I once got in a fist fight long ago. It reached nearly mythical proportions in my High School. Most of my fights up till then, were with Bullies. Which usually ended up with me having black eyes, a bloody nose, and split lip...along with some nasty looking bruises on my ribs. I was four foot ten inches in High School and weighed 120 pounds. So I was fairly easy to pick up and toss into a wall locker, nearby garbage can, and I even got tossed into the occasional ceiling fan.
I wasn't much of a fighter, but I hate bullies. And bullies don't respect anything except force.

So I launched myself at them- knowing full well the ass kicking was coming. And soon most bullies stopped bullying around me...they just didn't want to get their new clothes wrinkled. They called me crazy and left me alone.

But the legendary fight was different. My brother and Dad (both Champion Golden Gloves Boxers) tried to teach me how to fight. But turns out, I can usually take a punch...can't give one. If I hit just right, I might knock the wind out of a gnat.

So I turned to laughter to get out of fights. I got pretty good at that too. But then I had to fight a guy who had his own gang. He was a tough Italian kid. Already man sized with a mustache and child on the way...in Tenth Grade. Rumors abounded that he broke thumbs for the Longshoreman down at the lake for pin money.
And he decided he liked my girl.

So there we were sitting in a booth. My girl was on one side, with the door to the DQ right behind her. I was on the other side of the booth. We were just chatting away. In walks...I shall call him: Frank. He has his little gang of six or seven tough guys with him.
He sees her sitting there...she can't see him. He puts his hands on either side of her shoulder and slides his fingers down into the top of her blouse. She turned beat red...and the tears fell quietly.
"Why don't you leave this midget and go out with a real man, like me?!"
Everyone laughed. Not me. I smiled.

"You know what, Frank. Neanderthals would be embarrassed by your lack of evolution. (Nervous laughter from the other kids...but not Frank)
But you just scared a girl. A girl. What kind of a punk thinks he is tough scaring a girl?"

Now Frank got mad, and told me in no uncertain terms what he was going to do to me. I smiled up at him. (Heck I smiled up at everybody until I shot up to five foot six in Basic Training - and yes, I had to get a Waiver to join)

"Frank, I will make a deal with you (and I pulled out a quarter). We go outside, and flip this quarter. If it lands tails...you can ask her out for a date. If it lands Heads...I kick your butt all over this parking lot. And you don't bother us again."
Everyone laughed. Frank had tears in his eyes.
"Deal."

I held the quarter up again.
We went outside. Heck the whole DQ followed us out. There was a little grassy area with a picnic table...and that is where we went. I went over the rules. He laughed again.
"Just flip the coin little man."

I did. Intentionally flipping it twenty feet into the air. When he looked up to see the coin...I punched him as hard as I could in the neck.
He dropped and turned purple almost instantly.
There was stunned silence, but once they realized he was really hurt, most folks ran. Thank my lucky stars, there was a Nurse that stopped by the DQ after her shift for a shake.
She immediately started gently rotating his head from side to side. She glared at me.
"His neck is in spasm. You could have killed him. What's wrong with you?'
I just stood there. Staring. I didn't know that would happen. Ten minutes later and he could breathe on his own. (and man, I still couldn't stop shaking.)
He told the Nurse he was okay, but his neck was swollen.
He didn't even give me the stink eye. He just looked at me weird and walked away with the help of his buddies.
Three days later, people said I had killed Frank. Some versions had me knocking him out with a single punch. Some said I used some super karate move and laid him out with a roundhouse kick. Nobody seemed to remember the quarter.

I walked around looking over my shoulder for the next two weeks. And then, there he was at the DQ. His gang nowhere to be found. He called me over to his table. I thought he might shoot me, stab me, or beat the crap out of me. Because there is no World where I could take him on ...one on one...in any form of fight.
Turns out, he told me a little about his life. And it wasn't an easy one. He wasn't mad about me punching him in his neck. He brushed that off as just luck. What he wanted to talk to me about, was my remark about scaring girls. His Dad hit sisters and his Mom....and he hated his Dad for that. He had many physical altercations with his old man, either defending his sisters, or his Mom. And when I said he scared girls...it broke something inside of him.
He didn't want to be that guy.

He told me I was safe. And so was my girl. And that turned out to be true. He made sure nobody bothered us. He graduated a year ahead of me, joined the Marines, and I never saw him again. There is a life lesson, or two in there...but they escaped me for a long time. You never know the shoes someone else walks in.

And why that came to my mind tonight ...I have no idea.