How many door knocks does it take before you walk away?
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I went to the store to buy smokes, something I am embarrassed to admit I still do. It seems like a habit of bravado, something that 12 year olds do to seem older. I am already older.
The young man who was behind the counter stopped me in my tracks.
His eyes still danced behind the puffiness.
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His upper face was a uniform shade of purple black- I presume he had started out caucasian. I hadn’t seen shiners like that since my bar days, and was wildly curious to find out how he got them.His eyes still danced behind the puffiness.
My inveterate eavesdropping saved me the trouble. The answer was: “ A door did this. There were some people on the other side of the door that I didn’t want to see, and the door gave in. “
He offered no more detail, sparking questions such as “Who was it on the other side of the door? Why did they want to talk to him so bad? Drugs? Money? Overdue library book?”
What about his eyes? Were THEY bruised? Do eyes bruise? The whites were pretty much now reds, so I guess they do.
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The neatly attired gentleman who asked the question, smiled at me as I held the door for him. I was not going to use it as weapon.
“I didn’t quite buy the door story”
He laughed as he got into his shiny late model sedan.
“No probably not—I don’t think I would want to see what the door looks like !”
“I have to give him props for showing up to work—if I looked that bad I would stay home. “
He shook his head in the temporary Oregon sun. “Young uns, don’t they know enough to walk away?” with the air of a man who knew this with certainty.
That seemed to bring him up short, the memory that he didn’t always know the right thing to do.
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I laughed back at him “How many did it take you before you learned? 1, 2?
That seemed to bring him up short, the memory that he didn’t always know the right thing to do.
“It did take a few at that.”
I wished him a good day and drove off, unlit smoke clenched into my mouth.
By Risa Dale
This article was originally published on Medium. Read the original article.
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Photo: Getty Images
I learned it was OK to walk away when I no longer had to when I was about 19 or so. Many guys walk away from fights because they don’t think they could win them. That’s really the moral of this story. When I took martial arts in high school, I mostly fought because I had to. When you’re Asian in a white neighborhood in the most segregated city in the U.S., you find out that life becomes a little easier when you respond to racially motivated aggression with aggression and the subsequent violence with violence especially when you win… Read more »
Hi John- Thank you for sharing your experience. The goal of the piece is that people learn to walk away when it’s no longer worth the effort. Perhaps this might be of use to you.
https://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/a-5-step-plan-for-turning-anger-into-fuel-wcz/