I got in a fight outside Pizza Caesar and spent the night in the hospital.
. Day .
I was out an a Friday night with money to spend, and I had bought an album, The Doors' Waiting For The Sun. I went to Pizza Caesar, probably walking from the mall to the Brainerd Village Shopping Center to get something to eat or maybe just see if anybody I knew was there or just to play pinball.
While I was there, standing outside on the sidewalk, certainly wishing for a beer, a big guy stepped out the door and said something like: This place sucks. This place is for those McCallie (somethings. Most likely "fags".) I guessed he went to Baylor, or maybe he had a jacket or something so I knew he went there.
I don't know why but I had to say something. My dad always told me to stand up to bullies. It hadn't come up too often but this seemed like such an occasion. So I said, "Well, at least we didn't lose the football game thirty three to nothing."
The guy asked me to repeat what I had said, and I did. He pushed me in the chest, and after taking the time to set my record down, I shoved back. Then he punched me hard, a left to the jaw. I didn't feel my left jaw hinge snap off but it did. I ran back into Pizza Caeasar, becoming aware I was somwewhat injured, and sat at the table of a young couple who were enjoying a pizza in front of the big projection TV. They got up and moved to another table.
I remember some guy who said he was a doctor palpated my jaw and said it wasn't broken. I don't know who he was. Then Bev showed up with her friend Julie Johnston, and I believe Julie's mom drove us (me and Bev and Julie) to the hospital. My parents showed up shortly. I remember a lot of this, but none of it that clearly. It wasn't obvious that I should stay overnight but in the end I did. I think I was emotionally hard to control.
This was a hard event to assign to a date. But I remember waking up in the hospital the next morning, feeling guilty because I had cost my parents a bunch of money, and because I was just in a dumb fist fight, but I saw on the morning news that a lot of soldiers were killed in Beirut by a suicide bomber.
1984 United States embassy annex bombing in Beirut
By Nancy Wong - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0
Chattanooga Tennessee Brainerd Road Pizza Caesar fights Thomas Coles Baylor School McCallie School hospitals fractures Beirut suicide bombings The Doors Waiting For The Sun Eastgate Mall Brainerd Village Record Bar bullies stories Grady Beverly Julie Johnston
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