My brother Matt and I engaged in
glorious combat all the time growing up. Sometimes it was because we
antagonized each other, sometimes for fun, sometimes we were just
bored. I think it was so we got in less trouble that punches to the
face were generally considered taboo but we did a lot of body
punching, choking, wrestling and kicking. Somewhere between eighth
and ninth grade we started in with just a regular fight, about what I
cannot remember, and it quickly spun out of control into a full-blown
fight. I know I had tried choking him into unconsciousness at some
point and that Matt punched me in the face and then we were into the
no man's land of the punishment heavy no-holds-barred fighting. We
were both pretty roughed up and bleeding when my mom got upset at the
level of violence she was seeing and she tried to break us up. She
had just been yelling and then tried to get in between us the whole
time calling us savages and barbarians. She got us separated in the
hallway of our mobile home and was telling us both to knock it off
while holing us at arms length. I said something about Matt and he
reached around my mom and punched me square in the nose and bloodies
it and made my eyes water and we were back in the thick of it as we
pushed my mom out of the way. Matt was bleeding from his face holes
quite a bit and at one point he gathered a mouthful of blood and
saliva and spit right in my face while I was trying to hold him down.
I don't exactly remember why or how we stopped but we were both
pretty battered and my mom was furious at us and wanted my dad to
lower the boom on us. The boom was surely lowered but I don't
remember exactly it landed on but I am sure it was unpleasant. The
real fallout of our first really real fight was that we both lost the
taste for it and since then I don't think we have fought either
physically or even yelling one more time. I think by the time we were
both big and strong enough to cause some real damage and pain we
didn't need anymore of that and we hung up the gloves, or I guess the
bare knuckles in this case, for good.
