The Fight Within

As I’ve said before, I cannot imagine wanting to kill someone, to love the idea like Squeaky did. The idea of taking a life is horrifying to me. Even if I was protecting myself or a loved one, I’d want to deter my attacker, not kill him/her.

That being said…

I totally understand the urge to be violent from time to time. There are a lot of assholes on this earth. I understand wanting to smack someone or kick them. To borrow The Bard’s words, at times, “my fingers itch.” But again, there’s that pesky desire of mine to stay out of trouble.

Many of my friends have heard of the altercation I almost had with “Candy” back in college. She was this fake as silicon girl who loved to smile and be saccharin to your face and then trash talk you the minute you turned your back. She’d always kiss up to me because I was quite close to several “popular” people in whose good graces she craved to get. However, being the dim bulb that she was, she’d often talk badly about me without checking to make sure I was out of earshot. And one night she’d done it one too many times. “Hi Shannon!” She gushed, grinning from ear to ear at a party. “Can I have a beer?”

“Why would I give you a beer when you were calling me names not 2 hours ago?”

“What are you talking about?!?!”

“As soon as I left Richy’s room I heard you starting in on me to Megan.”

“Oh my GOD! We’ve been through so much together, I would NEVER do that!!!”

“Candy you may think I’m as stupid as you are but I’m not; I know what I heard.”

The confrontation continued to escalate in true “Melrose Place” fashion until Candy started threatening to “kick my ass.” I told her to go ahead, explaining she'd have to throw the first punch, lest her rich lawyer daddy have grounds to sue me. (I wanted to be able to claim self-defense while messing up her neat little nose job; I certainly couldn't afford a lawsuit.) But as excited as I got, as much as I teased her to hit me, she didn’t. Finally, when a crowd of people had crowded around us, cheering me on to punch her pretty little lights out, she turned bright red, muttered, “Screw this!” and stormed out. I cannot tell you how disappointed I was.


Like I said, I understand the lure of violence, the DESIRE…

But the execution: the following through… that’s trickier.