How Far Are You Willing To Walk Down This Road?

Fear comes from thinking too much about what's gonna happen if you do this, or do that, or don't do this, or don't do that. A fearless street fighter doesn't think about all this when he suddenly got the urge to knock your teeth out because you happen to look at him longer than a few seconds. He's gonna go straight to your table to deal with you before he leaves town.

If you're smart, or an experienced bar-room brawler, you'd know right away that when a guy is heading straight to your table looking as if he's got a serious case of indigestion there's a big chance that he is not coming to see you to sell insurance policy or water filter. This is the time to be at your most alert and you'd better put your stronger feet on the legs of the table, ready to push it like a projectile to slam against his thighs, or his hips. If you're lucky the table will slam hard enough to cause serious damage to both his thighs to momentarily paralyze him before you lift the table from your end to smash his body with it, sending him flat on the floor while you push your entire weight on him to crush his rib cage.

Of course the fight could go another way. He may have the first chance to push the table against your chest since you took your own sweet time to get up. The table may slam against your chest to leave you breathless for a couple of seconds. While you double over to catch some air, he's already on top of you to hammer with the back of his fist a spot a few inches down your neck behind your head. This blow never fails to black anyone out cold. If he's good, he'd drive a chopping kick straight down your back along the spine to finish you off. All because you stared him in the eye a few seconds longer, and all because you happen to be at the wrong bar at the wrong time with the wrong friends. It's a foolish reason to get into a fight like this but men have been known to brawl over issues more foolish than this like, my woman is prettier than yours, or why did you stare at my woman that way? Or I've got more marbles than you, or tok mung, ayoh mung, mok mung. When a fight is about to go down, you don't want to end up with wrong friends.

I say wrong friends because if you are with friends who are bar-room brawlers themselves there's a big chance that you can leave all the fighting to them, and stand guard to watch out and stop the onlookers who may feel excited to join the fray. Usually a fight like this will last between 30 seconds to a full minute. Of course in cowboy movies something like this can last half a day, and you can bet your ear that women who wait table in the bar, in their frill skirts and flowers in the hair, to join in the brawl to smash the head of an unlucky guy with a whisky bottle. But this is not a movie and you'd better listen to a guy who has been through this all his life when he tells you to leave the place the fastest you can before the bouncers start on you, or before patrol cars with blue lights blazing and siren blasting start to flock the place as if a party has just started and everyone is invited.

Maybe you have been in a lot of fights as a kid at school, or during your teen age years growing up in a boarding school or some place I've never been like a university. I don't mean to get you all excited to go look for someone to start a fight with but if you ever find yourself in a tight situation, you'd better stop to think for a few seconds what's gonna happen if you decide to fight, or walk away. You may wanna risk being called a coward if you decide to walk away from trouble but in my book it's better to be called a coward than to end up dead somewhere in the gutter behind an alley. You see, a street fight doesn't end like the last page of a book. In fact a fight doesn't end at all. It will get bigger, with the guy you knocked out coming after you with his friends armed with iron rods, parangs, knives and other weapons which they can easily buy from a hardware store like Brazilian machete. Or heavy duty Cold Steel ax that can split open a skull in several pieces. I am no scholar but I believe this is how men get all excited and motivated to spend hours and good money to develop bigger and bigger weapons that can annihilate everyone from the face of the earth. A fight may start with fists flying in all direction, and then it gets bigger with knives, parangs, ax, guns, bombs, C4, tanks, fighter planes, aircraft carriers, nuclear bombs and what have you.

If you happen to know a guy who's into martial art and he's all hot inside to start a fight over simple issues you can bet your index finger that he's just joined a martial class to learn a few basic things like horse riding stance, single punch, inner block or high section block. Most grand masters are people who refuse to get into a fight unless it is a matter of honor such as to defend the modesty of his woman, or religion or things he holds sacred like his head, or his nose.

I believe war is started by a guy who doesn't want to stop to think because he has to win, or because he thinks winning is everything. When it comes to a fight I always ask myself, how far do I want to walk down this road? Being called a coward doesn't hurt me none because it is always better to be a lion inside and a lamb on the outside, than to be a lion on the outside but a lamb inside. Whatever that means. You know how it is, grand masters are famous for being a poet or a philosopher but you can bet your left ear that they are as blur as you with things that sound good on the outside but mean nothing on the inside.