05/28/2024
Girl punched me in the face. I punched her back. Worst first date ever. Bonus points: I didn't know it was a first date.
So I'm in college, early sophomore year, in some Psychology 101 class. This cute Hispanic girl, Maria, sits next to me and we hit it off. To be completely honest, I wasn't really into her as a romantic interest at the time, but she was pretty cool and in hindsight I wouldn't have minded dating her. She was a commuter student, so we didn't really hang out much outside of class.
One weekend, she had a group project on campus, so she asked if I wanted to "hang out" after she was finished--around 5pm on Saturday. Incidentally, that's about the time that I went to the gym to practice MMA. She knows that I dabble in the martial arts, and when I bring up the conflict (which I had no problem skipping), she suggested she come with. This was also prefaced with a "Oh, but I'll be all sweaty after. No problem, I'll just shower at your dorm." Face, meet palm.
Fast forward to Saturday. We show up at MMA. Since it's a college-run club (at a tech school, to boot), we have a wide variety of dudebros there ranging from experienced fighters to complete newbies. This meant that Maria wasn't really out of place, and we spent some time going over the basics. Our practices were usually ~1.5-2 hours long, and we would drill for the first half and then spar for the second.
Since I'm probably the smallest guy there (5 foot 3, 125 pounds), and since Maria was my "guest," the sparring portion was all me. Now, real talk here, sparring with women is a lose-lose situation. Call it sexism, but even if she says she can handle it I can't just go balls to the walls. Especially with a newbie. If I come out blazing, someone is going to get hurt. Spoiler alert: It won't be me. But, at the same time, I can't lose. Call it pride or misplaced misogyny (consider my privilege checked), but if I lose then it's gg. I won't hear the end of it ever again.
So when fighting with a woman, I usually take a few lumps and give a few love taps. I'll go hard enough to make it clear that I'm dominant, but not hard enough to actually cause damage.
The fight starts and Maria comes out swinging. That's fine I'll just turtle a bit and throw a--suddenly I'm spinning. Turns out she's done some boxing before. Like five years worth.
Because I'm the smallest guy there, I usually spar with larger people. Think 5+ inches and 30+ pounds on me. Because of this, I've learned really fast that when I get rocked by a punch, I need to (for lack of abetter term) drop agro or else the fight's going to end. If I can't get them to back off, then they'll follow it up and I'll lose. So, I've conditioned my instincts to immediately counter if I get rocked--it's an unconscious thing at this point.
So here I am, rocked. I automatically throw my "oh s**t" punch. It catches Maria straight in the face, and literally knocks her off her feet to the ground. As my buddy tells it, "I started laughing because I know you got rocked. Then you knocked her the f**k out [author's note: she wasn't KOed] and I started laughing even harder."
Anyways, after much apologies we head out. Her eye is swollen. Like good luck hiding that with mascara. Like "No officer, I swear: she fell down the stairs" swollen. She turns to me and chuckles and says "Hah, so this was pretty much the worst first date ever, right?"
All I could do was do a double take and, ala Stewie Griffin, reply with a drawn out "Whaaaauuuuuuuuuuuuuuut."
Epilogue: We didn't end up dating. Class on Monday was suuuuper awkward trying to explain what happened to her.
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