Fightin' Words

I went out last night, bar-hopped all 2 bars in this tiny little burg, and ran into an old friend. Well, an acquaintance, I guess. She's always really nice to me and seems rather personable but she also seems like the type of woman you don't want to get upset with. You know the type. They fight at the drop of a hat for the tiniest of reasons. We were in a rather crowded room and I was always a bit leery, waiting for someone across the room to shoot a less than happy facial expression in her general direction, or as she may put it "give her a dirty look".

I have never understood people who fight. I can understand being so outraged that you feel moved to physical violence. But some people seem eternally primed to sock some stranger in the mouth. I think I was twelve when I first watched Road House and noticed that the tough-looking girl in the push-up bra did NOT get the hot bouncer in the end, but the smart and natural-looking lady doctor did. Also, all the men who actually seemed to like fighting came across as fumbling idiots while Patrick Swayze remained hot and unflappable. What did I learn from this? Fighting is unfeminine and makes you look dumb.

Maybe I think too much. Fighting words and dirty looks have never had much of an effect on me. If they're coming from someone I don't know then I really don't care what the opinion being expressed is. It's a stranger and their opinion is baseless. If it's a friend of mine, someone whose opinion may actually have some impact, then I'm generally more inclined to try to resolve the conflict. Either way, I don't like pain. Even if I clobbered my opponent (not likely) I would still hurt my knuckles. And probably take at least a couple defensive hits as well. Better to avoid conflict, at least of the physical sort. It causes less bleeding, results in less assault charges, and leads to a much more peaceful night out. Call me slut or cunt or whore, it really doesn't bother me much. They're all just nouns, and not even ones that I feel fit. As Dalton said, Cocksucker is just "two nouns combined to elicit a prescribed response."