The Brute Force

Here I lay down all the details of the fight that I got in when I was in the seventh grade. I was eleven years old.

There was this girl at school named Jennifer. She was fairly new and she was quite smallish for her age. I have never been smallish for my age. In fact, I've probably been clinically obese (according to Y-Be-Fit standards) since I was a baby. Also, I grew up with four brothers who made me strong. My parents would pit me against them in wrestle matches for Family Home Evening when we were growing up, for heaven's sakes!

Well, Jennifer just happened to tell Jamie (a boy---and one of the biggest losers in our jr. high) that I had a crush on him. She did it to be cruel. Suddenly he was following me around and stuff, asking me on dates (during my childhood, the dating at 16 rule was usually a convenient way to get out of dates that I didn't want to go on). So one day I called Jennifer a very bad word that may or may not have been "bitch."

I forgot all about it, actually and so, three days later, when Jennifer and her two hench women, Amanda and Some Other Girl Whose Name I Can't Remember, came to me and told me that we were going to fight, I had no idea why. They informed me that the fight would take place in behind the Archie Dillon Sportsplex, where all high school and jr. high school fights took place because of its central location. I lied to them. I told them that I couldn't go and fight after school because of my piano lesson. I had no piano lesson. I hadn't had a piano lesson since I was 4 years old. But for some reason, it was the first thing that popped into my mind as a Good Excuse to get out of fighting Jennifer at the Sportsplex.

The girls resheduled the fight. "Would Monday work for you, after school? We think we have some time between 3:30 and 3:40."

It gave me time to think about how to get out of it. And it gave the rest of the jr. high time to anticipate the fight and plan to also be free from 3:30 to 3:40 on Monday after school. Over the weekend I cried to my mother about what to do. Her response was simple. I just did not fight. Period. No fighting. It seemed easy enough.

So Monday after school, I got on the bus while half the school went over to wait for me at the Archie Dillon Sportsplex. Jr. high school students can be so unforgiving. These people---these bus mates---who I thought were my friends---started making fun of me. All of them were chanting and teasing and taunting and mocking me! They humiliated me during the 20-minute bus ride home.

I had the evening to cry to my parents about it. My mother, still very serious, told me that I did the right thing and that I could not, under any circumstances, go and fight this girl. My father, amused by the whole thing, told me that there is nothing the brute force can't fix. My mom scolded him for even saying it and he laughed and repeated it again before taking it back. But the damage was already done. My mind had latched onto it as a sort of mantra: There's nothing the brute force cannot fix.

The next day at school, I endured another six and a half hours of taunting and teasing for not having gone to the fight the day before. So I said I'd go.

After school, I walked, surrounded by a hoarde of students, to the Sportsplex. Various boys reminded me not to fight like a girl---keep my fists closed, they said. Justin, a boy I had never even been that good of friends with, reminded me that I was a girl, so scratching and slapping were totally valid moves, as was hair-pulling. I didn't pay too much attention to him, because I figured that I was going to the Sportsplex to talk my way out of it and not have to fight at all.

But the masses that were there! High school students, jr. high students! It seemed that everyone had heard about the fight! Jennifer and I ended up surrounded by everyone else in our own little "fighting ring." I told her that I wasn't going to fight her and I was certainly not going to make the first move. She stood there, tiny before me. She said that she wouldn't make the first move, either. It was ridiculous since she was the one to schedule the fight in the first place. Suddenly, all the school kids (who'd seen more fights than I ever had) started pushing us towards each other so it's actually unclear who did make the first move, but suddenly we were fighting. I don't remember the actual fighting in great detail. There was scratching, punching, slapping, hair-pulling, name calling. And in the whirr of all this action, she had the never to call a "puffer break." Yes. Apparently people with asthma, even when they initiate a fight, have the right to call the fight to a halt to be able to try and start breathing again.

It was ridiculous. The shameful part (and this is something that I think I may have admitted once to someone else in all the times that I've told this story) is that I finally told her that her puffer break was over, and if she wanted to fight me, she'd better get back to it.

That's when Amanda stepped in to take her place. Now there was a solid girl. She was always one of the althetic over-achievers and she actually was actually a fair match for me. So we started fighting and there was a repetition of the scratching, punching, kicking, slapping, hair-pulling (lots of hair-pulling this time, I remember well).

It finally stopped when I took a step back and yelled, "Enough!" (This is the climactic moment, by the way. Imagine a swelling of music and then silence as I speak and teach everyone a very moral lesson.)

"Enough!" I yelled and turned around to see the masses crowded around me. "I will not fight anymore!"

It didn't satisfy Jennifer and her hench women. They said that we needed to "finish it." What exactly does that mean? I mean, did one of us actually have to die for the fight to be over? As it was, I'd lost quite a bit of hair.

At this moment, we introduce Sabrina, who came rushing out from the back of the crowd. Sabrina was an eighth-grader, and she had already had several counts of assault filed against her. Everyone who had any sense was afraid of her. She came into my fighting ring and faced my three opponents and said, "My friend said she didn't want to fight anymore. Now run." She took off after them and the three girls ran fast and screaming.

And that was the end of the fight. I got in trouble with my parents of course. I was grounded for a while. I remember taking a bath when I got home and finding tons of hair in the bathtub that washed loose from my scalp.

The next day at school, the three girls found me and told me that they didn't want to fight me anymore. Then they added, "You never told us that Sabrina was your friend." The truth was, I hadn't known she was my friend, either. We had participated in a Jump Rope for Heart competition when I was in the fifth grade and she was in the sixth. Who knew it would prove so useful years later?

As a sort of epilogue, the principal called us into his office later that day. He was a long-standing friend of my father's. He expressed his disappointment in us and even threatened suspension. He turned to Amanda and said, "I know your father, and I know that he wouldn't have supported behavior like this." Turning to Jennifer, he said, "I don't know your father, but I don't imagine that he would be happy about this. Then he turned to me and said, "And I know your father. And I know he wouldn't support behavior like this."

I said, "My father said there's nothing the brute force won't fix."

And although the principal denied it, I knew and he knew that my father would have said something exactly like that.