Back in the day, I was in the middle of a Sunday 8 ball tourney and in walked a friend of my room mate and me.
He says let's play some $20 8 ball. I say ok and run out the first game and he refuses to pay.
Then a few minutes later, I'm doing this trick shot where a ball is sitting in the far corner and I roll the cb against the rail and throw the cue behind my back and hit it 5 or 6 rails to make the ball in the corner.
He says "I'll bet you $10 that you can't do that shot in 10 tries".
I said "ok, but miscues don't count as a try".
So, I miss it by a hair on the fifth try and he says, "let's bump it to $15".
I agree...
Then on the tenth try, I come a hair from doing it again and he says "You owe me $15".
I replied that as soon as he paid me the twenty he owed me, I'd pay him the 15 I owed him.
Now some background. This guy was 6'5", 280 and was a gun runner for gang bangers in San Bernardino and other areas of the inland empire.
At the time, I offered personal instruction in martial arts and would sometimes use the pool hall during off hours for the instruction.
So he comes up to me and says, "come quarter to 4 I'm going to collect."
I said, "Rich, if you shoot me, you better hope to God you kill me, cause if you don't, I will come back and kill you."
He replies "Oh I'm not gonna shoot you, but you better hope you're as much of a badass as you say you are".
I responded, "I"ve never claimed I was a badass Rich".
I hadn't either, people just assumed it because they would see me giving martial arts instruction and people would ask if they could try and hit me and I would let them.
So at like 20 till 4, my room mate Josh pulls up on his bike and he was always acting as a moderator between me and Rich, so I said, screw this Rich, let's go right now and I start walking for the door.
Scott, (the owner of the pool hall), says take it around back, take it around back.
We get about half way around back and I get into a fighting stance and Rich tries to just lean up and punch me in the head, I duck and then back out into the parking lot. He tries it again and I duck it again.
Then I pull my pants up at the knees to free them up so I can kick freely and Rich says, " go ahead and try to kick me, I'll kick you in the balls".
He tries the punch thing one more time and I duck it again and then Mike, (co owner and brother of Scott), comes running up behind him and grabs him and pulls him away.
That was that and Scott barred him from ever coming back to the pool hall again.
Later he ended up getting caught with illegal firearms in the back of his camaro and went to county for 18 months or so. That was the last I heard about him.
Jaden
My nephew trained with one of the more serious Karate instructors and "earned" a 2nd degree black belt. I watched him spar and he was quick, powerful and could be deadly. He was a non-violent person who would never start a fight. In fact, he had lots of friends and was just a nice respectful kid (to everyone). Everyone knew better than to mess with him because he could really be something you didn't want to mess with.
After training most of his young life, he went to a party with friends. At this time, he was about 16-17 years old and he walked outside by himself and someone hit him in the back of the head with a 2 x 4 or baseball bat. He was hospitalized but quit training and got away from Karate altogether. We theorized that whoever hit him was simply jealous of his martial arts capabilities and wanted to "prove" that he wasn't all that much of a bad ass. The low life POS's never were caught and no one ever told who did it. My nephew didn't drink, smoke or cuss; a real all-around good guy. Never got into arguments and didn't at the party either. He figured that someone just wasn't man enough to confront him face to face so they attacked him when he least expected it.
There are cowards everywhere, people keying other people's cars, defacing businesses property, shooting people in the back, hitting people over the head with deadly blunt instruments etc. These cowards sometimes get up the courage to ambush unsuspecting people. It's sad really, when a conversation could have fixed whatever ailed them. It's what happened to Mike Surber. www.mikesurber.com
JoeyA