Friday Night At The Fights

Yesterday Ginny took the day off work so she could be with me while I put the final touches on the Glog manuscript and afterwards we went out on our usual Friday Night Date.

We chose to go to a favorite Italian place where I was a good boy and ordered an antipasto salad instead of something yummy. As we ate we became engrossed in conversation about a murder mystery she’s reading, Coffin Corner, an old Dell Shannon Lieutenant Mendoza mystery.

The area around the restaurant is a Friday night haunt of a couple of hundred young people all so intent on individualism that they all appear to be in uniform – chains, black clothes, body piercing, tattoos, spiked green-dyed hair-dos.

The guys dress weird too.

After supper we sat on a brick wall across the street smoking, watching the parade of young people, and talking still about Ginny’s mystery.

Between us and our car a fight broke out.

Much screaming, cursing, pounding and grunting as 20 or 30 of the uniformed individualists clustered around the combatants. One guy banged another’s head on the hood of a parked car as they kicked, panted, screamed curses, and threw punches, then rolled on the pavement biting and tussling.

To me it was obvious that neither guy knew diddle squat about fighting. No weapons were evident. I didn’t think either guy was capable of really damaging the other. Even though the opponents were in their 30s, it looked more like a school yard brawl than a street fight

I briefly contemplated walking over to the crowd and speaking peace and grace and the love of Jesus Christ and all that good stuff -- You know the drill: Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall butt in -- but I felt no prompting of the Spirit and I was more focused on listening to Ginny so I said “Screw ‘em. Let the bastards fight”.

Ginny had taken out her cell phone thinking to call the cops, but she hesitated then slipped it back into her purse. “I don’t think I’m going to call,” she said, “Let them sort this out themselves”.

Aren’t we quite the Christian activists?

We finished our smokes then crossed the street and passed by on the other side (Hey, that’s biblical) as the fight escalated, more people joined the ruckus, and the crowd of onlookers swelled.

I locked Ginny in our car before going around to my side.

And then we drove away and spent the rest of our evening at home in peace and companionship and love while Ginny finished reading her mystery.