A professional boxer and convicted rapist once said, in reference to an opponent in his upcoming fight, “Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” He was not referring to Robert Burns’ poem, “To A Mouse,” a line from which has lived on far past its 1785 publication:“The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men/Gang aft agley,”
The boxer and mouth (or face) puncher was someone who competed in a ring that had rules and referees; the competitors wore padded gloves that protected the hands from damage when the punch landed on an opponent’s face. In the “cops and robbers” dramas that I watch on TV, I often note how both men and women will land a bare-handed punch on the face of someone, and seldom does the puncher cry out in pain. As a former, albeit reluctant, street scrapper, I must say that a bare-fisted punch to a person’s face — especially when it contacts bone — will rip the skin from the puncher’s knuckles and hurt like … really badly. When people talk of throat-punching — “I’ll punch her in the throat” — they are not speaking from experience. Punching in the throat is difficult to accomplish; the chin is an impediment to the delivery.
The multi-decades-old skin that wraps the bones of my hands is thin and weak. I apply soothing balms to my hands and cure the nicks and cuts with medicated lotions. My youngest granddaughter has free and easy access to a box of bandages, most of which she applies to her dolls, and some of which she will paste onto one of my gray and worn hands. Myah also enjoys plowing into my stomach, both arms outstretched, hands flat against my fat, uh … muscle. I can usually anticipate the assault, watching her position herself a few feet away from me, and paw the floor like a bull. She will then run into my stomach, which I have tensed in anticipation. She did surprise me recently, with a punch to my unprepared gut, one that got an “Oof!” She looked at me when she heard the whoosh of air and seemed to be checking my face for alarm. That sneak punch reminded me of when I was young and thin and strong and would invite my younger brother and sister to punch me in my muscled stomach. The game ended when my brother grew strong, and a wallop folded me in half. I’m looking for a new game for Myah.
Outside of the boxing ring, punching is not a solution to any problem. Some people will slap others when angry, but I am not suggesting that we bring a slap to a fistfight. As I wrote in “Slapping,” (Weekly View, O4/07/2022) we should not be pounding each other in any way. But when negotiations break down and a fist comes whistling toward your noggin, you may take some measure of joy in the fact that the puncher will often be as damaged by the punch as the punchee. In his play Timon of Athens, William Shakespeare wrote, “I’ll beat thee, but I would infect my hands,” one example of Bill’s many low-key, but stinging, insults.
Let’s not punch. Punching is akin to wrestling with a pig, a sport that tends to get us dirty and yet, delights the pig. As a beaten, battered, and bloody Rodney King once mournfully intoned, “can we all get along?” As for me, I’m singing with John and Yoko: “Give peace a chance.” And all I am saying as well is, “Don’t give punch a chance.”
cjon3acd@att.net