm (defensive arm) is totally out of position to defend because he was too busy trying to grab the right leg with it.
As he's slowly throwing his overextended power punch the blackbelt has enough time to quick jab with the right and still have the speed to throw a weak left hook that not only lands, but blocks his opponent's power punch with the elbow. Pretty incredible move.
From there the body builder gets really mad and takes the fight to the ground, where he should win from weight advantage but ends up getting tossed around a lot by the grappling master. The master appears to be in a submissive position with his back to the ground, but he doesn't even have to use a traditional guard position (legs wrapped around waist), instead the masters legs are used to roll around the mat quite a bit wasting his opponent's energy.
Right at the end the body builder grabs the master's head and looks like he's temped to start gouging eyes like he's the Mountain from Game of Thrones. If you look at the master's face during this time he's looking cool as a cucumber. This guy obviously is in full control of his emotions even during intensely stressful situations.
"Luckily" for the master, as a superior fighter, was easily able to take the arm clutching his face and wrap his entire body around it, employing a devastating arm bar that would have broken his opponent's arm immediately if he had so chosen. I'm talking compound fracture bone sticking out of the skin bad. Fortunately he's got a bit more discipline than that and just makes his opponent tap out. Even after tapping out this dipshit acts like he's going to continue fighting and the ref has to break it up.
What was I talking about again?
Oh yeah! So this dipshit is fronting like he's going to attack me on the street. He's issuing me commands and ordering me to leave.
I don't take orders from you.
He even had the audacity to claim it was "his street" like he owned the place. I guess he didn't notice the frontier of identical houses right next to his basic-bitch white picket fence. There was no fence, you know what I mean.
Then he pulls out his phone and starts asking me who I work for. He instructs me to finish my business and leave. He thinks I'm a Doordasher or some shit and he's going to get me fired or something. Well, which is it? You gonna fight me or get me fired? Pick a lane, friend.
The entire time his wife is "holding him back", but everything about his body language shows that this is what he expects (happens often I assume) and that he's not actually going to fight... unless he's a complete idiot that's going to pick a fight with a puffed out chest and box shoulders... I certainly wouldn't put it past him.
Look at yourself standing there picking a fight with me, acting like I was putting your child in danger. There was no danger. Get over yourself.
Then he proceeded to act as though this outrage had nothing to do with this kid. This was an obvious lie. The guy is a liar. Why lie? It was weird.
So I'm standing there on my phone texting my girlfriend:
I'm about to get into a fistfight right now.
She didn't get the message and I had to wait a bit longer. Meanwhile the wife seems nice enough... trying to balance out the shit behavior of her husband a little. She's a bit more diplomatic, but kinda just repeats the same message: "What are you doing here... why don't you just leave?" Like really? Same question back at ya. Maybe don't teach your kid to ride a bike in the middle of the street next to an intersection when it's dark out. How bout that?
The audacity of this guy, picking a fight with a complete stranger he knows nothing about. Meanwhile I know where he lives, his wife lives, and his kid lives. And I certainly don't mean that as a threat, because I'm not malicious, but the point is that he doesn't know that.
I showed up in a junker mobile tank worth less than $1000. My car is twice the weight of other cars on the road and it's been in multiple accidents with very noticeable paint damage. It very much speaks to this guy's character that he would pick fights with random people for no reason and nothing to gain.
I take a step back and look at myself. I look like a person that might not have a lot to lose, with my beat up car and my old clothes and unkempt hair. I'm the kind of person random people should think twice before starting some pointless confrontation with, but this guy with his blowhard attitude and self-righteous aura isn't much of a thinker I'm guessing. Those are the kind of actions that put you and your family at risk for absolutely no reason. He bet that I wasn't going to do anything, and he was right. Good for you friend, you just won $0.
Nothing to gain and everything to lose.
Seriously, what did he think was going to happen? What's the best case scenario? He kicks my ass and then I get him arrested for assault? Moron. That's just it though, people like that don't think, they just act as though they can control every little detail of their sad little lives. Yikes. Welcome to the real world where no one is in control. Life is chaos.
There's a very good chance I see this guy again, and I have no idea how that's going to go down. He wears all his buttons front and center for me to push at any time. I might not be able to resist.
You're a bad father and you have a toxic relationship with your kid. You're an overprotective, small-dicked, nonthreatening coward. You're a total cuck that doesn't know how to please his wife. I'm not afraid of wife-beating weaklings. We'll laugh about all of this while drinking Bud-Light and exchanging our favorite racial slurs.
There are just so many things I could say to this guy given my cold reading, and they would all fully enrage him. The closer they are to the truth the more enraged he'd be, I've got some experience in that department.
Not worth
Of course none of those things are going to happen because I also have nothing to gain from this conflict. Unlike this guy, I'm not an idiot who's willing to risk something for nothing. So there is that. I guess we'll see how it goes. For now writing it down helps vent the ridiculousness of it and move on.
End of the story
So my girlfriend finally comes out with two other people and I'm like HEY HEY HEY THIS GUY IS TRYING TO FIGHT ME RIGHT NOW. Surprisingly, she was not concerned. I was honestly kinda blown away by her attitude, because she is usually a pretty fearful person. No offense given, she's just a bit more careful and worried about things than I am.
The blowhard instructed my girlfriend to, "Tell your driver he needs to drive slower around corners." Which was like... really confusing and telling in a lot of ways. He still believes I'm on the job and someone like me (obviously lower class) would have nothing to do with his black upper-middle class neighbor. I couldn't tell if he was racist or classist, probably both.
This is especially relevant when you consider the extreme disrepair my car is in. It is such a hunk of shit (sorry baby) there's no way they'd let me ride-share an Uber or a Lyft in that junker. Despite the overwhelming evidence, this guy is convinced that I'm on the job. I'm not 100% sure what that means but it definitely means something.
So my girlfriend, totally taken aback and very confused, asks if we can just leave, and the wife and husband jump on that like, "Yeah it's time for you to go." Like I'm leaving because they told me to. I was extremely compelled to pause for dramatic effect. A few beats later I was circling the court and gave a friendly wave and a nice "goodbye" that wasn't necessarily sarcastic but I obviously knew it would be interpreted that way. He said something back like "fuck you" but I didn't really catch it because I was too busy tapping my fingers together like a yippy dog saying "blah blah blah".
"I'm an adult."
So yeah in any case when we got home I was still blown away that my girlfriend wasn't worried like at all. That seemed totally out of character to me. Apparently she thought I would have destroyed that guy in a fight. I wasn't so sure.
Even though he was peacocking and not in any kind of balanced stance, Vacaville is a military town, and this guy had major cop-face. Who knows what kind of training he's received. On top of that unknown, I pegged this guy as a bully and a coward. The two go hand in hand.
A guy like this would never engage in a fair fight. At the same time, there's like a 100% chance this guy owns a gun and he's ten steps away from his garage, so that's cool.
Conclusion
I'm still pretty jacked up even next day. People are dumb and overemotional. Nuff said.
Return from Riding high on adrenaline! Let's fight! to edicted's Web3 Blog
