In today’s Big Idea for Glass Houses, author Madeline Ashby poses a question, and then poses a separate question, and then makes you question whether one or both of those questions has the answer you think might be the correct one.
MADELINE ASHBY:
When is violence the answer?
It’s a question we all, if we’re being honest, wrestle with at one point or another. Most of us wrestle with it quite literally in childhood. There are playground bullies and cyber bullies, mean teachers and just plain creepy ones, and of course in America there are school shooters. “Fight” might be the last word in the “Run/Hide/Fight” protocol, but it’s there all the same. American life carries with it the underlying expectation to defend oneself, because who else would you expect to do it — law enforcement? Please. Pull the other one; it’s got bells on.
My freshman year at university, this guy was macking on my friend in a way that made her cringe and curl in on herself in the shape of an apostrophe, with her knees smashed to her chest like the words do and not slowly forming the word don’t. They were friends. They remained friends after this moment. (Later on, she dated a guy who was six feet, four inches of Viking sunburn, and the guy I’m telling you about got real polite real quick.) But in this moment, before the Viking, there was only me. Watching them. So I finished what I was drinking, which happened to be in a glass bottle, and I called the other guy by his given name. Not the nickname he insisted we all use. His given name.
He paused. I don’t think he even looked at me. “Yeah?” he asked.
I examined the bottle in my hands and gripped it by the neck. “If you don’t quit that shit right now, I’m going to break this bottle over your head.” And stab you in the neck with it, I thought, but didn’t say.
It was October. He knew me, but he didn’t know me. What he knew about me was that I listened to music he didn’t approve of, and I cursed a lot, and I was a pro-choice girl at a Catholic institution. On the other hand, I’m very short. About the only thing I had going for me in a fight was complete confidence in my own righteousness. He was, after all, distracting me from my studies. The Phaedrus wasn’t going to read itself. Either way, he paused. Just for a second.
My friend used this opportunity to wriggle out of his grasp…
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Source: The Big Idea: Madeline Ashby
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