Skip to main content

Something Worth Fighting For

The other night, I was hanging out with my old college room mates.  We were going to head to dinner, but one of them wanted to stop by an "event" that his local comic book store was holding.  They were showing a little bit of art and serving wine & cheese, so we figured it couldn't hurt to add a little bit of culture to the evening.  Also, I've been known to buy a comic book or two on occasion, so I wasn't exactly opposed to the idea.

As I was leaving the house far earlier that morning, I threw on my Green Lantern t-shirt.  My brother & his wife got me that shirt for Christmas, and I figured it'd be appropriate given the evening's activities.  I'll probably end up wearing that shirt just for kicks on plenty of other occasions, but I figured I'd get a few more kicks if I wore that night.

Funnily enough, I came surprisingly close to getting kicks because of that shirt.

My friends and I (there were 5 of us) were walking somewhere after dinner, when a random stranger noticed my shirt.  He was walking in the opposite direction, and was with his two female friends.  Deciding to be a jerk, he thought it'd be funny to say, "the Green Lantern sucks, Captain Planet is way better."  If you never watched the show as a kid, it was really campy, and the dude has a frickin' bright green mohawk, for crying out loud.  Clearly, the dude walking past me was just trying to get a reaction.

It actually took me a second to process that he was being a jerk.  At first it sounded like random sounds, and then my brain processed that he was talking to me.  By that point, he was beside me, rather than in front of me.  Still, I figured he could hear me, so I told him what I thought of his observation (hint: it involved a swear word).

I wasn't looking to get into trouble, though, so I just kept walking.  The guy was trying to get a laugh or something, I thought he was being a jerk, and that was that.  The jerk thought very similarly, since he also kept walking.  My old roommate, though, heard a tiny bit of the exchange, and asked what had happened.  I gave him the brief synopsis, and his immediate reaction was, "we should go fight that guy."  In fact, he turned around, to see how far away said jerk was.

I think the phrase, "really, if you're going to fight, that's not a half bad reason" came up a couple of times shortly thereafter.  We also joked about the seeming awesomeness of greeting a jackass comment with a punch to the face.  Clearly, these were important matters that demanded the utmost seriousness.

Astoundingly, the "kick someone's butt over Green Lantern" plan did not come out ahead.  Instead, we all kept going and cracked jokes instead.  I'm not entirely sure how my rep, and the resulting street cred, are going to recover.  Still, I have a sneaking suspicion that I will forever remember the two seconds when I almost stood up and fought, literally, for something truly worth fighting for.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Pink

Way back in high school, there was a male teacher that all the girls thought was attractive. It was an open secret that a bunch of them had crushes on him. In fact, the school newspaper even did an article about him that quoted some girl saying, "he's so cute, he even makes pink look good." Yes, he had worn a pink shirt to school one day, and it had apparently been a big hit. I was reminded of this story when my sister-in-law suggested that she would choose pink as the color for her wedding and bridal party. I don't think I've ever made a color look good before, but I remember thinking, "well, I know it's possible to not look stupid in pink as a straight guy, I guess I can try." And I think that's almost exactly what I told her. I also happened to own a gray suit, so I figured the combination would look all right. However, I was pretty much the only one willing to play along. My sister-in-law's brothers wanted absolutely no part of th...

Dreams

Normally, I don't eat very many sweets. I tend to eat pretty generous portions, but I generally prefer savory food over sweet. In fact, I usually prefer things half as sweet when possible. My preference doesn't have anything to do with health reasons, it's just one of those things that I've always liked better. That said, I do inevitably eat dessert, particularly if I'm out with other people. My stance towards dessert is roughly equivalent to those who are social drinkers . If other people want to munch on something for dessert, I'm not about to cross my arms and refuse. That'd be just a tad gauche. So, I do eat some dessert. I even have a few standby favorites that I'll usually order when presented with them (brownies, creme brulee, and apple pie). But left to my own devices, I'm not about to go hunting for dessert. Apparently, this means that the sugar can really mess with my system under the right circumstances. As I've discovered, ...

New York City Trip (Day 1)

After my crappy flight , I was now in Newark, New Jersey at 7AM on a Friday morning. I had done a little bit of reading up, so I knew which bus I needed to take and where I was going to get off. All in all, getting into the city was surprisingly easy. I suppose speaking the language does make things simpler. Through no real planning of mine (a theme of the trip, at least on my part), I picked one of the later bus stops at which to get off, Grand Central. I actually just figured that getting off at Grand Central would give me options, and heck, it's called Grand Central. That just screamed "decent place to disembark that might be close to some stuff" to me, so that's where I got off. However, it also meant that we drove down 42 nd St to get to my bus stop. That just happens to be a big street, and it gave me a glimpse of Times Square as we drove by. My bus stop choice had accidentally given me a rough layout of the city. Go me. I had about 6 hours to kill...