Attacked in my front yard

[kidswarrior]

The thing is, I know he won't let it die completely. Once he is done with the law I think I am going to try and test the water and see if we can have some kind of co-exist, you know the whole.......

Me- Sorry for the misunderstanding, hope we can put it behind us. Neighbor - (Hopefully) - Yeah man.

Sorry to take so long to get back to you on this, Matt. I always seem to remember it when I can't get to a computer. I think your plan here shows utmost maturity, and spirit of budo.

Got a minute to take a trip down memory lane with an old man? If not, just stop reading this now.

When I was 19, the next door neighbor (mid-30s and neighborhood bully), who had been feuding with my parents, called me out in the street one day as I got home from factory job (wearing steel toed boots). He thought that me being a kid, I'd be easy pickin's. Long story short, he swung, I lost it (whole world turned white) and the only thing that stopped me from probably killing him (was pounding his head into the pavement pretty good) was that his daughter's screaming from the driveway 'woke' me up. Cops came, ambulance took him, and deputy was already to arrest me for ADW (he told them I'd used boots). Fortunately, work dust was still on the boots while everything else was covered in blood, so deputy put it together pretty fast. Didn't even take me in.

Thing is, I regretted it almost immediately and am ashamed of it to this day. My family moved, I went into the service, etc. Still, I got in touch with him a couple years later to apologize. It was like the air went out of him--not what he was expecting at all. Don't know what it did for him long term, but allowed me to make peace with it; am not as embarrassed telling it now as I would have been had I not tried to clean up my side of the street.

Now, your situation is totally different--he gave you no choice, went for the sucker punch, you responded exactly according to your training, and you stopped as soon as it was reasonable to do so. Textbook self defense situation/response. All I'm saying is, I really like your idea of trying to square things with this guy. Will it make him a peach? No. Will it make him less dangerous? Don't know, probably not. But I know what taking the step did for me, and that's all I'm concerned about--you.

Anyway, thanks for letting an oldtimer ramble. Helps me to share, even if there's absolutely no applicability for your situation.

Good on ya' for setting such a shining example of what it means to be a true martial artist.[/quote]

 

[kidswarrior]

What sucks is being attacked by a group of five or six punks who then can all claim that YOU attacked THEM first The only choice then for a LEO is to cuff all the principals (including the assault victim!) and sort it out down at the station.

Luckily for me, when this happened to me, the other guys soon showed their true colors at HQ. I was released and my name never appeared on the docket, while theirs did.

Yeah, that makes sense: that you were the aggressor, starting a fight with a mob :xtrmshock Glad it worked out, but come one, why was your side of the story even an issue? This is kinda a sore point for rme, because at least a couple of times a month I get to face down/put myself between a group of off-campus punks (some adults) and the street-wise kids at our school that they may be waiting to jump. Always try to avoid trouble, for the exact reason of what happened to you: They'll later say I picked on them/started it, whatever.

Glad it worked out for you, tho. And glad you had the training/giftedness in your art to handle it (told you to remind me to call you Sir, didn't I? :ultracool).

Best, ~kidswarrior

 

[jim777]

Firstly Matt, I'm glad you came out OK. I'm guessing the reason he didn't swing a bat at you was because there wan't one readily available to him in his drunken state. If he would walk up behind a neighbor and punch them in the back of the head for no reason, he's either insane or suicidal or something. You absolutely did the right thing. What if he got a lucky blow to the back of your neck and caused you paralysis?

Secondly, I think it is extremely impportant to follow through on the protection order, simply because he might see a lawyer's commercial the next time he's lying drunken on his living room floor in front of the TV and decide to sue you for hitting him. Crazy, put possible. Never underestimate an a-hole's ability to be an a-hole. Get that protection order, and consider filing assault charges.

I bet some of your other neighbors want to shake your hand today That's how it would be on my block.

Jim