Ask Lemmy

Nearly 20 years ago, first year of uni, living on my own in a big city.

I was riding a metro back home, messaging my then gf, when some dude grabbed and pocketed my phone. He had a friend with him. I asked him politely to give it back to me, he told me to go fuck my mum, so I started swinging.

I landed a few punches to each one before they started kicking me into a corner. They stopped and jumped out the metro at the next station and I did not dare give chase.

There were a few people in the metro who had seen everything, and no one had come to my help. In the heat of the moment, I may or may not have shouted a bunch of abuse at them which was very stupid and I regret.

Only once in my life. A bully (like Eric Cartman but taller) tried to show his strength to the school during recess and I was the designated victim: shy introvert and visually weak.

Everyone is surrounding us like a WWE cage match, watching because for some reason violence attracts idiots.

The fight starts with him kicking me as hard as he can in the thigh. There is one small problem though: my whole legs are hard as fuck maybe due to my good genetics. I don't feel anything and I don't move. The guy stops fighting as soon as he started.

High School, Self Defence, got arrested. School administration sided against me and call the cops. I was 17. School district then tried to expel me, but failed. Charges eventually got dropped. I ended up just hating school and authority¹, I just took the GED, I got high scores on it without studying (I mean it aint hard, just basically highschool speedrun via a test that takes like a few hours in total time, I know the stuff already). USA btw.

(¹I mean, who doesn't hate authority, that's like American tradition, lol)

I have to thank my mother for becoming a citizen and therefore I automatically derived citizenship (under the Child Citizenship Act), so I already had citizenship several years prior to this incident. I can't imagine the alternate-timeline of the possibility of being deported for a stupid school fight (I mean it's a hypothetical worst-case scenario, not sure if that would actually happen in practice for something that small, but then-again this was during trump term 1 so... 🤷‍♂️ anything could happen).

My Mandarin skills are like... 2nd grade level last time I've been in school in China, if I got deported, not sure I'd survive in that society, especially in this scenario, I'd be separated from my family that are probably gonna stay in the US and I probably get left behind.

Hypothetical alternate timelines always hurts my brain just thinking about them...

I think I had a few fights in like elementary school, I was always the one getting bullied for some reason... always on the defence, I never even provoked a fight. What the fuck is this life.

I get approached by weirdos on the subway/street and I have to shove them off. That happens 1-2 times a year. It never really escalates beyond a 'get out of my face' and a push.

A legit fistfight? Not since middle school. Had quite a few when I was 10-13.

Been physically hit or threatened with a weapon? Happened multiple times when I was dating, but I stopped doing that about 5 years ago. Almost always during a breakup or immediately before a breakup. I don't tolerate violent women in my life. I can't really tell people this though, because people immediately assume a woman threatening to stab you for breaking up with her means you are the bad guy. Sexism is wild.

I got attacked by a mentally ill guy having some sort of freak-out: He came up, told me he was stressed out, then started punching me in the arm. I backed up just out of punching distance but still in kicking distance, squared off, and warned him to leave. Someone who was with him kinda dragged him off before he could close the gap again so things didn't escalate past that, but my plan was to teep him in the guts/chest as hard as I could if he came at me again.

It happened when I was in kindergarten. I was sitting next to a friend on the bus and she got into an argument over something with the two boys across the aisle. Being that we were all 5 year olds, this quickly devolved into name calling. I particularly got into it with one of the boys and he threatened to punch me if things kept going. I though he was bluffing and we all continued with the verbal slap fight until the bus arrived at the school. At that point we got off and lined up to enter the building. Everything seemed to be over at that point. It was not. He delivered on his threat.

He was immediately taken to the principal and I was sent to the nurse. The next day all four of us had to apologize.

held my smaller dog in defense of my older dogs food he's a rowdy fella

The guy kicked my car because I agreed with the female cashier at the 7/11 that he should leave and so I got out of the car and he pulled a gun on me. I told him to fucking do it and instead he walked away.

Not sure if the time I was held at gunpoint by Chinese soldiers counts as a "physical altercation", so I'll say it was the time a "friend" decided his drug problems were all my fault and he headbutted me out of nowhere.

Somewhere over fourty years ago, i was fed up being bullied by a rich asshole in school again and again and again. So I hit him, just once, decking him and making him lose a number of front teeth.

At least he learned that lesson. He never bothered him again.

Last year. My four year old was throwing a tantrum, so I carried/wrestled her to her room until she cooled down and was ready to talk about it.

Outside of that, I was routinely kicked and punched every Tuesday and Thursday from 2016 to 2020 at Karate practice. You should've seen the other guy; not a scratch, as we were both wearing proper gear.

Outside of that, I broke a guys nose in self defense in 2006.

Up to you if this counts because no one was hurt. I regularly go to therapy and it's in a hospital. At the entrance there is a guard station and they ask anyone who enters where they're going and whatnot. I find this pretty stressful, as I don't like sharing private information like that. Sometimes I give answers that are a little evasive, like "treatment".

One time apparently he was a bit suspicious of me so he told me to told me to step aside as he let other people in. I was already late so this really stressed me out, there were like 6 people behind me and it felt like an eternity. It felt like such bullshit. So when I saw an opportunity I just tried to sprint through.

But dang, that guy knows how to do his job. He caught me and physically held be back like I was nothing. (And honestly I kind of am nothing, I don't exercise or anything). I might as well have tried to run through a wall. That was that, no hitting or anything. Eventually another guard came and cleared me to go inside.

As I said, I wasn't hurt and I don't think he was either, but it still was a physical altercation IMO. For what is worth, I was never angry at him as an individual, he was doing his job.. It's the policy that I'm angry about. It's a freaking hospital, about half the reasons you go there are reasons you don't want to say aloud. It's a dumb policy.

A few months ago a patient was mad I wasn't stopping the ghosts from raping his butt all night every night (I'm not even slightly kidding), so he snatched me up bodily and shook me around a little. I got loose pretty quick and my coworkers showed up and he got a looooot of drugs. Went to the urgent care for some muscle relaxers to keep my back from seizing up from it (not the first time this has happened, and won't be the last), took a nap, went back to work next Monday.

Employee health thinks it's bizarre how touchy I am about my back while not giving a fuck emotionally but like. The difference between this and my childhood is that my mom can't stop me from going to the doctor to keep CPS off our backs (it was my sister doing the hitting, my mother was just a rug sweeper).

He actually apologized when I came back to work. He had been too paranoid to take the meds initially (and we didn't force any until he got aggressive) but once he was lucid he regretted it. Honestly even when he was psychotic he was still a sweet dude he was just terrified of the ghosts that were raping his butt all night. Thankfully, hallucinations are like THE symptom of psychosis that all three generations of antipsychotic work well on so a lil haldol easily told those ghosts to go on somewhere.

When I was in the police, over 10 years ago.

I used to love a good scrap

Does hitting one's self count?

We were both banned for the following 2 years from that [un]fair.

Ftfy

Like two weeks ago with my younger brother when I was staying at my parents' places

Probably middle school. Not really an altercation, just the last time I can remember being violent. My school bully baited me with insults and the teacher ignored it. I snapped, picked up a student desk and hurled it across the room at him. Missed, but it scared him enough to shake him. I got a talking to by the school principal, but that bully never bothered me again.

In school as a teenager, about 20 years ago I think. I punched a bully twice my size straight in his face (not very hard since I'm weak, but he got pretty surprised). All the others knew not to fuck with me already because I'm autistic and lack some emotional stuff which can make me seem pretty unhinged, but he was the "ring leader" and got emboldened because I was also an outsider weirdo and that made me an easy target. I didn't get in any trouble because what would they even have told? lmao

Came close one time.

My mates and I were having an "end of course" party in a local pub. Now the city I was in at the time had two primary groups of folks that frequented pubs: university students and the Navy. My group was the latter.

Anyway, one of the former group decided to get into a shoving match with one of our group. Our entire table (about fifteen of us) all got up to throw down and the little shite quickly fucked off.

Just a few mild ones. Never swung on anyone but some altercations.

In highschool I was ready to throw down with a guy in a fancy car who couldn't find a parking space so he just parked in the middle of a one way parking lot to run into the bank. I yelled at him out my window and he came over to get in my face but when I got out I was like 8 inches taller. We yelled at each other face to face then went on our ways.

In my mid 20s at a Jesus and Mary Chain reunion show a drunk guy in front of me was double fisting some beers and started spinning around with his arms up splashing everyone. We made eye contact while he was spinning and I flicked him off. He took offense to that and dropped a beer and started pushing me. I was going backwards and reached out and my hand kinda grabbed his throat. His eyes went wide and I'm sure mine did too but before anything more happened some other people were pissed at him too and shoved him. He went flying through the crowd and we didn't see him again in our section.

Later that same show a mosh pit broke out and I was on the edge of it. No one seemed pleased this was happening and i had shoved the dudes back in pretty agressively to get them away from me causing at least one of the thrashers to end up on the floor. The dudes in it were swinging extra hard forsomee reason and ended up hitting a chick on the edge of the pit in the face and I think breaking her nose. She was covered in blood at least. That was the last straw and the crowd descended on them. Security came in and broke it up.

I don't know what was up with that crowd. I expected a bunch of chill aging hipsters (and it was mostly that) but it seems quite a few people came in with different mind sets. I've been to legit hardcore and punk shows with a more polite crowd and where the thrashers weren't looking to hurt anyone.

Elementary school I think. Don't remember the specific instance, but I used to get into fights with another kid in my class.