RYAN

I've only been in one physical fight in my life. It happened in 5th grade, during a touch-football game on the playground. One particular opponent's touching style had grown aggressive (he was under the impression that we were playing touch-push-point-and-laugh football). After he pushed one too many of my teammates to the ground, I felt it was my duty as the kid who picked the teams to confront the bully. I got in his face (well, actually, I had to look down at him, but his little rat face still intimidated me). As insults turned to pushes, I realized I was about to be in my first fight...and I had no clue what to do.

I never tried to punch him. I gave his chest a hearty kick, but he caught and held my right foot. And that's when I apparently thought back to the skills I'd seen on the big screen. I thought by watching Jonathan Brandis and Chuck Norris in Sidekicks that I had somehow, through visual osmosis, instantly gained the ability to execute a roundhouse kick. I jumped with my left leg, swept it behind me, and the top of my foot connected with his head. We both fell to the ground (I hadn't thought ahead to the fact that jumping with the one leg I had control over would lead to me having control over neither of them. By the time we hit the ground, the recess teacher was stomping over to us.

It was the only detention I ever got.

JUSTIN

My favorite fight, I lost. Decisively. I tapped out. It was a guy that I didn’t much care for—I thought he was a condescending prick. I’m sure he thought I was a sheep with a big mouth. He was a 6’3” farmboy; he was probably sure of his ability to stare me down or pile-drive me into goo.

We got into it. I took hooks from hands that felt the size and consistency of frozen ham-hocks below both eyes. I blasted him in the rib cage on both sides and bloodied his mouth with my forehead. I got in too close or expected him to be stunned after a head-butt—he took us both down. After scrabbling in the gravel driveway for a while, trying to get my knees or elbows into anything yielding and soft, I ended up in a cradle lock: one of his arms was locked around my neck, holding the opposite hand, the arm snaked behind my knee pressing my face towards my shin. He was patient while I struggled. Eventually, I gave in.

Huffing and picking gravel out of ourselves, he said “I didn’t realize how strong you were.” He walked off. We get along just fine now.

TIM

My friend was intoxicated and wanted to go to Qdoba. He was making so much fun of some frat guy for wearing a pink shirt that the guy finally was like “you wanna take this outside?” and he was like, “yeah, after I get my food.” So he gets his burrito and we go outside. He eats half of it, then goes back inside and chucks the rest of it at the guy’s face. When they started to shove each other, our other very stout friend stepped in and the guy backed off. The End.

KELLY

This girl was talking shit about my friend, so I creeped up, hit her in the face and watched her anorexic legs flip up over the table. Then my friend and I ran to our car but still somehow had time to steal stuff—teaspoons in my bra, Chicken N’ A Biscuit under my arm, and cookies. But we put the cookies in the mailbox with the flag up. For the post man.

J.P.

I once had a fight with my cell phone when I was arguing with the cable company about a disruption of service during a pay-per-view airing of Wrestlemania. I won the battle but lost the war, having to spend $100 on a new phone without extending my plan.

BEN

Fist fights are overrated. What you want is a good old fashion knife fight.

CARMELINA

I was 12 and got into a fight while I was in the go-kart line at Thunder Island. Some guy cut me, and I pushed him. He was letting other people cut me in line!

PAUL

The fight that stands out as being particularly awful and pointless is from the eighth grade. I was spending a few days at the Earhart dorm in Purdue for a 4-H conference. (One of the reasons for the mounds of embarrassing stories about both my fighting and loving is that I was president of my 4-H club in high school. I will disguise the name of the club only slightly—the Bean Blossom Sodbusters.) I hated my roommate, and it didn't help that, because we went to the same school, he and I ended up spending time with each other by default.

Enforced cohabitation with a loathsome troll is a recipe for a fight. But puberty is a spiteful bitch and had given him a beard, muscles and an extra three inches two years before it would give me anything even remotely comparable. Our fight, which I'm pretty sure I started and started over something stupid, was pathetic, not least because even his puberty-boosted muscles and height made him only a slightly above-average-sized shrimp. For my part, I think I actually pulled hair.

Like most physical violence, our tussle began over nothing and solved nothing. The only lasting effect came years later. We were both in Latin class and I wrote scathing double entendres in the language of the Caesars accusing him of masturbating.

JOSH

In 5th grade, a kid was picking on my sister so I mixed words and pushed him around a bit. Then somehow he grabbed me and knocked me on the ground even though I was bigger than him, and then, as I was getting up to kick his ass, the teachers popped out the doors to unlock them and the bell rang. They didn’t see, so neither he nor I got in trouble.
Good times.