My older brother was dating this little cutie and her cousin was none to happy about it, why,… I still can't tell. So he makes a call to us one evening and gives us an ultimatum. My brother being dumb in love tells the guy to go shove it and pound some sand at that! The cousin lets us know that it’s on. (Keep in mind that the police don't frequent my neighborhood) The guy lives down the neighborhood from us so we have little time to prepare (keep in mind we expect only a rumble). We imagine that he has two to three guys with him and there are four of us. We never got a rule book to fighting but we never gang up...ever! My friend and I are the younger of the bunch so we were put behind my brother and his friend ...me with a bicycle chain and my buddy with a small bat, only for control. My brother and his friend are unarmed. We have a couple of rifles in the house, but we never thought about grabbing those...we figured worse comes to worse and we would be missing a tooth and pretty sore fore the next week or two.
Then it happens...the adrenaline has built so high that I'm shaking. The car screeches to a halt at my house and the cousin jumps out and chambers a round, draws down on us, and time stops. His buddy gets out of the car so slowly it seemed unreal. I don't mean to get all Mark Twain on you but it seemed liked I was traveling down that barrel at supper slow motion speed. I was so ready to beat any man with that chain that jumped my brother with more than a one on one mentality but I felt it drop from my hands and realized I'd just made a sound...gun was on me then my brother, then our buddies. I spoke up "hey man, we didn’t mean to bring it this far we'll do what you want"; it was practically a gasp more than a sentence. It lasted forever before he told my brother not to mess around and in some weird way that was him saying it was okay to date his cousin. They got in the car and off they went.
That was the last rumble that I never got in...It's still strange to me this day, but stranger still is the future of these happenings. Several years later I was at a BB-Q and low and behold was the cousin, and I was dating another one of his younger cousins (I did not KNOW). She said “Hey, let me introduce you to my cousin, he's cool!" We met eyes and I Instantly went into fight or flight mode. He recognized me as well.
I grew up around firearms and have never committed a crime other than traffic violations and even at eighteen I had a shotgun in my trunk (New England single shot 12 ga.) That shotgun is all I could think about. He put out his hand to me and before introducing himself he said 'I'm sorry". When an apology from a proud man is given, it should be weighed and then is truly deserving of acceptance. It turns out that he spent a little time in the pokey and met a man in there that taught him a thing or two……strange , but it is a small world after all.
