Yeah.
I fought back once when I was 13 or 14, we were arguing playing no-pads tackle football, and I took a swing at him. He efficiently hit me, I dropped to the ground, and he began to kick me so hard as I lay in the fetal position that I pissed blood afterwards. I was screaming so loudly as he kicked me that some passing lady about 50 yards away started yelling at him to stop.
The family of guys (three of them) who had just been playing tackle football with us (with no equipment) had just been called inside by their father, and they watched and heard the ass-kicking through their windows. Their father was, at the time, physically abusive to them and was not the kind of person who would intervene in any case.
I didn’t feel much satisfaction at having fought back.
At the time, I outweighed him, but he was much faster, much more aggressive, far meaner, and much angrier about life in general. I was pretty happy-go-lucky and quiet, and my mother had encouraged me to stand up to him, get him on the ground and sit on him (she knew the downside of telling him to just stop) but it didn’t help.
I think he was angry a lot because he had braces, and acne (we all did) and he and my oldest brother would fight violently enough when our parents weren’t around, with closed fists to the face even as one was pinned to the ground, and once there was a thrown butcher knife. The ferocity, no holds barred way they fought terrified us. And my older brother (not the oldest) would never give up. Just wouldn’t, even as my oldest brother implored him to. So part of it might have been the sh** rolling downhill to me.
Fortunately for me, my brother entered a different stage of his life right after that, and he never came at me again. And we became good friends. Then best of friends.
I think it was girls that changed him...he began getting really serious about girls and got a steady girlfriend.
My wife told me about a basset hound they got when they were kids. They already had a cat, and the cat didn’t tolerate the basset hound, and would regularly kick its ass.
The dog got so cowed by the cat, that when they passed in the hall, the Bassett Hound would press itself tightly against the opposite wall and turn its face to the wall. Apparently, the cat would just stop and glare at it, its paw twitching as the dog passed it.
That is kind of how I felt with my older brother.
Regnery <— publisher for your book or anthology (sp?)
He just caught me on a bad day. I wasn’t a fighter, so he regularly would win any fights we got in...till he pushed me too far that day.
I still remember him crying so hard and pointing at me that my mom whipped my butt and when he could finally talk, she whipped me again.
Whippings is something else I didn’t like but that day I told them with pride...