Is Beating Up People the New Teen Sport? Unfortunately, the answer is a resounding “yes”, but big, strong youngsters using helpless elderly people as a punching bag is nothing new — it’s not a suddenly appearing phenomenon — it goes all the way back to ancient Rome, was popular in London a few hundred years ago, erupted as Walpurgis Nacht and Crystal Nacht and Christmas Day Riots and the Hellfire Club and other demented senseless violence, back in the 18th and 19th century, and it’s here, today, with a vengeance, as I’ve been warning you, and sure enough, it happened to us, just yesterday. I’ll tell you about it.
Yesterday, at a local Craft Shop, I stopped and idly examined a rather strange display — it was an entire island crammed with dozens and dozens of CONCEALED CARRY handbags designed as crafting projects. I wondered idly for a moment — why would Concealed Carry Handbags be popular ALL OF A SUDDEN??? I gave the matter no further thought, and Barbara, Yanesh and I left the craft shop, and walked out to our car and got in and drove out of the parking lot.
Only three or four minutes later, I was nearby at another shop, where we bought some craft supplies that they don’t carry at the other shop, not a large list, I can tell you. Upon leaving the second shop, just as we passed the threshold onto the wide sidewalk, I was accosted and threatened with death by three very tall, very stocky football player type teenagers, obviously flying very high on meth and very full of themselves, as meth does.
Obnoxious and openly threatening, they had just been screaming at the woman driver of a passing pickup truck, and now turned their rage and attention upon Barbara, Yanesh and myself as we exited the shop into the bright sunlight. I was wearing my ASA Army Service ballcap at the time, and just as we were getting into our car, which was parked outside the shop, the Alpha Male Leader, about the size and weight of Claude or Dick, growled at his companions, “I think I’ll beat up and kill that old man over there,” meaning me, looking very much 74 years old in the smoky pollen town air, not at all ready for physical stress, certainly not a death struggle locked in combat with three drug-crazed very large teen jocks.
Although there were people in the shops, they had not reacted to the screaming of the teens up to that point, and when they threatened to beat me up and kill me along with the two “bitches”, meaning Barbara and Yanesh, we all simply ignored their taunts, and slowly turned toward them and stood our ground, making no threatening moves, but ready to fight to the death if things turned any more ugly than they already were.
I resent the fact that someone can intimidate people into losing their personal freedoms, and regretted that I did not have a CONCEALED CARRY purse filled with my Colt .45 Peacemaker, but I didn’t, don’t now, never did, and never will carry a concealed weapon, nor will I use a gun against anyone without a gun in his hand, too. Overwhelming force is just not Good Gorby Science.
So without a weapon in my hand, I estimated my chances, thought that I could take down the leader, and maybe crack his skull open on the pavement, possibly discouraging his companions from further engagement, but realized that would take too long.
I then considered a simple crushing blow to the sternum, delivered with my left foot, but I’m wearing a knee brace on my right leg, and wouldn’t be able to stand the shock. A driving head-blow is also out of the question, due to cataracts and retinal issues. I’m a cardiac patient, so I have some serious limitations to what I can do these days to defend myself and my friends.
Kick to the groin? He’d be prepared for that. I thought briefly of screaming loudly in full rage attack mode, but they wouldn’t have heard my screams over theirs, and nobody was responding to their screams, anyway. It was a deadly moment, and six lives or more hung in the balance.
These guys were a full head taller than I am, and had a reach advantage of at least half a foot, and one of them displayed a knife — not an overly large one, but one doesn’t want to take on a raging gorilla with a knife freaked out on meth. I certainly wouldn’t try that stunt in a public parking lot full of witnesses, so I waited, saying nothing.
The Alpha male in the three-person mob took one step toward me. Instead of retreating, I took one step toward him, hoping that I looked eager to fight, with a slight ironic smile on my face and a look of expectation and amusement, just like you’d do in the Bardos.
He hesitated, saw that I was seriously thinking of ways to break his neck and drive a fist through his sternum, ripping his living heart out of its rib cage, a trick I learned in Asia. After a dangerous cat-like pause during which he considered the odds of me taking out all three of them, obviously impossible, but it was very likely that I’d take at least HIM with me when I died.
With a shrug, the big bully broke eye contact with me, and turned away, and then his friends and he returned to screaming at passing cars and raving wildly about how high they were. Charming group. They didn’t know how close one of them came to being dead, along with me and the two women, and possibly a few more passers-by in the resulting mayhem.
I made sure not to antagonize him, not to respond to his threats and taunts, just stood there and waited, with HANDS OPEN, but in the ready “STAND” pose, the most neutral posture I could maintain while remaining at the ready for a frontal attack.
I kept the car to my back, to prevent them from surrounding me. They wandered off in another direction, and someone or something else replaced me in their animal attentions.
Still ready for an attack, possibly on the windows of the car, keeping our fronts toward the crazy kids, we slowly got into the car and drove away, with me vowing to never get caught in that situation again without some sort of defensive weapon, now that the sport of the season is to beat up “old folks”, a seniority title for which I now eminently qualify.
I would never use a gun or knife, even against a knife. Deadly force is not my style, never was, never will be. Just defense. Problem is, with a drug nut, simple defense is not enough. Like dealing with a religious fanatic, you can’t come to terms with them, you have to kill them and fuck up their shit permanently, so they can’t keep coming after you.
I don’t want to kill anybody. I would do ALMOST anything to avoid it. I had a tire-iron, but that’s deadly force, and out of bounds for me. I just would never use it, no matter what.
I want to NOT engage, if possible, to do NOTHING, which will, hopefully take the heat off by us potential victims not reacting to taunts, insults, threats, all the usual Darkside of the Force nasty attempts of a typical bully to intimidate someone smaller, weaker, unarmed.
Had all three come after me, I wouldn’t be writing this right now, and California State Prosecutors would be handling the arraignment of three very foolish teenage murderers, but they don’t have to worry. They’re minors, and they know full well that they would get off with a suspended sentence, same as rape, because the victims were seniors — like women and other minorities in the majority, unimportant in the bigger scheme.
Hah, wait until they see the senior vote block this year, and the women voters and the Jews, and the Moslems, and the Christians and the Sophomores and the Vegans. Everyone will want to get into the act this year, because it’s the year everyone gets to do that, but I digress …
I want to impress upon you that after this incident, I would normally just never return to that shopping center again, but I also know that there are thousands of similar creeps somewhere close-by, close enough that I want to somehow feel safe on the street again which, thanks to these particular kids, I don’t, which robs me of my Freedom From Fear, one of the Four Freedoms, if you are into Constitutional Law.
There was no way that Barbara and Yanesh would have stood by and let this happen without wading in and getting themselves killed as well, and that’s the problem in dealing with this situation — collateral damage and destruction of the lives of all the people involved, including their friends and families. What’s more, these kids were unaware of THEIR danger had they gotten those “girls” pissed enough to do murder.
Imagine their reaction seeing me lying dead in a pool of blood. They’d go apeshit far more over the top than those meth-crazed kids, far more over the top, using strange powers and strengths that only come under such circumstances, and every single one of us would be dead today.
VERBAL Threat is called, in legal parlance, “Assault”, which contains a clear THREAT of violence. This is against the law, but try to prosecute it and see what happens.
PHYSICAL THREAT is when someone touches your body in a threatening or harmful or painful way. This, in legalese, is called “Battery”, and it’s a serious offense that you CAN and SHOULD prosecute, if attacked.
I knew full well that those doped-up kids would themselves soon also be dead, but before that happened, they would have left me bleeding on the cement sidewalk, had it gone that way. They will surely be dead fairly soon, as a result of their deadly meth habit.
They may end up holding up a bank or a store, or hacking a merchant to death as a result of the dangerous and deadly behavior that goes along with meth, but I didn’t want for us to become their victims before they’re stopped by an overdose, overwhelming brain damage, or a cop’s bullet.
A cop’s bullet would have ended that particular matter, but the problem still exists for the main body of senior citizens who are the targets for this cruel teen “sport”. It’s so popular that if you google “knockout” you won’t finish reading the postings until the middle of next week.
There are hundreds of deaths every month in major cities, and thousands of unreported deaths resulting from this “sport” every year. Tens of thousands of attacks have occurred over the past 4 months, and the number is rising every day.
The safest plan would be to never ever go to town again, and I’ll bet that many senior citizens, after an experience like this, end up staying home, or at least thinking twice before going out of doors, which means those bastards have robbed you of your Civil Liberties, the very thing that makes this country different.
Robbing you of your Civil Liberties is a Federal Crime, a Hate Crime and more, and you are completely justified if you feel scared by these people, because they are truly little more than wild jungle animals who would just as soon kill you as go fishing. It would have done no good to point out that they would be committing a hate crime and that the FBI would sooner or later catch up with them. No good whatever. They were beyond hearing.
It was then that I remembered the English Quarterstaff, and smiled. I will arm every senior citizen with a defensive weapon, in the form of an otherwise innocent walking stick.
The English Staff, or Quarterstaff, was used in Medieval England and other countries as well, as a fighting weapon. Peasants were not given swords, not ever, because they could potentially use them to stage a revolt.
The Quarterstaff is a weapon which I call “Gandalf’s Revenge”. What you do is, you carry a walking stick or cane, and when questioned, respond with the Gandalfian, “You would not deprive an old person of the comfort of his walking stick?”.
I will demonstrate at this morning’s ICW how to use this defense weapon that is totally legal because its primary purpose is to aid you in walking. The whole point is NOT to engage, but to discourage a coward by showing that he does NOT have a clear advantage, that YOU ARE NOT AN EASY TARGET.
This can work, even if you are actually unable to fight with the Quarterstaff, because bullies live by intimidation and they WILL back down if you show them that you are not an easy target. Just a tiny bit above “easy” will do, because they are VERY afraid of you, which is why they get belligerent and obnoxious.
As a Senior, YOU ARE A TARGET. I am NOT advocating murder, killing people or wounding them. I’m advocating a preventative technique against bullies in general, which is a way to tell them that YOU ARE NOT INTIMIDATED and that you have a means of defending yourself.
Avoid conflict, but as President Teddy Roosevelt said, “Speak Softly, But Carry A Big Stick.” Our President said that, and it’s good advice, doubly so in these raging days of fear and violence on Planet Earth, just before the Third Great Flood, coming soon at a neighborhood theater.
In yesterday’s incident, it happened under ordinary circumstances, in broad daylight, in front of dozens of nonresponsive witnessnesses, at least one of whom was pointing a cell phone in our direction to capture the moment, I suppose. The video footage might have been of use in the aftermath, but who cares about that when you’re being cremated?
See You At The Top!!!
gorby