Imagine the following scenario:
It’s a sunny Friday evening. You’re hungry so you walk to your favourite pizzeria to get your favourite pizza. Please take a moment to imagine your favourite pizza — got it? OK. As you enter the pizzeria, you notice a couple in their mid-30s waiting for their order.
You order your favourite pizza, including all your favourite condiments etc, and you idly watch the cute pizza attendee put it in the stone oven with the long stick. You remember when it was raining and you decided to get delivery but then she arrived at your door soaked and unhappy and you felt awful.
You are jolted out of reverie by increasingly insistent honks from a truck waiting outside. The couple who entered behind you are ignoring the honks, deliberately.
You decide it’s getting a bit warm and you’ve got a few minutes to wait so you go out front and light up a cigarette. You note the truck, which is a dark blue, parked on the edge of a junction next to a few others. The man in there, in his 50s, is watching the couple intently. You feel worried about it, but in a detached way.
Two young men, one of them extremely well-built, enter the establishment. The well-built man is wearing a polo shirt in that way well-built men sometimes do.
The couple exit the shop with their pizzas. The subsequent events are obvious and could have been foreseen by anyone present.
The older man exits his truck. He approaches the male member of the couple. The woman shouts something. The men brawl. It seems the man from the truck wants to fight a lot more than the other man. The two young men run out of the pizzeria and the well-built man grabs the man from the truck and pulls him away and holds onto him.
The couple get into their car and drive off very quickly, while the woman shouts ‘please don’t hurt him!’ at the well-built man.
The young man tries to figure out what to do with this man. He tells him ‘if you calm down I’ll let you go. are you going to stop?’ and the older man grunts. The young man throws him a few feet away and puts out his arms to fend off any counterattack.
The young man’s polo shirt is stained red. The older man’s face is glistening with sweat and blood. He picks his keys up off the floor. The young man watches. The older man gets in his car. The young man watches.
The young man shouts ‘you go home yeah’.
The old man speaks ‘I ain’t finished yet’.
And he speeds off, giving the impression he has a destination in mind.
The young man, stained with blood, re-enters the pizza place. Meanwhile you are still smoking. You did not intervene. You reason you don’t have the strength. You would have done more harm than good.
You give it a few minutes, enter the pizzeria, watch your pizza emerge, be boxed, and handed to you. You thank your crush nervously, and leave to walk home.
You wonder about that young, strong man. Why is he so strong? Such a physique does not come without work. Does he play sports? Does he want to appear a certain way? Does he love the power that strength gives him?
You have always feared the strong, because with a strong body comes the knowledge that this person has the power to destroy parts of you in a way you cannot resist.
And so you resent him, for imposing this upon you. But is that right? Didn’t he do a good thing today?