Decades and Miles Apart, Opposite Reactions to Violent Outbursts

Tonight, my friend and I were having dinner at a fun Mexican restaurant in my town, when we heard shouting and screaming. Not knowing if it was reaction to something sports-related on one of the TV screens, we casually looked toward where the sound was coming from and realized this was actually an incendiary altercation between a young man and young woman.

I looked back at my friend, who was able to see exactly what happened, and I missed the part where the girl smacked the guy. By the time I looked back that way, the couple had started a vitriolic brawl. 

Immediately, the men at the bar and surrounding tables started shouting at the man to stop pounding on the woman. Several got to their feet, and one expertly pulled the man away with what looked like a professional move. 

It took multiple men to subdue the offender. As they did this, the young woman screamed over and over, “Kill him!” The quick-thinking fellows instead dragged flailing man to the door of the restaurant, and I don’t know what happened to him after that.

Obviously, the girl should not have hit the guy. Conversely, the guy never learned that even if a woman hits a man first, he cannot hit her back. 

What is most impressive to me is the quick action the men in the restaurant took in the moment. We need more of that in this world. Those men were heroes.

I witnessed a similar altercation in the 1980s. The reaction of the witnesses, though, was completely opposite of the heroism I saw this evening.

My now husband and I were at a wedding in upstate New York, enjoying dinner with our friends. Like this evening, a young couple, not known to us, got into a heated screaming session. Soon, they were scuffling, and to everyone’s horror, the man dragged the woman by her hair across the floor and out the door. 

The difference? 

No one did anything. 

In Jim’s defense, he was busy comforting me because I had devolved into hysteric tears and had my face in his chest. The woman sitting across from me said, “Wow, that really upset you, Ann.” I returned, “How could it not?”

After things calmed down, the guests went back to dining and conversation, but the entire vibe had changed, similar to the way the vibe changed at the Academy Awards a few days ago. Even though it’s decades later, the reaction of the witnesses at the awards ceremony, when Will Smith smacked Chris Rock, was more similar to that wedding in the 1980s than in the restaurant tonight. 

At the 94th Academy Awards, the guests in the Dolby Theatre sat there in stunned silence as Will Smith spewed expletives in front of children in the audience. People tried to put on happy faces for those being honored, but the mood was ruined. It reminded me of that 1980s wedding where everyone pretended to return to a celebratory mood after witnessing an act of violence. 

The confrontation at the Academy Awards wasn’t a brawl between a man and a woman. It was a sucker slap from one enraged man to an unsuspecting man who had offended him. But I couldn’t help drawing lines from the awards ceremony, to a 1980s wedding, to a Mexican restaurant in Erie, Pennsylvania. The reaction at wedding and the awards were similar even though decades apart. The reactions to violence at the Academy Awards and the reactions to violence at an ordinary Pennsylvania restaurant couldn’t have been more different. 

I’m proud and grateful to the men who didn’t mind their own business tonight, but rather got off their duffs and stopped a brawl. They may have saved a life, or at least kept her from being seriously hurt. One young woman is very lucky tonight. We need more men in the world like those my friend and I witnessed tonight. Thank you.