Assholism

The world around me is getting more dangerous as time moves forward.

Around 11 a.m., while delivering newspapers, I entered a business and exchanged the issues from the week before for the new ones. Having done that, I collected the money from the plastic container next to the paper holder and exited the business.

Not more than three steps into the gravel driveway, I was struck in the back of my head by someone. The blow was hard enough to throw me off balance, and I tumbled forward.

Rolling on my right shoulder as trained in self-defense courses, I came up on my feet, ready to fight. Suddenly, I heard a woman screaming at the man who had hit me.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?!” she said.

“I saw him steal money from the paper jar,” the man answered.

“It his damned money, you fucking idiot,” she continued. “He’s the newspaper guy!”

With the left side of his body exposed to me, he had turned slightly to look at the woman. As he started to look back at me, I unloaded a full-body punch to his jaw.

I launched my right fist into the corner of his mandible after I took a step and leaped from the ground, placing my entire 200-plus pound frame into the swing.

The man, about five inches taller than me, maybe 75 pounds less than I, and at least 25 years younger, stiffened and spun to his right, falling on his left side. He lay there, unconscious and quivering as if having an epileptic fit.

Because he was shaking so badly, someone called 9-1-1, and soon, the fire department, an ambulance, and two squad cars arrived on the scene. In short order, I found myself wearing cuffs, detained as the LEOs set about to figure out what happened.

Several people came forward as witnesses, and I was soon released. By then, paramedics had loaded the man up and left, taking him to the nearby hospital.

The LEO who had cuffed me told me that while he considers my action as self-defense, he still has to turn the case over to the district attorney, and that person might see it differently and charge me. I agreed to turn myself in if that should happen.

That’s the end of the story for now, but for the life of me, I cannot understand why this shit keeps happening and why I respond like I do.