Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="DDK" data-source="post: 687094" data-attributes="member: 6469">Re: Why is it...Heh, perhaps many of the people who are drawn to martial arts are also people who happen to need to know how to defend themselves because of where they live, how they live, who they are or however many other billion reasons there are.The last fight I was in, with the knife-wielder, was about three or so months ago, maybe more (it was before I had a phone...). I live in what's called a rooming house: essentially a very large house in which the various rooms are rented out individually.There are elven rooms and currently only three permanent residents. The rest stay for a month or two and then leave, depending on their personal circumstance. Although, having said that, the only difference between a permanent resident and a short-term resident is how long they stick around or have stuck around for.Because of the mostly temporary nature and the lack of a need for bond or first months rent in advance, it is considered transient accomodation.I won't go into the details of how or why I'm in such accomodations, but suffice it to say that although this particular rooming house is the best of its kind in the area, it ain't the Ritz.Now, due to it being considered a quick and easy solution for accomodation purposes, both the Salvation Army and the Corrections Authority (ie. jailors) refer clients here. Currently there are two heroin junkies, a couple of dope-fiends (they were growing plants out the front in the vege-patch among the tomatoes... classic...) and a chronic alcholic. Two of these people I know for certain are currently on parole for robbery and/or assualt.Now... I don't choose to live here. I can't afford to live anywhere else. I keep to myself and keep out of everyone elses way, but at the end of the day, a lot of people come through here and a lot of them are the scum of the earth.And so one of them, a person who I found out later was on parole for assault, was clearly on drugs of some kind. It wasn't until I saw him in the hallway, sucking on an aerosol can of paint stripper, that I realized what it was he was on.One day, whilst I was washing my dishes in the communal kitchen, he decided to get to know me. I was cordial but let it be known that I wasn't interested in conversation; definitely not rude, just not terribly forthcoming.After that, he decided that every single time I went into the kitchen, since his room was right next to it, he would come out and bug me.By the fifth or sixth time of him bugging me about everything from my name to my personal sexual preferences, I asked him if he could just leave me alone and that I really wasn't interested in talking. I walked off and hoped that was the end of it.But that just made him even more persistant until he decided to get right up in my face (and trust me, he stunk) and blow cigarette smoke at me.That was the last straw... I picked him up by his throat, threw him across the room, put him up against the wall, held on to his larynx so he couldn't breath, and told him in no uncertain terms that if he didn't leave me alone, I'd kill him.So I turn my back on him (I knew what I was doing) and walked away. He decided to walk up behind me really close so I spun around and smacked him in the face, breaking his nose (and not just the cartiledge either...).Two days later he and his friend begin trying to kick my door in. Two days of them harrassing me ended up with him barging into my room with a knife held up against my face. I managed to throw him out of my room but his friend backed him up so I couldn't disarm him and by that stage another person had joined in and was trying to calm things down.I said that if he comes anywhere near me, I'll fulfill my promise and kill him. If I had of gotten the knife in that initial struggle, I garuantee you that I would've used it and used it until the little prick and his mate were dead. If it wasn't for the other guy intervening and someone else threatening to call the cops, that's most likely what would've happened.So, they calm down and go back and I sleep with a knife and a stick by the bed. The next day, they start bashing the door AGAIN. So I wait for them to stop and then come out ready to kick arse and they've gone.After a bit of thought and calming down, I decide that instead of getting into another fight in which I'll most likely kill someone or die trying, I'll go to the cops.At the police station, before I've even had a chance to say my piece, I hear on the radio there that there's been a showdown at the rooming house. The copper tells me I should probably get down there at about the same time as I start walking out the door.By the time I get back, I see that the place is CRAWLING with cops (I counted five cars) and half the road is blocked by an ambulance.It turned out that, whilst I had decided to walk to the cops (I didn't have a phone then), the guy who had helped me out that night by intervening had heard the racket and had decided to call the cops. Two of them had turned up and the two guys were off their faces on dope and spray cans and apparently fought each other and the cops. They were so daft that they actually ATTACKED the cops... I mean... I'm sorry, but that's just STUPID, especially in Australia where the cops have guns and this guy had a friggin' paring knife... Anyway, capsicum spray and a few lies uncovered (they had lied about who was who and what was what in order to have at least one of them go free, even though they had fought each other... morons) and a report down at the station, and they're back in jail.Oh, and btw, they discovered over a hundred spray cans in the guys room and a fair bit of dope and lots of empty Jim Beam bottles.Now... I didn't ask for any of that. If you had been in my position and have grown up like I have, then you'd know that he wouldn't have stopped at the smoke in the face. He would've kept coming and coming and coming no matter what. I know the type, I've beat them down before and I will again if ever they get in my face again. But at the end of the day, I didn't ask for it. I don't want to live where I am but there's nothing for it so I make do with what I've got.I'll be damned if I'm going to be a victim to some piece of <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> like him though. So as for why I like martial arts and why I get into fights... well, it's because I don't have a choice for the latter and because I refuse to be helpless for the former.</blockquote>

Verification