You get to be a certain age and pretty much every day is an anniversary of some milestone event in your life. The situation that spawned this post AGGREGATE DAMAGE is coming up soon. It’s taken a while to process but it’s now picked through and filed away in a safe place. There is permanent damage from a retinal injury that wasn’t detected at first. It manifests in a permanent split image in my right eye so passing a driving test should be interesting. That’s the least of my concerns really.

The event came to mind in the wee hours of this morning. It was more a quiet contemplation of just how weird life can be. Who knows why it’s been so difficult to discuss? It may have been an attempt on my part to put it behind me. There is no shame or doubt but my physical response in the moment was one that only happened one other time in my life.

The details are pretty simple. It was a typical New York Story. Big drunk guy on the F train starts harassing an Asian man and trying to physically intimidating him. Yes, racist incidents are common in New York City. He has previously been harassing some girls who were far too young to be looking at, let alone making lewd comments to.

Would shit have kicked off at all had I not told him to stop? That’s a hard call. It’s too late to second guess all that anyway. I told him to cut the shit and his attention turned to me. Truth be told, I was hoping that my size would be some kind of deterrent because fighting is not really my wheelhouse. My size, as it turns out, meant nothing. He wasn’t any smaller. He had also been been drinking heavily, so even a magistrate agreed that as soon as I spoke out it was on. A witness did make a statement that he thought I would never strike back and maybe I should have just taken the asswhipping in the place of the other potential victim and left it. That’s not what happened

His list of injuries, to the best of my memory from what a lawyer reported to me: fractured orbital, concussion, 14 stitches, broken hand. torn ACL and a mouthful of broken teeth.

Do NOT get it twisted.

I am not proud.

I’m not ashamed either. It is what it is. I don’t know why it’s been foremost in my mind today. Upcoming anniversary maybe. I don’t know. It was my physical response that disturbed me in the days immediately following. It was the rage, and as I said, it’s only happened in one other time in my life. Triggers are there for everyone. This one was a major trigger, that pullswitch between rational and animal.

Color me contemplative.