Have You Ever...

I actually answered this above, another poster asked a similar question that I think qualifies:

If you stretch the definition of adult I was “involved” in a fight. 40 years ago I was a 20 y/o working in the back of a bar in New Orleans when one of my co-workers told me they needed help up front. You don’t ask questions when that call comes and soon I found a dude more than holding his own against both our bouncers. It was an African man I had played soccer with named Remy. As he started to throw a punch my way he recognized me and suddenly stopped long enough for me to explain that we needed him to leave. By that time he was well outnumbered and agreed that was for the best.

Back in my Army days that’s what we did for entertainment. Great team-building excercises, too!

I’m more a flight than a fight guy myself.

As such I have been the recipient of a couple incidents.

1975 in the back seat of a car at a bar just over the WI state line. I’d drank a butt load of Schlitz malt liquor tallboys (doesn’t that sound tasty) mixed with Tequila Sunrises snd retreated to the car while my HS graduating buddies continued their merriment. My frenemy and lockermate Dave B. who was a gymnast and could do an iron cross on the rings followed me out to the car. Ostensibly he wanted me to keep drinking but I think he was more about the fact that his former girlfriend was now mine (and would be for the next 4 years). At any rate when I respectfully and drunkenly declined he hit me with a right cross. Woke up the next morning with 2 black eyes.

Year after Bears won Super Bowl (1986), was my first experience with some sobriety. After Bears Giant game at Soldier Field, my friend and I flagged down a cab. Some “lady” came running from out of nowhere and tried to steal it. My friend nicely moved her out of the doorway and we jumped in. All of a sudden her boyfriend runs up and sucker punches me thru open window. Broke my glasses almost put my eye out still got a scar. Cops were busy with traffic and said they’d have to arrest us all or nothing.

36 years without getting tagged since!

Nope.

No fights since 8th grade.

I learnt my lesson early too, grade 5 and lost to a grade 4. Haven’t came close to fighting since.

No, I have not. And I hope I don’t need to.

No fights and no punches. Thankfully I’m a very friendly person when drinking. I’m also usually the peace maker, and thank god have NOT gotten hit while separating others.

As an adult, never even close. Prior to that, I was hit by someone else twice (both times for being a sarcastic asshole), but I never hit anyone else. Came close a few times. The one time I probably was going to hit someone I ended up tripping on my shoelace that had somehow untied itself, and the situation dissolved into laughing fits. That’s the closest I’ve ever come to hitting someone in anger.

Only once, strangely. I get rowdy when drunk, and I worked as a bouncer for a couple years. But only once did drunk me get into a real fight. Tequila. Bad shit. Wasn’t much of a fight tho, it was before I got some real training in, and I don’t remember taking much damage either. Guess I’m a peaceful dude ;)

My brother.

I got punched in a bar (during a bachelor’s party) by a dude who thougnt I was chatting up his date. She was a girl I had known from grade school, no chemistry at all,. but he was drunk. I didn’t even see it coming. Woke up in a bathtub the next morning, nice black eye.

Were you covered in ice and missing a kidney?

Once. Sadly, it was with one of my bandmates whom I (up until that moment) considered one of my best friends. It consisted of exactly 3 punches after finishing what was to be my last gig with the band, waiting to get paid. We were arguing because I’d decided to leave the band for another and he was upset. He sucker punched me because he felt I’d insulted his wife (which I most definitely did not). I vaulted a dance floor railing/bar and punched him in the face. He then bent over forward and charged me like a linebacker trying to tackle me, so I punched him again on the top of his lowered, bald head. BIG mistake. The skull is much harder than facial flesh, and it broke the metacarpal of my right pinky finger. Bouncers broke us up at that point, but my hand was messed up for a few months, longer than usual because the doctor who confirmed the break felt I didn’t need a cast, and when I started playing in the new band, introductions involving handshakes were expected and extremely painful, especially from the macho “firm handshakers”. I quickly learned to thrust out my LEFT hand for all introductions, but so much damage was done before that, and sometimes even after from the few times when I idiotically forgot. However, as painful as the hand healing was, I’ve always felt the loss of the friend much worse.

I have the same injury. Tented metacarpal. It never healed right.

So… late teens, maybe early twenties (old enough to drink, vote and fuck at any rate) I was out clubbing (urgh) with friends on a Saturday evening. Being an introvert, I struggle with crowds and such; always hated clubbing especially since I could never understand what anybody was ever saying. However, sacrifices needed to be made to maintain the few friends I had so I ended up getting dragged out every couple of weeks. Ok, it wasn’t all bad; everyone being horny and drunk af meant I got to make out with the odd girl here and there but fundamentally… not my scene. I bailed early, and often.

Problem was… I was kinda poor (which was another reason to bail early - couldn’t stand people feeling like they needed to keep buying me drinks after the first couple hours), so more often than not this meant no taxi for me and a solitary 2 mile slog home from the city centre to my parent’s house if I’d missed the last bus.

My preferred route for said slog took me around the outskirts of a poorly lit park where… oh, you know where this is going. One time, the one fucking time I decide to try and trim 3 minutes off my travel time and I get grabbed from behind.

As I’m screaming getting dragged off the path the dude puts his hand, or his arm, whatever, across my face and I bite. Deep. Until tooth scraped bone. I was rewarded with multiple blows to my face, skull and shoulders, but also release. Though it was only temporary - he grabbed my arm and turned me, tripping backwards onto my butt. As I lay sprawled and he approached, I lashed out as best I could. Somehow I managed to plant the tip of my boot into his crotch with all the force I could muster. He collapsed howling and I wasted no time; I ran for my life outta that park, blood dripping down my chin like a goddamn vampire.

I’ve never quite forgiven myself for such stupidity; I could blame booze but in all honesty I don’t remember having much more than a slight buzz on at the time. Just a dumb fucking decision I lucked my way through by the skin on my teeth. I suffered some small amount of PTSD and carried a knife with me for years afterwards.

Anyway, here’s to fighting fucking dirty.   (ง •̀_•́)ง

… and that was the last time grandpa fox tried to stop fox.ferro from going through that park…

Fuck yeah! :high-five:

Great stoy dude! I hope you can now look back at it as a cool sea story from back in the bad old days and not something deeply traumatic.

There are a lot of great stories here, thanks!

I only got in one real fight, in 5th grade where he punched me in the ear and I hit him in the face. Nothing after that other than some shoving and posturing - which I’m happy about. I’m not a big fan or people feeling like it’s Ok to assault others. This doesn’t t fall into the spirit of the question, but for some reason I thought this and haven’t told it to anyone in a long time. When I was in college and on my girlfriend’s front porch saying our goodnights after going out. A car pulls up and some guy yells “Who the fuck are you?” So as any self-respecting Long Island resident would do I yelled back “Who the fuck are YOU?” They didn’t pull away and then eventually yelled something else so I went over to the car. When I went to the guy’s window I could smell the booze. There were two or three other passengers, I don’t recall. I asked what the problem was and one of them said he thought it was his girlfriend I was with. The driver got out of the car and I said something like, “well, it’s not so I guess you’ll be leaving” and I kinda patted his shoulder. He starts freaking out saying not to touch him and saying they have a gun in the car. I started thinking “oh shit”, but I was trying to stay calm and wondering what I should do if the others get out of the car. So I calmly said, “look man, me and my girlfriend are just minding our business and you start yelling shit at us”. He just looks at me and said OK and got in his car and left. I don’t know if he really had a gun in the car, but I was happy I didn’t find out.

That’s hilarious :-) My wife and I were dropping off my son and his female friend at the movie theater last weekend. When we pulled up I hear my wife say “Do you guys want to get fucked up after the movie?” I’m thinking “I didn’t really just hear that”. I turn and look at them in the back seat and they both have confused looks on their faces. I said, “You didn’t really just say that did you?” She said “Say what?” My son said " You just asked us if me want to get F’ed up after the movie" and she replies “Do you want to get PICKED up after the movie?”. That isn’t what the 3 of us heard, so I’m not sure how she managed to get us all to think she said what we heard. She isn’t someone who swears either, so it’s not like she would have done it as a joke or anything. Anyhow, we all laughed pretty hard.