[tdavis]

I may have been labeled a nerd (or geek or who the hell knows; I never asked) in High School, but that didn't mean I was picked on. Okay, I take that back, I was picked on twice. Both times ended with the other person bleeding. I guess when you're 5'7" 150lbs and have the audacity to punch a 6'3" gorilla in the face in the middle of class, people stop messing with you.

Basically, we had our group of friends, everyone else left us alone, and that was that. Even when we did really nerdy/geeky stuff like play Magic the Gathering at lunch, haha. In our school the popular people focused on being popular, the true nerds focused on getting good grades, and nerds like me who just didn't care focused on sleeping and graduating with the worst GPA possible while self-schooling in the evenings. Everyone just kept to themselves, more or less.

[geebee]

Awesome. But have you ever seen the movie "dazed and confused"? Remember that scene where the geeky, brainy guy figures that he can punch the dude who belittled and threatened him, on the assumption that he just needs to survive the next 10 seconds before someone breaks it up.

The nerd gets in a good punch, and the fight eventually gets broken up, but not until the nerd has been through a nice, fat beating.

I'm going to guess that you were a pretty good fighter, because in many of the public schools around San Francisco (no, folks, it's not all peace and love here) you could get seriously pounded for that.

The movies love to push this asinine, feel good notion that bullies are really cowards at heart, and all you need to do is crack them in the nose once and they start mewing like little kittens. What crap. You punch a local badass, he'll punch your ass 100 times. You better be ready to back that shit up. I'm not kidding.

[tdavis]

I had a couple things working in my favor:

1) It was the middle of class and apparently he cared more about getting suspended than I did at that moment in time. I somehow had perfect timing because the teacher was writing something on the board right as I hit him.

2) Something I learned long before seeing Fight Club is that most normal people will do anything to avoid a fight. You're right that punching a bully once doesn't mean he's going to run away and cry, but there's a probability of it.

The key, I think, is learning who the true "badasses" are and who the guys are who just want you to think they're bad. You make examples out of them because they're not going to retaliate. So, in this case, it wasn't a fight in the classic sense. I popped him, he threatened me, then sat down and shut up. I never had an issue with him again.

In other instances I have made the mistake of thinking someone wasn't going to retaliate when in fact they had every intention. This can be problematic when the other guy is, say, a college football line-backer. In times like these, one must take advantage of the environment and use implements such as bar stools to one's advantage.

My Drill Sergeant always said, "If you find yourself in a fair fight, you've done something wrong."