I got punched in the face tonight. It’s the first time in my life that has ever happened. And it was done by a very old, very drunk woman.
I learned something. Getting punched in the face sucks, but not as much as getting a B- on a Book Review for your New Testament Introduction class. It falls somewhere in between stubbing your toe on a coffee table and having a really bad migraine.
I work as a bouncer at a venue on the weekends. Typically it’s pretty laid back. I stand there and look intimidating while I tear tickets and tell people there are no “ins and outs”. Occasionally a drunk person does something stupid, keeps things interesting.
But some nights they bring in a Country/Hip Hop artist. As in, both country and hip hop… at the same time. It’s not my cup of tea. It sounds like rap music without the rap or the music, and with a fiddle thrown in over it. But that’s not the worst part. It’s the confederate flags that seem to be plastered everywhere. It’s the big guy in the pit wearing a cowboy hat made out of a Bud Light box. It’s the amazingly drunk people doing amazingly ridiculous things. It’s not without its entertainment value. It’s certainly exciting, but as I said, it’s not my cup of tea.
I take these muscle-relaxers for my back when it flairs up. I know, I’m an old man. Being a bouncer means standing for 7+ hours straight, so I took one about halfway through my shift. No more than a minute after I take my pill my manager comes running up to me. “We need you in the pit. Now!”
I go from the 30 degree weather outside the venue, to what feels like a hot sweaty sauna. The pit is filled with all sorts of characters. A group of people who had just turned twenty-one occupied one corner. The very large men with the Bud Light hats occupy another. Then there are some die hard fans in the third. And the fourth… that’s where the party is. There’s a woman on the ground and bunch of yelling.
I try to help the lady to her feet but I can’t hear a thing. It suddenly becomes clear that everyone wants to help the lady up, except for the lady, who is flailing her limbs like one of those inflatable advertisements, just whipping them wildly back and forth.
I yell to her “we’re going. Get up, let’s go.”
“Aahahwarghaarhh,” she responds.
A couple of people are pulling her up already, her back is against the stage and she’s using it as leverage to begin kicking anything and everything that moves. She’s a woman and she’s using it to her advantage, leaving me with the question: where can I put my hands? I go in head first to try and pick her up from the midsection, I learned this move from playing Jud in Oklahoma… it does not work in real life. She claws my neck, leaving a mark that my wife described later as “probably worse than you think it is.”
I turn my back to her and thrust my shoulder into her chest to push her out. That’s when I find out there isn’t just one person causing a problem. The woman’s son, who is much bigger and stronger than his elderly mother, is now getting upset that his mother is being dragged out. I know this because over the music you can hear “that’s my ma! that’s my ma!”... so I assume it’s his ma.
I get kicked in the back. Good thing I took those muscle relaxers or I’d be on the floor. That’s when the woman swings her arm around and socks me in the face. Bam! Bam! Bam! Three strikes right in my jaw, next to an ear that recently had an infection. It’s a weird feeling. Not one that I would describe as positive, but it certainly wakes you up.
Between me, and three others guys, and a girl… and probably countless other people, we finally get the two people out of the venue. The guy kicks me a couple of times, punches some other people in the face. I don’t pity them. The mother-son team are both in full nelsons while people are holding their legs, and I think there are still 4 people on each body, one for each limb. I keep pushing the mass of people with my back while keeping out some people who are trying to keep the fight going. I think they’re also family members trying to “talk” with their brother, or mother, or what have you.
---
I get home around 12:30. It’s Daylight Savings so if I take the extra hour early I can still claim that it’s Saturday night. I’m exhausted. Kate gets woken up by my moaning. The pills I took are wearing off. I finally get a chance to take more, and I apologize for waking my wife.
Then, I lay in bed for a moment. I just breathe and think “I should write about this…”
And then I think, “I can’t believe I got a B-”.
See, pain is easy. Being exhausted from a long night, aching because of the beating you just took, it all sucks, but it’s easy. When someone says “why do you hurt?” you respond simply with, “because I got punched in the face.” They understand.
But I’ve got this anxiety. It makes me paranoid sometimes, easily worried, hyper-sensitive. Because of everything that has happened recently it’s hard for me to think about certain things. Simple stuff hurts. When my wife asks “what’s wrong?” I’m not sure there’s an answer. It’s not like I just got punched in the face. It just hurts.
When stuff hurts for no reason your brain has a way of attributing that pain to something real. So little things end up feeling like big things. You clean up a mess and then a cat knocks over a water cup and you just get pissed, like “see? everything is falling apart!” Obviously not everything is falling apart, and obviously you’re not mad at the cat.
Maybe this is a better example. You get a B- on a paper. You think “I’m not good enough, I don’t measure up.” Not because of the B-, but because you’ve thought that for weeks. You’ve thought that because you were expendable at the job that you gave your life to. You’ve thought that because maybe you’ve just always thought that, so it’s easy to find proof in anything. So you lay awake at night thinking about all the things you’ve messed up, and you wonder if you could’ve made it better. Sometimes you wake up at night with the same thoughts, but usually they’re not that profound or self-aware. Usually they sound more like “I can’t believe I got a B-”.
It’s funny how pain works. Honestly, if I had my pick I’d choose the punch in the face, but then again I got the elderly lady, not the grown man (counting my blessings). And if I’m to be completely honest, I’d choose neither, but that’s not really how life works, is it?
Sometimes things hurt. Sometimes it’s because of a punch in the face. Sometimes it’s because of something you may never be able to explain.
Sometimes it’s because you got beat up. Sometimes it’s because you’re the one beating yourself up.
I wanted to write a post, not about how pain leads to healing, or how you’ve gotta feel the hurt to have the happiness. I wanted to write about pain on it’s own terms. So this may not be much of a conclusion but here it is:
Pain hurts, but everyone feels it.
I know, pretty profound. I’d give it a B-.
I learned something. Getting punched in the face sucks, but not as much as getting a B- on a Book Review for your New Testament Introduction class. It falls somewhere in between stubbing your toe on a coffee table and having a really bad migraine.
I work as a bouncer at a venue on the weekends. Typically it’s pretty laid back. I stand there and look intimidating while I tear tickets and tell people there are no “ins and outs”. Occasionally a drunk person does something stupid, keeps things interesting.
But some nights they bring in a Country/Hip Hop artist. As in, both country and hip hop… at the same time. It’s not my cup of tea. It sounds like rap music without the rap or the music, and with a fiddle thrown in over it. But that’s not the worst part. It’s the confederate flags that seem to be plastered everywhere. It’s the big guy in the pit wearing a cowboy hat made out of a Bud Light box. It’s the amazingly drunk people doing amazingly ridiculous things. It’s not without its entertainment value. It’s certainly exciting, but as I said, it’s not my cup of tea.
I take these muscle-relaxers for my back when it flairs up. I know, I’m an old man. Being a bouncer means standing for 7+ hours straight, so I took one about halfway through my shift. No more than a minute after I take my pill my manager comes running up to me. “We need you in the pit. Now!”
I go from the 30 degree weather outside the venue, to what feels like a hot sweaty sauna. The pit is filled with all sorts of characters. A group of people who had just turned twenty-one occupied one corner. The very large men with the Bud Light hats occupy another. Then there are some die hard fans in the third. And the fourth… that’s where the party is. There’s a woman on the ground and bunch of yelling.
I try to help the lady to her feet but I can’t hear a thing. It suddenly becomes clear that everyone wants to help the lady up, except for the lady, who is flailing her limbs like one of those inflatable advertisements, just whipping them wildly back and forth.
I yell to her “we’re going. Get up, let’s go.”
“Aahahwarghaarhh,” she responds.
A couple of people are pulling her up already, her back is against the stage and she’s using it as leverage to begin kicking anything and everything that moves. She’s a woman and she’s using it to her advantage, leaving me with the question: where can I put my hands? I go in head first to try and pick her up from the midsection, I learned this move from playing Jud in Oklahoma… it does not work in real life. She claws my neck, leaving a mark that my wife described later as “probably worse than you think it is.”
 |
| Kate took this picture 4 hours after the original scratching to show me that the marks were still there. |
I turn my back to her and thrust my shoulder into her chest to push her out. That’s when I find out there isn’t just one person causing a problem. The woman’s son, who is much bigger and stronger than his elderly mother, is now getting upset that his mother is being dragged out. I know this because over the music you can hear “that’s my ma! that’s my ma!”... so I assume it’s his ma.
I get kicked in the back. Good thing I took those muscle relaxers or I’d be on the floor. That’s when the woman swings her arm around and socks me in the face. Bam! Bam! Bam! Three strikes right in my jaw, next to an ear that recently had an infection. It’s a weird feeling. Not one that I would describe as positive, but it certainly wakes you up.
Between me, and three others guys, and a girl… and probably countless other people, we finally get the two people out of the venue. The guy kicks me a couple of times, punches some other people in the face. I don’t pity them. The mother-son team are both in full nelsons while people are holding their legs, and I think there are still 4 people on each body, one for each limb. I keep pushing the mass of people with my back while keeping out some people who are trying to keep the fight going. I think they’re also family members trying to “talk” with their brother, or mother, or what have you.
---
I get home around 12:30. It’s Daylight Savings so if I take the extra hour early I can still claim that it’s Saturday night. I’m exhausted. Kate gets woken up by my moaning. The pills I took are wearing off. I finally get a chance to take more, and I apologize for waking my wife.
Then, I lay in bed for a moment. I just breathe and think “I should write about this…”
And then I think, “I can’t believe I got a B-”.
See, pain is easy. Being exhausted from a long night, aching because of the beating you just took, it all sucks, but it’s easy. When someone says “why do you hurt?” you respond simply with, “because I got punched in the face.” They understand.
But I’ve got this anxiety. It makes me paranoid sometimes, easily worried, hyper-sensitive. Because of everything that has happened recently it’s hard for me to think about certain things. Simple stuff hurts. When my wife asks “what’s wrong?” I’m not sure there’s an answer. It’s not like I just got punched in the face. It just hurts.
When stuff hurts for no reason your brain has a way of attributing that pain to something real. So little things end up feeling like big things. You clean up a mess and then a cat knocks over a water cup and you just get pissed, like “see? everything is falling apart!” Obviously not everything is falling apart, and obviously you’re not mad at the cat.
Maybe this is a better example. You get a B- on a paper. You think “I’m not good enough, I don’t measure up.” Not because of the B-, but because you’ve thought that for weeks. You’ve thought that because you were expendable at the job that you gave your life to. You’ve thought that because maybe you’ve just always thought that, so it’s easy to find proof in anything. So you lay awake at night thinking about all the things you’ve messed up, and you wonder if you could’ve made it better. Sometimes you wake up at night with the same thoughts, but usually they’re not that profound or self-aware. Usually they sound more like “I can’t believe I got a B-”.
It’s funny how pain works. Honestly, if I had my pick I’d choose the punch in the face, but then again I got the elderly lady, not the grown man (counting my blessings). And if I’m to be completely honest, I’d choose neither, but that’s not really how life works, is it?
Sometimes things hurt. Sometimes it’s because of a punch in the face. Sometimes it’s because of something you may never be able to explain.
Sometimes it’s because you got beat up. Sometimes it’s because you’re the one beating yourself up.
I wanted to write a post, not about how pain leads to healing, or how you’ve gotta feel the hurt to have the happiness. I wanted to write about pain on it’s own terms. So this may not be much of a conclusion but here it is:
Pain hurts, but everyone feels it.
I know, pretty profound. I’d give it a B-.
|| Posted by Alex ||
Fun read. Good thing you don't have a weak chin!
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