September 1988

Saturdayevening. I was 15 years old, probably a bit naive still, even if I'd seen pretty much of "society" already.
At that time I was a pretty active ballroom dancer (yep, guys do that, too) and every Saturday evening we had this dancing evening in the dancing school where everyone from the different dancing classes could dance freely without the teacher nagging and looking at your steps.
We used to gather outside the door just before 8pm and wait for the door to open and in time, when the word got out that it was a pretty popular place to be on Saturday nights it started to be this "hang-out" kind of place also for the youngsters that didn't give a shit for dancing and they were basically there provoking other people and being a major pain in the butt.
Also this particular evening they were there. Standing there, playing the tough guys, talking too loud, making fun of other people, laughing at them, even a bit harrassing.
I never was really popular in my childhood; glasses, one eye plastered, red hair, you know the drill, it makes you victim pretty soon, but at age 15 I looked "pretty normal". No glasses anymore, no plaster anymore, but still the red hair. And I was called redhead frequently by those very same people. So when a couple of guys of that group started pointing in the direction where I stood and looking in that direction I started wondering and I must say that I got a tiny bit uncomfortable.
And that didn't get much better when one of the guys, the biggest guy of the group, and probably the "leader", walked in my direction. I turned half around, pretending to ignore him and he indeed passed me.
He walked up to the guy that was standing in the group behind me. I knew the guy, we went to the same highschool, even spent a while at the same BMX club in the city we lived then. And what I saw there drew all the blood from my face. It made me completely speechless.
The big guy walked up to the other guy, swung his fist full strength straight on the mouth of the guy, turned around and walked back to the group he came from like nothing happened. All the guys in the big guy's group cheered and laughed and every one shook the big guy's hand, because of such token of courage and adequateness.
And we stood there... Completely silent, perplexed.
The guy who just got hit was so completely surprised by this cowardly attack that he started crying. When he took his hands away from his mouth his hands were completely bathing in blood and his clothes were soaked with it, too. He was left behind with four or five teeth beaten through his lip and he did nothing to the other guy, absolutely NOTHING to deserve this.
Later we heard that he pressed charges against the big guy and I think the guy was even convicted to some minor punishment, but it ofcourse never made things better. And I don't think that it did anything to the big guy, because after a while he showed up with the same group again, tough as ever.
And the image of the guy standing with his hands covered in blood and his mouth completely torn open never left my mind.
I actually felt bad for a pretty long time after this whole thing had happened. I saw the big guy coming and I turned away. Even if I didn't know what the big guy was up to, I thought for a long time that I could've given some kind of a warning, but I didn't. Maybe that made me a coward, too?

People are cruel...