Can You Offer to Beat Yourself Up?
OK imagine there is some group of people--maybe from a small town in Italy, or maybe just the guys from a particular family with extreme views--who are mortified by the idea of being beaten up.
So what they do is, whenever someone wants to fight and the proud guy knows he might lose, he offers to beat himself up to the satisfaction of the other guy. I.e. the "winner" sits there and watches you just destroy yourself--like Ed Norton does in his boss's office--until the other guy says, "OK man, that's enough! You're really gonna hurt yourself!"
How does everyone feel about this? Is the guy in question a crazy bad*ss, or cowardly? Keep in mind, this is for real. For this to work against a guy who was actually going to pummel you, you would (a) really have to sell it to get him to back off for 60 seconds and watch, and (b) really have to mess yourself up. So be careful before you dismiss it as wussy.
So what they do is, whenever someone wants to fight and the proud guy knows he might lose, he offers to beat himself up to the satisfaction of the other guy. I.e. the "winner" sits there and watches you just destroy yourself--like Ed Norton does in his boss's office--until the other guy says, "OK man, that's enough! You're really gonna hurt yourself!"
How does everyone feel about this? Is the guy in question a crazy bad*ss, or cowardly? Keep in mind, this is for real. For this to work against a guy who was actually going to pummel you, you would (a) really have to sell it to get him to back off for 60 seconds and watch, and (b) really have to mess yourself up. So be careful before you dismiss it as wussy.
Is there an option for "Sit on the sidelines, spit occasionally and drink whiskey with Himalayan masters"?
ReplyDelete'Splain it more!
Why wouldn't you just fight the other guy? I mean, if you are going to beat yourself up 100%, and your greatest fear is being beat up, why not go for that 1% lucky punch against the other guy and then you don't get beat up therefore avoiding the beatdown you fear.
ReplyDeletePepe,
ReplyDeleteI'm not saying it's rational, I'm just wondering if it would work (and then, if so, how we feel about the guy doing it).
It's comparable to soldiers who might blow themselves up instead of being captured, if they are doing just to avoid the indignity of being paraded in chains before TV cameras etc.
This way the proud guy can say, "I have never lost a fight."
Bob,
ReplyDeleteIt would be really hard to do. Maybe you could cut yourself a little, or jump off something just high enough to break something.
Rachael,
Bob is off his meds again.
The Romans were quite eager to off themselves to avoid falling into the hands of their enemies -- Cato, brutus, Cassius, and Antony come to mind right off the top of my head.
ReplyDeleteI was going off the criteria:"who are mortified by the idea of being beaten up."
ReplyDeleteNot the later changing criteria of: "the proud guy knows he might lose"
So, if the guys greatest fear/criteria is pride and not physical pain than he should beat himself up because he could lose the fight.
Is he tough? Nah, he should really be tough and refuse to lose the fight...pride remains intact and he becomes a legend.
Under your pride criteria he could just run like hell and be able to claim he never lost a fight.
Mammy Yokum was the social doyenne of Dogpatch because she could beat the crap out of any of the other residents. One day she was actually challenged by a sweet-looking white-haired old lady. Mammy had no choice but to accept, although she figured the old bird was loony. The old bird then proceeded to wreak such a horrible beating upon herself that Mammy came near to buckling. After wrestling with her conscience, with great reluctance and some shame at resorting to so ultimate a weapon, she played a record of Nelson Eddy singing "Shortnin' Bread" until the challenger capitulated.
ReplyDelete