Why did I choose not to fight?

 I know my strength and it scares me

To this day, I am sure my wife's son considers me a coward for not fighitng him; every day I suffered verbal abuse, and threats from him, and yet I never brought myself to hit him, I did defend myself when he attacked me three times.

One reason is he was not worth going to jail for, but the main reason is I knw my strength, and I am scared of letting my guard down as i knew I could do some serious damge to my opponent; this is no idle boast, when I was 11 I hit another child who angered me, and cracked three of his teeth. When he complained to his parents about what I did, all they said was "You were told not to do what you kept doing."

After 30 years of arguing with him, I stopped, I knew I was right, and that is what mattered to me.

As Mahatma Ghandi's passive violence philosophy said, "It takes a better man, not to fight," sadly that is not always possible. But, violence does beget more violence.

I knew that after six years in the Armed Forces taking down a rowdy teenager would be a piece of cake, I could have done serious damge, and left little evidence of the attack. I never took Judo lessons, but through my interest in Israel, I learned of a way of fighting that uses little energy, and achieves a lot.