In my profession, I run into a few constants. One of the issues that seem to come up repeatedly is the issue of walking away from a fight. The majority of the students I deal with on a day to day basis are kids between the ages of 11 – 15. This age group is especially vulnerable to the fear of what other people will think of them. What seems strange to an adult who had been through it all (me, but “it all” seems so long ago) is that the fear is really of the names. Since this is intended for a family atmosphere, I will not get too graphic with the names kids call each other. But just think of any of the names that you have ever been called, or have called anyone else, and your child will probably hear it at some point in their school life.
One of the things that adults must remember is that the base of all of the fear associated with walking away is that they will lose the respect of their peers. Add to this the problem that they may fear that if they walk away that there will be no end to the further torment from the bully. I know from personal experience that underlying all of this is a fear that you will never escape your role as the victim.
In order to begin at the beginning, we must look at what brings the bullied into the crosshairs of the bully in the first place. Understanding this can prevent some of the situations before they begin. If you are able to stop it when it has yet to begin, you are miles ahead of the very difficult learning curve. There are certain behaviors which will attract the attention of bullies, and avoiding these behaviors will help you or your child to never be bullied in the first place.
For a start, the bully, like any other predator, is going to be first interested in the victim who is alone. If your child is a loner at school, or has a limited number of friends, then there is an increased likelihood of your child being bullied.
When I was in Middle School (we called it “Junior High” back then), I was terrible tormented by a group of people who would never have been bullies, except for the easy victim they found in me, and the idiotic nature of humans in groups.
I had been overweight for most of my childhood (and most of my adult life as well for that matter), and bullies cannot resist that. I also had a somewhat weak nature to me. That I no longer have, but in my childhood, it was a real part of my life. I looked weak, I was overweight, had zero confidence, and was afraid of nearly everything. (The joke was, “Wallace is afraid of the dark…AND the light”).
I attended a small parochial school. With this being a small school, it didn’t take long for the boys to notice that I was the only one of us who did not have a girlfriend.
They decided I was gay.
This was devastating to a teen that was already lacking any confidence. From there the bullying only got worse. It went form calling me gay, to making loud and very crude sexual advances at me. (It is almost laughable to me now that they were calling me gay, but were going into disgustingly graphic detail of the acts they wanted to perform with me…). The bullying reached its worst when I was attacked in a restroom (a physical, not sexual assault). This brought on an investigation by the school, and a final punishment for the bullies. As my story ended rather quickly, I must point out again that this was a small school. Your child may be attending a large school, and many schools today, both large and small, will minimize this type of event as they look first to avoid a lawsuit. I will deal with school issues in more detail in a later chapter.
The fact is, I made myself an easy victim. Most bullies will ignore you if you do not present yourself as a victim.
I have very little concern for criminals now (who are nothing more than bullies who never grew up). In addition to having more than a quarter century of training in a brutal martial art, I grew up to be six and a half feet tall and usually weigh in around (a very round) 285 lbs. Add to the mix a face that looks like an angry drunk, and you have a person low on the victim scale. My wife constantly comments on how when we are out and around that no one looks at her or our daughter for more than a second.
What my wife may or may not realize is that when someone IS looking at her or our daughter, I have a stare for them that tells them to leave while they still can.
Which brings me to the second point – look at them. DO NOT STARE, unless you can back it up. And even then, it is the wiser course of action to look, take notice, and move on as if the bad guy is a backdrop in the scene. He is there, but it doesn’t matter. I glare at potential threats for one reason only, I want them to back down because I do not need the legal hassles that would go along with killing them.
Lt. Col. Dave Grossman uses the perfect analogy for the three types of people out there. He divides people up into sheep, wolves, and sheepdogs. The sheep go through life avoiding all conflict, and do not usually like to even consider the notion that conflict exists anywhere nearby. The wolves do what wolves do – they eat sheep. The wolves are the ones who are out searching for a victim. The sheepdogs are the people who feel it is their job to protect the sheep. They are fully capable of violence, are willing to commit violence, but will only bring violence to the table if the wolf is trying to eat the sheep. When I glare at the bad guys, I am communicating with them. I am telling them, “You don’t want this. Today is not your day. Go home.” For most people, however, their best bet is to take notice and move on. What this communicates to a bully is that you are not interested in his games. He will usually move on. The bully can also tell that the person who is not interested in the game is also most likely to be the person who will call for help, and not be a quiet victim.
On the “No Nonsense Self Defense” website, Marc “Animal” Mac Young puts the percentages like this, “Let’s say that we started with a 100 people. 80 won’t even notice him. Of the 20 who do about 80% will just go back to what they are doing. So out of the original 100, only about four will be willing to interact with the tough guy. Those four can be broken down into four basic types.
- 1. Those whose job requires them to deal with the tough guy (restaurant workers, store clerks, etc.)
- 2. Those who will be victims.
- 3. Those who will fight.
- 4. Those who can hand the tough guy his liver (after tearing it out).”
For the person who has a job which requires they interact with the bad guy, they really have little choice in the matter, and will almost certainly be scared out of their wits. Remember, a sheep is still a sheep if you throw a wolf skin over him.
Those who interact and fall into category two, those are going to be the people who saw too many movies and think they can handle anyone in the world. Just a word of warning, no one can handle everyone.
In category three, you have fighters. When fighters collide, both people are going to get hurt, and there are no two ways around it. The street is nothing like the movies. Both combatants will walk away hurt, if they walk away at all.
In category four, you have a rarity. This is the person who outclasses the bad guy in the ability to visit violence on another that the bad guy ends up being the one who is afraid and looks for the nearest exit. When one predator meets another, it the recognition is immediate, and just as quickly, each one knows what the outcome would be should the course of violence be chosen.
The person who takes only a small notice of the bad guy and returns to whatever he was doing is (unknowingly, most of the time) exhibiting the same behavior as the counter-predator who scares the pudding out of the bad guy. The person who is fully capable of violence and fully confident in their ability to do so is not going to be full of swagger and loud behavior. He is going to be the one who would go completely unnoticed, except for this presence. It is this presence which gives him away. And it will be picked up first by the smaller predators. While the person who is more dangerous may notice the lesser threat, and go on to seemingly ignore him, he has noticed, and having noticed, will keep one eye on the bad guy. Interestingly, the sheepdog isn’t afraid. He will simply monitor the situation. If the wolf starts to do anything out of line, he will be pounced, and pounced hard.
But what do you do if you are chosen? What if you are selected by the bad guy to be the victim? Odds are, if you are selected, you were giving off a different signal than the one detailed above. You may have looked at the bad guy, then looked around the room (possibly looking for good guys), then continued to look nervously at the bad guy. If you were doing this, you were sending the signals out that the bad guy was looking for. You were nervous, and this is the same as outright telling the bad guy that you were the one he was looking for.
You have to get past your fear of backing down. You have to have two abilities if you have no others – walk away, or get help.
Yes, if you walk away, there will be people who talk about you. But there will always be people who talk about you. There is no way to avoid it! And since it is unavoidable, why should it be a worry or source of any concern whatsoever?
If you think that fighting some bully will keep people from talking about you, you are in for a rude awakening. The truth is that there are far more people who will respect you for not fighting than there are those who will respect you if you do.
I realize that much of this will be wasted if read by young people. There are many youth who think that “old people” don’t understand. This advice will go in one ear and out the other for most young people. Still, I must put this information out there for that small number of people who might listen.
If it is respect you are after, walk away. If you are concerned about not getting hurt, walk away. If you want to stay out of the principal’s office, the police station, jail or prison, walk away from the fight.
Just about two years prior to this writing, a man went to a liquor store to purchase some spirit juice. He had not made it into the store when he was confronted by another man. After the usual verbal escalation of the situation, the man going into the store punched the other man once. The man fell and hit his head on the parking lot. And he died from the head trauma. The man who was, by all accounts “not looking for trouble” ended up going to prison for murder.
So let us say that a bad guy confronts you. He pushes you and calls you a b****. Maybe he even slaps your face. So, you punch him in the head, he falls, hits his head on the sidewalk, and dies. You are arrested and tried for murder, convicted and sentenced to 25 years in prison. You will lose a quarter century of your life for one insult.
Is it worth it? Let us change the situation a little. Let’s say you hit him, and he falls down, but it relatively unhurt. You take the opportunity to give off a macho laugh, and go about your day. In between the next classes, he stops at his locker, retrieves his gun, finds you in the hall, puts the gun to your stomach and fires two bullets through your spinal cord. You will be in a wheelchair for the rest of your life.
Is it worth it?
Let’s change it a little. This one is the same as the last, only your spinal cord is not severed. Instead, your colon is so badly damaged by the bullets that the doctors need to give you a colostomy. This is a procedure where your colon is cut and one end is poked out from the skin on your stomach, where a plastic bag is attached for the poo to come out, which it does without you having any control over it. This is irreversible, and you will have the colostomy bag for the rest of your life.
Is it worth it?
When I was young, I always thought that I would fight for “honor”, which at the time meant that I would fight to keep people from thinking or saying anything bad about me.
Over the years, I had a drastic change of heart. I am very thankful that during my youngest and most vulnerable points in life, I had a stark terror of fighting, of any confrontation at all! This kept me form fighting. Later on, I was willing to fight, but not skilled enough to save myself. Finally, once I had the fighting skills, I didn’t have the desire to fight, or the stupidity.
The simple fact is, fighting is stupid. With all of the things that can go wrong, from being killed, to getting sued, from being crippled to going to prison, fighting is a macho game that makes no sense at all.
The quicker you learn to not fight, the better off you will be.
I can hear the voices of my students as year in and year out they reply to this speech with, what if you can’t walk away.
I think that the issue that is missed by those who ask this question is all of the opportunities you missed to walk away before it ever got to the point where walking away became impossible.
If you watch a typical schoolyard fight, or even fights between adult males for that matter, you will see that typically there is a lot of posturing prior to any actual physical conflict. The combatants will puff out their chest, in a primal attempt to appear bigger. There will be shouting and waving the arms (the actual manner of waiving the arms differs from culture to culture). The two may bump chests and “get in each other’s faces”. There will undoubtedly be a lot of talking, threatening and obscenities.
After all of this, the fight may or may not ensue.
So, where in all of the above is it not possible to walk away?
If someone bumps into you on the street or in the school hallway, is it necessary to confront the person who bumped into you? Absolutely not! There is no need for any such behavior. In fact, the safest route is to continue as if you had not even noticed that the bump occurred.
And at any point you can walk away. Take a closer look:
The combatants will puff out their chest, in a primal attempt to appear bigger. ***WALK AWAY HERE***There will be shouting ***WALK AWAY HERE***and waving the arms ***WALK AWAY HERE*** (the actual manner of waiving the arms differs from culture to culture). The two may bump chests ***WALK AWAY HERE***and “get in each other’s faces”***WALK AWAY HERE***. There will undoubtedly be a lot of talking ***WALK AWAY HERE***, threatening ***WALK AWAY HERE*** and obscenities ***WALK AWAY HERE***
So by the time the fight begins, you have missed several opportunities to walk away. The more opportunities you miss, the more dangerous the situation becomes. And the above list does not take into account the probable “things done wrong” which occurred before the swaggering and posturing began.
There is no name they can call you to make fighting worth the risk.
Rule number one should be – don’t put yourself into places and situations where you have to be anywhere near these bad guys. Most situations do not require a fighting response. And if you are prone to realism, consider this – the legal costs alone for a non-lethal conflict will add up to more than you would ever think it is worth once you take legal fees, court costs, fines and whatever dollar amount you put on your time spent in jail. The police will not care that you were insulted by the other guy, only that you broke the law.
What you have to keep in mind is that there are ALWAYS consequences. You cannot predict the outcome of a fight, as it has too many variable, but you can predict one sure thing – it will not end the way you think.
Just look at some of the possible ways a fight can end;
- You go to jail
- You both go to jail
- He goes to jail
- You go to the hospital
- He goes to the hospital
- You both go to the hospital
- You are permanently disabled
- He is permanently disabled
- You are both permanently disabled
- You are killed
- He is killed
- You both die on the scene from injuries
And this is a short list which does not take into account all of the variables found by an end result which is a combination of two of the possible outcomes listed.
Walk away.
