Back in 2009, my friend Ben Wood and I were involved in a little bit of a misunderstanding. I don’t want to divulge too many details, but there was an ill-considered comment here, a hurt feeling there and we ended up inadvertently upsetting somebody (the folly of youth!). The upset person then told a friend of theirs, who, one break time at school, wanted to have a ‘word’ with me and Ben.
We went over to see him, and the first thing he did was grab us both by the neck and lift us into the air intimidatingly. He was quite impressively strong, you see.
“Hello,” I said and smiled, trying to keep to situation as pleasant as possible.
“This isn’t funny!” he shouted, which is a shame, because I wasn’t trying to be funny. He then shouted at us for a while about how we had upset somebody, and it made me feel pretty bad.
“So you are going to apologise,” he said, at the end.
“Well, yes, of course,” I said, and perhaps I should have left it there, but I carried on. “Will we get an apology from you afterwards, if we do? I mean, yes, it was probably quite stressful for them, but it could be argued that it’s also quite stressful for Ben and I to be violently grabbed and shouted at too.”
He looked at me and narrowed his eyes. At this point I got quite a bit of bad luck, because I suddenly had quite a tingle in my throat. I needed to cough. But because of the way he was holding me, I’d end up coughing right into his face and that would seem awfully rude. I thought for a second about explaining my predicament, but I couldn’t hold it in any longer and I coughed right in his face.
Before I could say anything he spat right into my eye, which was a little unpleasant. He then lifted us a little higher into the air and threw us hard onto the ground, which was quite painful. Ben and I exchanged a few “Well, that wasn’t very nice” words, and then got on with our days.
So I just wanted to share that; the story of, perhaps, the most intense conflict I’ve ever faced. And there were no lasting bad feeling, either (in case you were worried!) We made up completely with the person whose feelings we had hurt and I bumped into the other person just the other day and we had a lovely little chat.
EDIT: I have been reminded that, after being spat on and thrown on the floor, I actually got quite angry and said to the other person that I’d make a fake Bebo account of them. A rather silly thing to say (again, an example of how immature we can be when young) but, of course, I never actually did that.
(Don’t miss my latest article for SmartDating UK!)
