Part of Rich's job is dealing with the occasional high school fight. They're few and far between, but they do happen. Rich keeps an escrima stick in his desk to add a bit of attitude to any intervention. Since he's mostly done with his career and teaching because he wants, he doesn't fear the onerous rules about "touching" students. When they break bad with him and tell him he can't touch them, he reminds them that he doesn't need the job and is perfectly willing to give it up to take a bully down. The saber rattling generally works. For the most part, dealing with a fight in progress is about separating the two. Most don't *really* want the fight to go on too long, and are secretly happy it stopped.
Rich did however mention that it was the girls' fight that was the most difficult to deal with. We chatted a bit about it. Women are slow to fight, but when they do it takes a *lot* longer for that emotional hijacking to settle. And the tactics used by girls in a fight are different. There's a lot of face-slapping, scratching, and especially hair pulling. It's *personal* you know... Here are some pretty good examples.
This fight finishes with the aggressor trying to shove the girl's face into the mud.
..... Girls Fight At School
Note how slow the brunette is to anger, but how ruthless she becomes.
..... girls fighting hard in the school yard
I find it interesting that I was talking about this with Rich just last night so I could give my younger son "alone" time learning in a karate class. Then just today my son came home and talked about how two 9th grade girls went at it today in his high school. I described what the fight was probably like, and apparently I was spot on.
Beware the beatches!
- Bill
