Choices

It was one of those nights where it was 1:30 a.m. and both Steve and I were more awake than we should have been at that time of night, so we were just talking about this or that.  One of the things that came up was a time when you found yourself at a road, a decision that you instinctively knew would define you.  One of his was in about 8th grade when he was having trouble with a bigger boy.  He said he remembers to this day the conversation he had with his dad about it, and his dad told him that he had to stand up, even if he got hurt, even if he was scared, he had to stand up and be prepared to give everything he had, he had to do that now, this first time, basically to become the man he wanted/needed to grow to be. Steve said he did, knees a little knocky, but he did--and the bigger kid backed down, which he said was a second and big life lesson about bullies.

I had a few more decision moments than he did, and I remember each of them with a lot more clarity than I remember most of my past.  Most of them I'll keep to myself, but I had one that had to do with fighting too.  I'd written about it before, so the short-ish version is that I was in an apartment with three other roommates and a visiting guy friend when a very large, likely high on something, VERY angry black man basically broke into our apartment and started screaming at and attacking me.  He had me pinned up against a wall with his (very big) fist back and aimed for my head when my tiny little roommate came out swinging her fists at him to get him away from me, so he threw her against the wall while I ran behind him.  At that moment I looked around for help.  My giant roommate and her guy friend were huddled around the corner in the kitchen watching everything with their mouths hanging open, scared to death.  Meanwhile crazy guy was about to pummel the girl who just came to my defense.  Looking at the two of them cowering around the corner disgusted me to my core, so much so that even though I figured I was about to get creamed, I knew I couldn't be that, couldn't be them. So I chose. I grabbed a board used to lock our sliding glass deck doors and I screamed at him to get out, and when he turned around and stared at me, I was pretty sure I was going to get that board taken away from me and get beaten with it, and my legs were wobbling, and I stood there and locked eyes with him, and I'm pretty sure he'd have knocked me into the hospital, because he wasn't just twice my size, and angry, he also wasn't...right...except someone else entered the fray and confused him enough that we got him out of the apartment and the door locked.  I'll never forget the moment I brought his attention back to me, the moment he locked eyes with me and I saw his rage and...wrongness...and I read his message that I was dead meat, and behind him I could see a 19 year old "man" cowering behind a cabinet, and I'd grown up Baptist, man, where boys and girls were on different sides of the bus, where people were polite in public, where girls wore dresses every day, where things like this didn't happen, and I couldn't have been more out of my element if you'd tried, but all I knew was I couldn't just run or I could never live with myself, couldn't be the person I wanted to try to be. So I was at least going to go down swinging, so to speak.  We all have defining moments of some kind, and Steve's dad was right--the first one sets the tone.  Once you make one cowardly choice, the next one is easier. Not all of the defining choices are about self-defense, of course, this is just one example.  I do wonder if at some point you get older and more...tired...worn down...and it gets harder again.

Meh.  Too melancholy for a pretty Saturday, isn't it?  Kaylee is doing her laundry, Steve's out at the airport, the cats are roaming the house, and me, I'm getting some stuff ready for the upcoming week, and figuring out life-altering choices like "What's For Dinner??"  ;)