fight club

i'm not a bully... now

some kids might have called me one when i was younger. i wasn't so much a bully but more the 'go to' person if someone was doing you wrong in the playground and the problem needed fixing. debra copped it this way. she'd been teasing my second-best-friend janice and i was called upon 'to get her'. so after school as debra was walking across the quadrangle i whacked her over the head with my wantirna heights primary school school bag.

in most cases this would have been the end of it... but in this instance, her mum was waiting to pick her up from school and saw the whole thing happen. when her mum yelled out i took flight and bolted in the opposite direction... and she took off after me. i knew that quadrangle like the back of my hand due to daily blood-sport bouts of 40/40 so there was no chance she was going to catch me on my own turf. i ducked and weaved through the bushes and adventure playground like a wet jack russell that'd managed to escape its bath.

but while i escaped debra's mum... i didn't escape the principal's office the next day. but what was funny is that the principal understood why i'd done it and didn't even call my mum. it seems that debra's nastiness wasn't only directed at janice... and at wantirna heights primary it was ok to take the law into your own hands.

fast forward 5 years later to wantirna high and once again i find myself needing to protect janice's honour. this time we're putting our books away in the year 9 locker bay and maria (head of the home girls) pushes janice head first into her locker as she's walking past (all because they were both in love with the head home boy). i see this happen and slam maria back into the lockers on the other side... and then there's this big stand off between MARIA - HEAD OF THE HOME GIRLS and ME - YEAR 9C FORM CAPTAIN.



at this point i'm not sure what to do... maria calls her homies over and keeps saying "that fuckin scrubber just hit me" and i try to defuse the situation by mocking her and tapping my chest like the 'real' home girls do in american movies. luckily the bell rings so it ends with an aggressive shoulder bump as we both head to our respective classes. hard core wanny style;)

so yes... i was never really a starter of fights... nor would i feel the need to fight if someone teased me... but it seemed i had no hesitation to take someone down if they messed with someone i cared about. bully? a bit... tonka tough? my first instinct would be to run;)

it is true that as a kid i was obsessed with action and martial arts movies. i did my year 8 english assignment on van damme (the only reason i was allowed to was because miss dight thought he was a spunk) and i turned my backyard cubby house into an arnold schwarzenegger shrine. at the time i thought i had a crush on him but i figured out later that i just wanted to be him:



fast forward another 5 years and my ability to fight got a little more sophisticated when i took up karate. but after 3 or so years of that i got sick of the kata (detailed patterns of movements, like trying to learn a dance... which i suck at despite my talented friend renegade's expert tutelage) and just wanted to focus on the kumite (sparring)... which is why i now box!!

there's something totally addictive about training with stinky, hairy, sweaty men 3 times a week... a certain kinda loyalty and respect that reminds me of spending time with my dad and uncles at football and motorbike meets as a kid. i'm not the only girl at the boxing club but i think we all get off on the no bullshit, grueling slog of group training at our rundown 'rocky' style gym... it's all about instinct and determination and not wanting to slack off while everyone else is busting their arses. and the pain is real... there's a bit of that fight club masochism for sure.

it's funny... wheels and i have started our own fight club recently. we're not dickheads and would never get involved in a glassy brawl (a dyke bar) or anything... but we've started punching each other (mostly when we get drunk) in a playful but not-so-soft kinda way. i'm sure someone would put it down to the same reason people peel the labels off bottles of coopers... but we're buddies and it's a good way to let off steam!

the whole sex / fighting analogy is an interesting one though. and i don't mean that in a creepy way. i reckon it's true that both are about instinct and body language and timing and interpretation... less head more heart... intuition over tricks... haha... i'm crapping on... we've all got tricks.

watch this video. it's frickin cool: