I lived in Brooklyn through my school years. As Rocky Laporte would say "you had to be tough, I remember laying in bed at night looking at the stars thinking, where the heck is the roof?" Haha
For whatever reason my thoughts have been stuck on the fights I had as a kid in Brooklyn. I never went looking for trouble but occasionally it seem to find me. I never carried a weapon like a switchblade, or a zip gun, or brass knuckles, but I was well aware of them. If you wanted to fight me it had to be hand to hand combat.
Charlie K pushed me while we were on line in high school cafeteria.The other kids online laughed. Charlie and I were friends, we were on different teams in the same Little League. I asked the high school coach to enlist him as our first baseman on the varsity team, and he did. Today he wanted to be an antagonist, I pushed him back. I remember I was about two kids in front of him so when I was facing the front of the line he would push me. Finally he gave me a push that upset me so I pushed him hard and he charged me. Charlie was 6'4 a big strong kid, he outweighed me, and outreached me, I was 5'7. I didn't want to take a wack at him, because I considered him a friend even though we didn't hang out together, I thought we were teasing each other, it wasn't serious. I didn't want to chip one of his teeth or break a nose or a jaw. He charged like a bull to a matador, when he was a few feet away I jumped up aiming at his neck and got him in a headlock. He tried to get me off, I held on wouldn't let go. It wasn't long before a teacher saw the commotion, separated us and brought us to the assistant principle's office. We sat there giggling while waiting for the assistant principal to come. After the assistant principle lectured us and gave us detention, we were told to shake hands, which we did. We walked out laughing at each other.
I was walking home from school with PeeWee.We stopped to talk and were discussing something and in disagreement, basically arguing. Another student who was walking close enough to hear our conversation, joined us by using the wrong vocabulary "you M/F don't know what you're talking about", I stopped him right there and said, "don't you call me that, nobody talks about my mother like that." He repeated it and gave me a little shove, I clocked him with a right cross that scared the hell out of me because for a second he went down like he had no control over his body. I helped him up, he was holding the side of his face and he ran. He was in some of my classes but he kept his distance. I always felt, afterwards that I was too quick on the draw and a few times I wanted to apologize, but I never did.
I learned some of the skills of boxing from my cousin who lived next door to me. He was a professional boxer, occasionally we would catch him on TV on " Friday Night Fights". In the yard, where he lived in my uncle's house, my uncle built a chining bar, and a reduced size boxing ring, also had a sand bag. I would work out there, and shadow box in the ring.
it's not a strong pain and today it feels actually went down a little bit. 
My oncologist told me that chemo and radiation can age a person's body by 10 years, increasing arthritis and other age-related issues. Good times, huh?
