It's Going, It's Going, It's Outta There! 5:7 (10/23/2002) in Keeping Safe

Sunday morning dawned foggy, and after breakfast again at Hobee’s, the class reconvened for the final day of the retreat.

At this point the class was fighting at full force and speed, the muggers were giving absolutely no quarter whatsoever, and there was almost no scripting at all for the fights. Indeed, on a couple of individual fights two muggers would be on the scene, as the second happened on the first being beaten up, and joined the fray after the first one was “knocked out”.

Following that series of fights, each student was offered a “custom fight”, where he could script the fight to address a hypothetical conflict, a psychological issue, or perhaps an event from the past to which he would like to rewrite the conclusion. The custom fights would be videotaped and then replayed during the lunch break, so that the students would be able to see just how far they had come in slightly less than two days of hard work. Following the replay, the videotape would be destroyed, to preserve the safe zone.

Twenty-eight years ago, towards the end of sixth grade, I was jumped and assaulted by a classmate and his sidekick, a younger boy in a lower grade. The assault took place on a second-floor walkway between the library building and a classroom building, at the entry to the classroom building. The classmate threw most of the punches, and the attack lasted between five and ten minutes, with no witnesses. I wrote about it in metaphor in the entry “I Defended a Boy Today”, and now I am able to say that I was the boy in that entry twenty-eight years ago.

For my custom fight, I chose to re-visit that long-ago assault. They came at me from behind, and I whirled to find them near me and closing fast. The classmate engaged, and this time I took his ass down. Then the sidekick, seeing his fallen leader on the ground, [in a departure from the original incident] engaged me as well - and I took him down too. I staggered to my feet from where I had tumbled after delivering the knockout hit to the sidekick, and the female instructor said in a soft voice, “you’re here now.” I staggered to the spot four feet from the head of the sidekick, scanned the area and said “LOOK”, then assessed the classmate and the sidekick and said “ASSESS”, then stamped my outside foot as hard as I could and screamed “NO!” I staggered over to “safety”, where my legs became quite wobbly, and sat down with my back against the wall. The assistant there sat down with me and asked me if I needed anything. I said, “Please hold me.” He gathered me into his arms, and then the dam broke.

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The last paragraph is where the sub-drop occurred. I still haven’t figured out if there was a way to have avoided it. [World-Pilot] 4/16/2009 10:46:39 PM

Last updated January 18, 2015