…it certainly resolves certain matters. Getting hit clarifies things. In my early 20s a guy I was arguing with punched me hard in the jaw, and in the wake of this I distinctly recall saying to myself, “Whoa…that kinda hurt…I’d better zip it for the time being.” This was my first significant jaw-slug.
I remember jogging behind a chubby girl during a 1970 anti-war demonstration in Washington, D.C., and flinching hard when a belligerent, barrel-chested cop ran up and walloped her across the chest and stomach with a baseball-bat-sized billy club. She sharply yelped…”aagghh!” I was deeply affected by that.
Ditto watching a high-school fight in a parking lot. The guy who won was victorious in less than ten seconds. It was over like that.
In 11th grade I was slapped two or three times by a pretty drunk girl…she really whacked me. And I didn’t mind because she was basically saying that she felt strongly about me. She became even more enraged when I reacted casually and impassively, like Lee Marvin reacting to getting slapped by Angie Dickinson.
