The Moment That Never Came

Tonight I watched the first episode of SAS: Who Dares Wins, which is a show where various very fit guys get put through a condensed version of special forces training out in Morocco. The training is tough and on the first day alone, 4 guys dropped out from an intake of 25. By the end of the episode the number had risen to 6 or 7.

The thing that struck a chord wasn’t the beastings, the discipline or the physical exertion. It wasn’t the psychological evaluation and it wasn’t the fact that being just physically fit wasn’t enough.

It was that recruit number 4, one of the guys who voluntarily withdrew from the course, a boxer named Adam, was flagged as a potential risk even before he quit because he had written in his 500 word application essay that the most satisfying moment in his childhood was when he laid out a bully who had been tormenting him for years at school.

During a boxing match (the first tasks the recruits got) Adam picked the next biggest guy in the group as a partner. Only problem was that Adam is 6’ 8” and the other guy was 6’ 3”. Adam is a professional boxer and he made no bones about beating down his opponent. Drill staff stopped the fight after 2 minutes and later stated to each other that Adam appeared like he had something to prove, even though he is ranked 15th in the British Heavyweight leagues and should therefore be comfortable with himself by now.

Calling Adam in for a chat, they ask him about his childhood and it turns out that he was bullied almost constantly from 11 to 17. When he punched his playground nemesis in the face the other lad lost 4 teeth, blood spurted and he was “stretchered off, job done”. Adam had stated to camera earlier on that he regarded this moment as “biblical” in its significance in his life and he then evolved into the huge, hulking fighter that he is now.

After a pause one of the drill staff says “sounds a bit excessive to me” and the other asked him if he believed revenge was the way forward.

As much as I wanted Adam to make it through, he quit later in the same episode and the drill staff who accepted his numbered arm band (the method of quitting is to take it off and hand it over) said “I think you’ll regret this and it isn’t physical, it’s lack of self belief”.

The thing that got to me though was that, although Adam couldn’t make it through the special forces training due to having a lack of mental stamina, he was still bitter about his childhood experiences, even though he had a moment that I would have gleefully killed for.

To whit…he punched a bully so hard that the bully lost teeth and went to hospital.

To as recently as this morning I have spent my life feeling bitter, twisted and angry about the bullying I experienced as a child and later as a young man. I was specifically told at the age of 4 that hitting was wrong (after having been told 3 days before that hitting was just fine if it was in retaliation).

This mind fuck was enough to neuter any sense of self confidence around throwing punches and while I had from that day until the age of 46, an inbuilt reluctance and phobia of fighting, the rage and frustration remained constant as I grew up. 

I was also told that every bad thing that happened to me was my fault and that other people had been abusive because I had “made them do it”.

The list goes on. 

There was never that Eureka moment though, when I managed to finally summon the power of Greyskull to whup a bully’s arse and send them flying into a wall with their teeth rattling around. Never a Back To The Future (part 1) reckoning where McFly Sr. manages to thump Biff so hard that it completely changes the future and makes him the happy, confident businessman and Biff the guy who cleans his car…once Marty finally gets back to 1985.

I always imagined that, had this moment ever come, I would be at peace now. When Simon Tayler gleefully punched me around in class one day and bust my nose open in front of everyone…had I broken his neck then I would have either gone to prison or been committed but I would have hurt a bully.

If when Mark Allen used to let my tyres down on my bicycle (while smirking as I impotently screamed at him to stop) I had stabbed him in both eyes with a sharpened screwdriver, then maybe I would have had counselling for years but I would have caused my tormentor pain.

And if when, in later life, I got a job with a piece of shit company where my supervisor Barbara Bellis had nothing but contempt for me and bullied me in every way except physically…well maybe if I’d socked her in the jaw then I’d have a criminal record 23 years later that would prevent me working as a teacher…but it would have felt sooo good at the time.

My feelings of injustice and desire for revenge have festered and bubbled for decades. I realised a few years ago that it was mainly due to there never being any resolution to these stories. I got hurt, the people laughed and smirked, I never got justice. 

But what I had always imagined was that, if the situations had played out differently, and I had summoned the strength to do that massive, jaw breaking, rocketing uppercut to the bully’s chin then I would be absolved of all my negative feelings of resentment and vitriol.

Seeing Adam tonight I realised that wasn’t the case. On his application form to take special forces training (albeit for a TV show where the line “go and see the medic” is uttered after anything involving physical injury or when someone quit) Adam had put that his strongest childhood memory was hurting a bully so badly that he put the guy in both hospital and potentially a dental surgeon’s office. He clearly relished this memory and was still pained by the memories of what he’d gone through as a kid. 

I have not only fantasised about hurting bullies I’ve dreamed of killing and torturing them. I never actually wanted to do this but there was a time when I would have traded 10 years of my life for the chance to make a bully suffer the way Adam did. To do something that would make me realise I had the power to stand up for myself once more, and I’d see that glorious fear in the eyes of playground predators when they saw me

But it never came.

I genuinely believed until tonight that my ongoing war with my memories was due to the stories not playing out the way I wished they had. Problem is that, even if I HAD disfigured one of my tormentors…I would still have been bitter (and would probably still BE bitter) about the fact that these things happened in the first place.

Adam came across as a nice enough bloke but being hugely tall, hugely muscled, hugely scary and a competent fighter….he still wasn’t at peace with himself. His demons still haunted him and he hadn’t moved on.

I never got that moment of punching down a bully. Adam did. Now I realise that it probably wouldn’t have made that much of a difference anyway.

The Long Way Round

As a child I thought bravery meant not crying, keeping your word and standing up to bullies. I also thought it included not showing fear and not making "silly" noises when confronted with something scary.

As I got older I realised most of that was antiquated rubbish from the pre and post war era, still lingering around like a bad smell from people who had their hair clipped "when we were your age" and had possibly done national service.

At about 10 or 11 when I started fancying girls I thought bravery meant actually being able to ask a girl out. I would add into that also that bravery meant not showing any emotion AT ALL if she laughed at me. Bravery extended to continuing to be stoic if, months later the girl in question and her friends would point at me and giggle as I walked past.

Watching far too much television, films and reading shed loads of violent comics and books, I had rather moulded ideas as to what bravery could and did encompass.

Bravery when being tortured by baddies would mean keeping your mouth shut and if necessary, dying to protect secrets. It was only much later in life that I realised that no matter how hard someone is, if you attack their testicles with nut crackers or flay them alive, then they are 99% certain to confess to everything including the assassination of JFK.

Bravery was a long list of things but most of them came under the sub headings of stoicism, suppression of emotion, standing up for yourself and not being afraid to voice an opinion/ answer back.

I considered myself Not Brave for a long list of perceived failures. I don't know about now but in the 1980s, if you were attacked by another kid or even a teacher, be it verbally or physically then unless you were known to be "hard" you had to just batten down the hatches and take it until the storm of abuse had passed.

What a pansey!

Not answering back as 'Errol' stole my lunch money and stamped on my foot for half heartedly attempting to stop him. Not saying or doing anything as 'Chubs' repeatedly punched me in the face while I simply stood there crying.

Growing up there were a multitude of situations where I kept my mouth shut and to this day feel resentment for doing so. My aunt remarried a rather loathsome businessman named Barry. Very rich, very successful and a complete and utter wanker. Racist, right wing and judgmental of anyone below the 40% tax threshold, he once told a story at the FUCKING DINNER TABLE in my house about how he'd got an attack of the "screaming abdabs" while visiting a tyre factory and had shit himself. He stood up to mime how he'd been waddling with his undies full of excrement while everyone sat there and simply said nothing (or in my aunt and mother's case, giggled appreciatively like it was the funniest thing they'd ever heard). If I had tried to tell the same story I'd have been shouted down or made to leave the table within the first couple of sentences. I wanted with every fibre of my being, to plunge a fork into the ill mannered twerp's eye sockets...but of course I didn't.

What a pansy!

Suppressing how I felt and simply "taking it" became a part and parcel of life. Problem was that when I got into my early twenties I then began to get a little more stubborn. I'd argue a 'little bit' and regard that as 'better than nothing' when I reflected on the incident later.

When I got into my thirties my obstinacy had become obnoxious but rarely productive. I'd stand my ground in arguments and tell people to go fuck themselves but it was mainly because I considered that the alternative was to simply stand there and take it and if I did that well...

What a pansy!

I joined the UK police in 2006 and never once stood up to my Sergeant,  a 'man' who bullied me until I quit the job. I did however get my own back by writing a book about what he'd done. But did I get my own back? Maybe not.

When I was in my late thirties my father told me over a beer the following opinion.

"You're not a coward Lance, you are in fact very brave. You're prepared to stand your ground but you just can't fight".

Later as I took up Krav Maga and tried to adopt the philosophies about Conflict Resolution and what the UK head Jon Bullock calls "the lest creative option" to solve problems I realised that bravery is a lot more complicated than simply standing still and taking a beating to prove I wasn't a sissy.

Bravery can and does include keeping my mouth shut. I had a row recently with a rude man in Boots (chemists) in town. What started off as me telling him that I didn't' like how he was speaking to two female cashiers, quickly devolved into a Monkey Dance that would have (as Rory Miller said), looked highly impressive to a female chimpanzee.

Bravery to me used to mean walking down that dark, narrow lane to prove that I wasn't going to be intimidated. Bravery was standing up to a guy (who was with about 5 of his mates) for insulting a woman I was with. Bravery was refusing to be the one that reversed when in a narrow bit of road where only one car can pass, and both of us took the initiative and now someone has to back up.

Bravery can include these things but something I've found recently, partly through Krav and partly through just being alive for 45 years, is that bravery can also be going the 'long way round' to avoid that narrow lane. It could be NOT confronting that racist guy who insulted my lady friend. It could also be biting the bullet and putting the gear stick in reverse. 

Bravery includes being able to swallow pride and anger and let yourself be humiliated if it is necessary to avoid potentially greater nastiness. A Krav Maga instructor named Nick Maison is Expert level 3 (black belt 3rd dan equivalent) and when in a verbal argument in London with a big guy who had queue jumped, he showed submission and lowered eye contact. He has my respect for this as it took what Mr Miller calls the Human Brain to be this controlled and above all lacking in ego to resolve it this way.

Being able to take the path of less badassery or what may feel like the 'coward's way' is one of the bravest things you can do, if it is to resolve a situation in a way you 100% feel is the right one, not just the easiest one.

A quote I read years ago sums this up for me:

"A true hero is someone who does what he does not knowing if anyone will ever find out why he did it".

Nuff said.

For Once It Went Right

A story to warm the cockles of your heart. Told to me by my friend yesterday about her 12 year old  nephew Alan.

Alan was on his way to school with a mate when he stopped to wait for another friend. A group of 14 year old boys from their school then stopped in front of them and one said to Alan "What the fuck are you looking at?"

Alan replied "I'm not looking at you mate, I'm just waiting for my friend."

The lad again demanded to know "What the fuck" Alan was looking at while his own mates were loudly encouraging him to punch Alan....which he did.

Instead of hitting back, Alan simply held up his hands, palms out in a placating gesure and said "Look mate, I'm not going to fight you I'm just waiting for my mate."

The lad punched him again and this time Alan said "I warn you, I do kickboxing, if you hit me again I'll hit you back."

The boy hit Alan a third time and Alan responded with one punch which broke the other boy's jaw.

Alan's mother got a phone call from the school, demanding that she come in immediately. When she arrived the bully's mother was already there and began screaming at her, saying she was going to get Alan arrested for 'beating up' her son and how Alan was an 'animal'.

After speaking to both Alan and a teacher, his mother got a full picture of what had happened. Reemerging she was met with the same screeching woman and shut her up by shouting back "HE LEARNED KICKBOXING FROM ME. IF YOU DON'T SHUT UP I'LL MAKE YOU SHUT UP!" 

After some semblance of calm was achieved, the lad was found to be falsely claiming that Alan had attacked him in an unprovoked assault and had his mates backing him up. Alan's mother then pointed out the black eye and other bruises on Alan's face and questioned how he could have 'beaten up' the other lad if, as all witnesses said, he'd only thrown one punch.

The school wanted to put Alan in detention for 2 weeks but his mother denied it, saying the other boy was two years older; that Alan had only hit him once; and that as it had happened outside of school it was technically a matter for the police who she would go to if they didn't drop it. To ensure he wasn't put in detention she also collected him from school every afternoon.

Eventually, after looking into the matter properly the school found that the other lad had indeed started it and suspended him for 2 weeks. To really sweeten the deal, they waited until he'd got discharged from hospital and THEN activated the suspension meaning it couldn't run concurrently.

Go Alan.

The Eternal Practitioner

Throughout life there are different sets of responsibilities that slot into place as we walk through the process known as "growing up."

At about 5 you have to go to school, which is a huge change from hanging out with mummy or daddy and learning the rules of how to "play" (i.e. the advent of having to share your toys and say 'please' and 'thank you'). You may later on have a younger brother or sister to look after. You will be tasked to "set an example" to the younger kids at school. You have to tidy your room. Etc.

As you move up in years you may have a part time job (in my day the ignominious delights of a paper round) and become a Prefect at school (assuming that they still guilt older kids into being unpaid supervisors for younger ones).

Your responsibilities mount up as you move ever onwards in years.

In adulthood most people find a niche that fits the life of an adult. They form relationships, make lasting friendships and get a job that pays enough to set up a mortgage. They marry, have children and then settle into the life of a fully fledged "grown up". Even later in life they pass their knowledge and wisdom (or lack of) on to the next generation of grand children.

Life can basically be split into 3 levels. Practitioner, Graduate and Expert.

At Practitioner level we are learning. While some things are easy to pick up; such as walking, talking and riding a bike. Others aren't quite so simple such as maths, science or how to tie your shoelaces quickly. However we eventually learn and move on.

Graduate skills are based more on using the Practitioner stuff as a grounding. From basic science we move into the worlds of physics and chemistry and biology. The ability to speak is used to leapfrog into the skill of being able to express yourself through writing or learn a second language. Skills in social interaction will lead to finding a sexual partner and maybe having children. Being aware of danger will be used to become daily awareness of personal space, traffic and hazards. The lists go on.

By the time we reach the Expert levels of life, we are grounded in a full knowledge of Practitioner and Graduate skill sets. The earlier levels rarely need to be refreshed (although they do need to be, now and then) and we can pass on our judgments and experience to those who came into the world later on.

I am approaching a P5 grading, probably in December at the P camp that Krav Maga Global are holding.

There is a part of me that wants to rest on my laurels once this is achieved and not go any further. After all, that lovely patch with its 5 bars would look much more eye catching than a G patch with only one bar...wouldn't it?

Not really...but it's tempting to remain the highest grade of Practitioner than become the lowest level of Graduate. The reasons are a mixture of fear, foreboding but mainly the knowledge that I'll have to actually start taking some responsibility in my life as I move from the P levels to levels where I will not only be eligible to take an instructor's course (regrading pending of course) but attend G camp. The primary worry is that by stepping into big boys' pants I will be obliged to actually act like a Graduate, rather than remain an eternal Practitioner.

Sometimes growing up can be scary.

Bring it on.

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