Post your tough guy moments here

[sniffa]

There's several threads/posts going about the "Canadian Bus Chopper" (Bi-Baby TM) and the cowardly reaction of 37 bus riders who didn't save the beheaded Aborigine. Some people think they would have saved the kid, or at least taken down the killer, whether the kid was dead or not.

So, what are your real life experiences that are similar, or even deadly for you?

Here's just a few of mine (some have been posted on DU - mostly in the Lounge, so that why it's here)

- the incident I wrote about a month or so ago about the drug deal gone bad, with three totaled cars, a pound of weed, a gun, and amazingly no dead/seriously injured people involved in it. I initially ran to try and help the old man who I thought had to be dead.

- a bicyclist was struck by a car about 10 feet in front of me. The rider was wearing a helmet, but his brains ended up on the pavement. I immediately ran out into the street to help him, but thankfully, there was an actual doctor who beat me there (as I only have First Aid training I've thankfully never had to use prior).

- I was once jumped by a mob of kids with weapons. My response was to immediately drop to the ground and curl up in a ball while I was pistol-whipped, stomped, and beaten with various bricks, rocks, sticks, etc. I survived that with only large lumps on my skull and severely bruised ribs (I protected my grill throughout).

- I attended the (1996?) Hemp Fest in Boston and it was one of the most violent shows I've ever attended. I witnessed one person break his neck and his head was turned almost entirely around. I cringed, and felt nauseous. At the same show, there was fight going on that I approached to get an up close view of... two guys were wrestling around over some object, and I finally noticed that they were fighting over a handgun and I immediately did an about face and started tomahawking my way out of there as I didn't want to get accidentally shot.

- I once hit the wall on Storrow Drive (below the overpass near Harvard Stadium) as a backseat passenger in a car going well over the speed limit. I blacked out, and was awakened by the driver (who had gone through the windshield) who was covered in blood. Despite his bad situation, he went right into rescue mode trying to get everyone out of mangled car as the car was smoking bad and starting to catch fire. I was the only person in the vehicle who didn't have any injuries, and as I was awakened and got out of the car, I thought I was dead because I felt no pain (and everyone in the car had broken bones and/or was covered in blood). I refused to get in the ambulance as I was in complete shock and took off walking some miles down Storrow.

- an altercation with "one" person turned into about 20+ people trying to pound on me, and I miraculously not only survived, but didn't get much of a scratch as I went all psycho (dirty) fighter before finding safety beneath a car.

- when I was a kid, one bully thought it would be funny to drown me. I still don't know how I survived that as I finally gave up the fight and was inhaling water.

There are much more, but these are some of my "tough guy" moments and my responses - each one different.

Your reaction is never what you'd normally think it would be.

[TroglodyteScholar]

1. Hmmm

Back when I was married, I had to squash a bug or two. Yech!

[LostInAnomie]

2. I peed on a dog's head once.

I was 7 and the dog had my cat chased up a tree. I decided that the only way to save my cat was to piss on the dog's face. It worked.

[ScreamingMeemie]

3. I punched a policeman in the gut the day I lost my husband.

Because I could see him and they wouldn't let me go to him.

[Fran Kubelik]

33. Oh fuck.

Oh damn. :hug:

[ScreamingMeemie]

37. It wasn't fair of them and it is one of the many things I will never

forgive that idiotic police dept. for.

[Fran Kubelik]

44. That's just awful.

:hug:

[LeftyMom]

4. I beat up the teenager who undressed my sister and her best friend*, and he lost a testicle.

Which doesn't sound all that impressive until I mention that I was eight at the time. If I have to fight I fight dirty.

*It's probably worth mentioning that she's slow.

[Kali]

5. for clarity: I am female.

I decked a big drunk Mexican at a baile in a small town in Chihuahua. My friend (also female) and I had gone out a ways from the building to find some bushes, if you know what I mean. You don't go to the bathroom without a male escort in these circumstances but we had been drinking a fair amount of beer (possibly another no no) and had to go.

We got followed by a gang of borachos and my friend was kind of panicking about it - I told the guy not to touch us, loudly, several times and he still came towards me while another one grabbed at my friend. So I punched him in the face and knocked him to the ground.

Everybody was so shocked (especially him!) the we just walked away. Pretty wild.

[madeline_con]

10. So, this was a roving band of rapists? n/t

[Kali]

43. might have been

but more likely just drunks trying to take advantage of the situation

definitely some cultural miscues happened!

[flvegan]

6. I've done quite a bit of open rescue.

My liberations are the only examples I'm really proud of. I've hurt a few folks, and although it might have been for the right reason, I kind of cringe when I think about them.

You are right though. Your reaction may not be what you'd expect. Adrenaline has that pull on a person.

[sniffa]

9. Exactly so

The instances I posted each had a different response. Sometimes, I react as a hero, other times I panic, and other times I just react in self-preservation mode. Looking at what I posted, it seems the older I get, the less I panic. :shrug:

I love what you do by the way. :hug:

[DS1]

7. I fell off a house

brushed myself off and got another beer

:thumbsup:

[sniffa]

13. Yeah, but it was a Smurf house

Did you kill any Smurfs in the fall?

Smurfs are an endangered species, y'know.

[DS1]

15. The fact that they are endangered keeps me up at night

There's only a few more to go, however.

Praise Jesus amen!

[LeftyFingerPop]

8. I have read the threads pertaining to this...

and I have been thinking about what PERHAPS I would have done.

Reading about this horrid incident has upset me.

Putting myself in that situation as a passenger:

My natural inclination, based on past experiences, is to move toward a person that is being hurt in an attempt to help. However, if it was obvious that there was no chance to help the young man being stabbed (the damage was already too severe), I probably would not be inclined to try to take down the individual unless there was a real lucky "in". If he were swinging a large knife wildly, and the person was harmed beyond repair, I would not attempt to jump the guy.

Instead, my focus would probably be attempting to get other people out of the way, as well as trying to save my own ass.

All of this is hypothetical of course, because there are way too many variables, and everything would be happening so fast.

The "fight or flight" decision is instinctual, rather than thought driven.

Because of this, I think it is ridiculous to call the other passengers "cowards" for not intervening.

You do what you do, and it is not always a conscious decision.

[madeline_con]

12. I keep thinking I'd look for something to hit the attacker with.

Something large, maybe an armrest? :shrug:

[LeftyFingerPop]

16. Perhaps...

That may be reasonable...but again, I feel that most people would be so shocked, they initially would not believe what they were seeing. This shock would probably cause hesitation, if only for a few seconds. By that time, the poor guy would probably be obviously dead.

No idea what I would actually do...but I keep thinking that I would try to protect myself and others by yelling at people to get the hell away.

[madeline_con]

17. Absolutely. they'd be so freaked, just getting those who

would be no help out of the way could be a feat in itself.

I keep seeing the guy busily hacking away, and wonder if I wouldn't just drop said armrest and haul ass if he turned and looked at me after I clocked him.

Once you hit a guy like that, you have to keep on hitting.

[LeftyFingerPop]

19. All I can say is that...

the whole situation is one of the most frightening things I have ever heard. Probably because you would not expect this to occur where and when it did.

[flvegan]

22. That's why you don't keep hitting him

you attach yourself to him from behind with your arm under his chin and you don't let go. The choke is the most underrated offensive maneuver. Well applied, you get to play God.

[madeline_con]

27. Imagine if you will a knife strike to someone who has attached

themselves to your back. Not difficult. He;d have to be ghit in the head repeatedly with a blunt instrument until he lost conciousness.

[flvegan]

29. Your answer is why a good self defence class is a must.

[madeline_con]

32. Barring that, practice swinging heavy objects.

I think it's kind of weird how we have 20/20 hindsight. I'm sure the passengers were not believing what they were seeing.

[flvegan]

40. I agree with you.

So tough to sit here and say "I'd have done this or that"

When you watch someone get decapitated, I know that I'd at least spend a few moments vomiting.

[bicentennial_baby]

42. That's what I heard on the CBC interview this morning...

They asked the passenger who was helping to keep the doors shut how he felt when the suspect was waving the head in front of them and then dropped it...He said: "I got sick"

Can't blame him.

[sniffa]

25. The point of my OP

is that in many different scenarios, I reacted in different ways.

You don't know how you'll react. I've become more "heroic" as I've aged (I didn't list the moments in chronilogical order) but I can't say I'll react in a "heroic" fashion even now. You react how you react.

[Schema Thing]

18. It makes me want to travel with a brick

[Gormy Cuss]

31. "Perhaps" is the operative word.

As sniffa pointed out in the OP, we have no clue how we would have reacted in that situation. We know how we've reacted in the past to stressful situations, we'd like to think we would do the right thing, but we don't know for certain until it happens. My own life experiences tell me that I have no fucking clue how I would have reacted on that bus.

[bicentennial_baby]

11. I'm glad you're not dead, Husband...

And me, I just challenge drunken Irishmen to fistfights...small potatoes, that.

:loveya:

[Schema Thing]

14. I was working in the men's locker room of a gym facility

attached to a large hospital. Doctors and staff worked out there, but also rehab patients.


Around the corner of a row of lockers came shuffling veeeery slowly a man who couldn't have been a day under ninety. Just as he turned the corner, right in front of me, his loose fitting briefs (which was all he was wearing as he'd just come from the shower I assume) fell down from his waist to land around his ankles. He stopped his forward shuffle, looked sort of confused as to what to do next.....


.... and I reached down and pulled his underwear up and into place for him. There wasn't no way now how he was ever going to have been able to bend over to get them himself, and any other scenario would have involved at least 5 minutes of him getting his feet out, somehow getting to the ground to pick them up, sitting on a bench to get them back on...

He said thank you.


I feel like I deserve some kind of medal for that.

[Pierre.Suave]

20. I survived my time in the Marines

that has to count for something.

[jobycom]

21. I posted in GD.

Other than that, I'm a wuss. Although I have jumped in the middle of fights to break them up, and I once pulled a Doberman off an Irish Setter.

[City of Mills]

23. Jumped by a gang outside a convenience store

The day after I graduated high school, ended up surrounded by 7 or 8 gang bangers. They were just looking for somebody to beat on to impress each other i'm sure. Anyways one engages me in some intelligent dialog "You gotta fucking problem? You gotta fucking problem with me?" So I tell him I don't know him and while I'm talking, the guy to his right rushes me and shoves me over a guy in back who had kneeled in back of me (i'm sure they've been practicing that move) - I go head over heels and scramble to my feet just in time for the first guy to punch me in the face. It didn't faze me at all though, I don't even think I flinched. My adrenaline had kicked in. He threw another punch and hit me again, again I didn't even feel it. I threw a left and missed, and then one guy to my left threw a karate style kick at me which missed. At this point everything was surreal, I had no idea how I suddenly ended in a fight...but then something happened - the guy threw another karate kick and I caught his leg. Using it to throw him off balance, he ended up falling down with my weight on top of him. He hit head first and started screaming, which caused the other gang bangers to suddenly take off. I got up, startled, and the guy got up from the ground and staggered off. The whole episode must've taken been about a minute or two but felt like much longer.

[Shine]

24. Jesus, sniffa. My life sounds so fuckin' tame compared to yours!

I'm not worthy of this thread. :rofl:

Oh, OK: Last year I participated in a major endurance cycling event. 129 miles, 5 mountain passes, with 15,000 ft of climbing...all in ONE DAY. I did the whole thing on my first attempt. It took me all fuckin' day, but I did it, dammit. I hit my fastest speed EVER going downhill on my bike: 46.4 mph.

That was pretty bad-ass.


I also walked about 20 yds on hot coals with my bare feet when I was 8 mos pregnant.


I like extreme physical experiences, but I don't tend to get into physical conflicts very often, which I think is a good thing.

[bicentennial_baby]

26. Um, sweetie, you're pretty badass

:D

:loveya:

[RoyGBiv]

28. Hrrrmmm ...

I started to blow this off, thinking I don't have any as I am heavily into self-preservation, but then some synapses opened up, and I realized I do. Your final comment means more than it says. You don't know how you'll react in any given situation. In fact, you most likely react in a way that runs counter to every outer manifestation of your personality with which you or anyone else is familiar. Most incidents like this in which I've been involved I never think about because it doesn't seem like me.

Hell, just writing that small paragraph I thought of half a dozen. I'll just mention two, in the order they came to me.

When I was a kid (about 14 I think) I was riding my bike down a street and saw the neighborhood bully holding a kitten by the neck and spinning around in a circle, I supposed trying to break the cat's neck. I was probably 100 yard away from him when I realized what he was doing, and I have no current recollection of how I traversed the distance to him or how long it took. In my mind, it was instantaneous. This was a big kid, probably about six inches taller than me and bulking, who outwardly seemed to feel no pain. He'd beat up half the neighborhood at one time or another despite having bricks and even trashcans thrown at him in self-defense, and I was terrified of him. I also wasn't the best bike rider in the world, which seems irrelevant, but that bike was in fact my first weapon.

The phrase "fair fight" only applies to boxing and other organized sporting events where beating someone to a pulp is the goal. In these situations, the only "fair" is what lets you survive the encounter.

I remember only the end as my bike, with me on it, seemed to come out of the air and land with the front wheel smashing into his side. He went down. The cat went flying (and then ran off), while I jumped up off the ground where I landed, grabbed this kid by the neck and started flinging him around as best as I could ... serious adrenaline high. I then picked up a nearby 2x4 and commenced to beating him, at which point the kid's equally terrifying father came barreling out of the house to see who was wailing on his little monster. Seeing him coming, I grabbed my bike, immediately sped off, went searching for the cat (and didn't find it), and then sped home. I ran to my room, crashed hard from the adrenaline, and cried for a solid hour.

Tough-guy moments rarely end as such.

(The kitten did eventually show up at one of my friend's house, who brought it to my house, and it lived with either me or my mother for the next 16 years. Her name was Pepper.)

The other moment was more traditional. I ran a liquor store for a number of years, and there was this guy we called Crazy Harry who would haunt the place now and again. He was crazy for all kinds of reasons, which I won't go into, but he was best known for his sexual verbal abuse of young women. He walked into my store one evening. I'd had a particularly bad day with a number of run-ins with drunks and underaged kids, and my patience had reached its absolute limit.

Harry walked over to the shelf with the Crown Royal where also stood a collection of college-aged girls. (I immediately called the cops. He wasn't supposed to be in there and knew it, but he was known to be violent and carry knives in his boots.) I watched him closely. He seemed to be talking to them under his breath, so they quickly started to exit. He followed.

About the time the group got to where my counter was, he uttered something disgustingly profane, which inspired the girl to to turn around and say something profane back at him, at which point he called her a stinky ... use your imagination ... and grabbed for her shoulder. Then I snapped. I grabbed the baseball bat I kept behind the counter, launched *over* the counter, and whacked the fucker in the knees. He went down. The girls ran out and quickly came back in with a boyfriend who was probably underage and also probably a linebacker. He and I picked Harry up and threw him into the parking lot about the time the cops showed up.

I imagine the cops saved Harry several broken bones.

And I'm not proud of having to say that.

[DarkTirade]

30. I've only been in one real fight in my life

and it was started because A) This guy had been being a pain in my ass for several months, B) I had been having insomnia and I was not myself at the time, and C) He crossed the line from verbal to physical. Nothing serious, just touching. Not even shoving. But I lost it and decked him. This was back in 8th grade, so he did the typical "You and me after school" posturing and I just said, "Whatever. I'm getting off at my bus stop. If you wanna walk home from there, be my guest."

Long story short, it was a weak-ass fight. Neither of us really knew what we were doing. He tried to grab me and swing me around and I managed to brace myself and send him flying instead so his wrist was sore for the next week. He got a lucky hit in and broke my nose, so that was a sore for a couple of days. That's about it.

Well, okay, there were plenty of 'flight' responses back when I lived near two college campuses in Orlando and didn't have my own car. But that was all me dodging stupid and/or drunk assholes in cars who didn't think to look where they were going.

[Danger Mouse]

34. I kicked a kid in the stomach once for spitting at some girls.

...
EDIT: NOT AS AN ADULT, AS A KID!

[AlCzervik]

35. Only one real episode in my life that i think actually counts and one other that was just dumb.

but i didn't follow through with it which in hindsight i guess worked out for the best.

Anyhow my drunk ass dickwad stepfather came home from the Elks lodge in a drunken rage once again and went after my mom this time, usually he just went for yours truly and beat the shit out of me, this time i ran to the kitchen and got a big knife and was prepared to stab him to death. I didn't of course and i don't really know why, i could have killed him because i was so full of rage, like rage i've never had before and haven't had since, something in my 13 year old mind just snapped and i had reached my limit on getting my ass beat by this disgusting horrible bag of flesh.

My one other thing which is really stupid happened in old town Sacramento, a girl from work was moving away so we took her out and my friend Donna got shitfaced and somehow ended up in the middle of a gang fight, just kind of got stuck in the mob so i went and got her out which was scary as shit but no one else including her husband would go get her. Now when Donna and i go out we go to the movies or for coffee only because she is just one of those people that does not operate well when she's hammered.

[sniffa]

38. I love you

:hug:

Not enough hugs to give you but here's another.

:hug:

:loveya:

[AlCzervik]

39. Thanks, you're making me a bit teary eyed. I haven't thought about that whole thing in

a while but i guess it's always right there, up front in the good seats you know?


:loveya:

[Redstone]

36. I'd guess this situation, which is not at all as stupid as some of the other

things I've done:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=105&topic_id=7121019&mesg_id=7121093

Redstone

[Swede]

41. I went with a friend to retrieve her child from her ex.

When they were splitting up he told me it's either her or me as friends. I couldn't and wouldn't choose either,so he chose me to be his enemy. It got real nasty,real fast. I got death threats etc. He snatched his kindergarten son from school,the older brother ran home. The scariest thing I've ever done was knock on his door that night,to get Lyndon. It felt like there was a gun pointed at us the whole time. But we got him.

[regularguy]

45. Ugh. Just a few days ago

I caught a teenager stealing my daughters bike from our front yard. I followed him for a while and then sorta lost it. Threw him off the bike a pushed him around a bit. He was much bigger than me and I probably had about 30 years on him( at 17 or so he's *way* to old to be stealing a little kid's bike), but I had incoherent rage on my side. Anyway I got the bike back and chased him out of the neighborhood, but I still feel shitty about the whole thing.

[sasquatch]

46. What did TeenMidlo do?

:shrug: