> A few years back I had to break-up a girl fight at our church’s summer carnival. It was pretty serious. They were wailing on each other pretty good. <
As I noted elsewhere, I taught for many years in urban schools. And I never hesitated to break up a fight between two boys on my own. For some reason the boys usually listed to commands.
But a girl fight? No way would I intervene unless the odds were at least 2 to 1 in my favor. Those fights were brutal.
The thing that really irked me is that the church had hired 3 off-duty police officers to provide security for the fair. But they were nowhere to be seen when this pretty substantial brawl broke out. So I was compelled to step-in.
Off on an hour-long donut break I suppose.
My school years were 50's and 60's. I never once heard of a girl fight/brawl. Although sometimes tussles would happen instantaneously on school grounds in elementary school, by junior high and high school the boys with some lame grudge would almost always put it off till after school and off school grounds and meet some blocks away.
Then the one losing the fist fight or ground tussle would say "okay, you win" and the two would just walk away and that was the end to it. It was like tapping out and there was no honor loss for the tapper because he had the nerve watching the seconds pass by on classroom clock and showed up, even if unevenly matched. It happened to me more than once. Also got in a fight on school grounds (he chose me out instantaneously) once in JH and as the a teacher approached we both stopped by his direction, but we both got 2 swats from the VP. We became friends after experiencing the awakening of a big ass flat board. I can still feel the sting.
I also had an after school fight where the kid kick me in the balls making a major connection. Of course I lost that fight, but the other kid didn't get bragging rights, because that was not within the ROI and the Manly code of the time. He was ostracized by all but his closest buds.
Those were the days of a simple fist fight with no one going home to get a gun. Maybe you'd go home with black eye or busted lip and some ground scrapes. Us Boomers started the stupid Hippie movement, but most of us were taught respect for authority from the Greatest Generation parents.