My Senior year in HS a girl walked up beside me in the smoking area at school and cold cocked me. I had no idea why. Later I pieced together that she had heard a rumor I was “out in the country” with her boyfriend one Friday night. Well, I faced her and asked what the hell she was doing, and she punched me again. I grabbed her wrist. She swung at me with her left hand. I grabbed that too. I had about 3 inches on her and was much stronger. However, I wasn’t a violent person. She kept snarling at me to let her hands go….so I let her hands go, and let her take me down. She was whaling away on me. I heard somebody yell something about my glasses…and some on-looker picked them up and kept them safe. A teacher came in and broke it up. At that point I think I felt safe enough to get REALLY mad. He grabbed us both by the arm to escort us to the office. I YANKED my arm out of his grasp and said, “Don’t touch me!” That was completely unlike me. To my amazement, he complied and I didn’t get scolded for snapping at a teacher.
In the principal’s office: Principal was going to suspend us both for 3 days. I yelled, “Why??!! I tried not to fight!” Jebus! One does NOT yell at a principal! But I did…
Then I turned to Angie and snarled, “Tell him I tried not to fight!!”
She kind of hung her head and said, “She tried not to fight.”
So he commuted my sentence to being expelled for the rest of that day. You have to understand, I NEVER got in trouble! It killed me to have a teacher even gently admonish me. I started to protest over being expelled at all, but he explained that if I stayed the day kids would be bugging me, wanting to know about the fight, etc. That made sense, so I went home.
So, about 1:00 my Mom came home to see me sitting all cool and nonchalant on the dining room table, my feet on a chair, and said, “WHAT are you doing home from school?”
I started to answer…then just burst into tears and threw myself in her arms and said, “Ohhh Mommma! I got into a fight at school!”
I thought she’d be mad. To my utter amazement she held me, and patted me on the back and said, “There, there. It’s OK. I know you didn’t start it. I know you. It’s OK.”
I have to say, Mom hated it when we cried. Hated it. Would yell at us to stop. That is the only time that I remember that she held me and comforted me when I was crying. Usually she’d just snap, “Stop being stupid!”
Later that night my dad taught me how to really throw a punch.
I guess my folks were alright after all.
I have something else to tell you but I can’t in public…