VOIP! BAM! BOOP!

This past week, I've been recovering from one of the more bizarre occurrences of my young life. I vehemently wish, for the sake of my masculinity, that I could say that I was slapped by a high nobleman of the eighteenth century; that he challenged me to a life-ending duel, on the grounds that I had unfortunately impugned his high honor by whiling away my time in his daughter's chambers (or something). Per my usual though, even instances of assault upon my person end up being more farcical than tragic.

Last weekend, I went out to grab a drink or two with some of the usual suspect physics graduate students; in particular, Matt and Karie were there. Several of the physics graduate students who have been in the program longer live behind the Northgate area, where many of the more popular bars in College Station are located. At any rate, hanging out in their front yards as the night draws to an end provides for the right relaxing and comfortable mood a physics graduate desires, I suppose. And for that reason, those in the know call that region, "The Neighborhood."

Matt, Karie, and I were leaving The Neighborhood to watch a DVD. We were walking in opposite directions, as I was riding with Matt and Karie was driving herself. At this time, I noticed that a crowd of five drunk guys were walking in our general direction, looking for their cars to drive home after a long and eventful night of drinking. One of the five was clearly a bit more drunk. The term is "belligerent." He was telling his friends about how he wanted to beat some ass or some nonsense. Hearing that, I looked over at them from across the street and gave them my patented, skeptical, "What me?" shrug. I guess the belligerent one took umbrage to that particular look because he was litterally, "hop, skipping mad." And his woeful friends were trying desperately to hold this pistol-less Yosemite Sam back.

I simply said, "Go home and go to bed. It's not worth it."

As I got to Matt's car and opened the passanger side door, I realized that I had two individuals rapidly approaching me. The belligerent one was yelling for me to get out of the car (which, at no point, had I entered), and one of his very sober friends was wisely trying to head him off. The friend came up to me and apologized. Paying full attention to the friend and unaware of my surroundings, I replied that it was fine and that he should get his friend home. At that moment, the belligerent one transcended into "Pathetic Asshole" and gave me an open-handed slap to the face, across my eye and over the bridge of my nose.

Seeing nothing but stars and confused as hell, I slumped into Matt's car, closed the door behind me, and slumped over -- catching the blood with my hand as it ran profusely from my nose and worried about getting blood all over poor Matt's car.

After slapping me, the pathetic asshole was extremely shocked by what he had just done and started running away. His woeful friends huddled around his back and ran with him.

At this point, Karie drove up in her jeep, and Matt ran up to her to say, "Button got slapped!" So Karie jumped out of her car, left it idling in the middle of the street, and sprinted after them (all five foot-nothing and ninety-some pounds of her). She yelled at them and somehow intimidated the hell out of them. They must have thought she was a little drunk, crazy or both. One can only suppose.

Meanwhile, Matt, who had been a student of Tae Kwon Do, inexplicably had his boken wooden sword sitting in the back seat. Rationally, since there were one of him and five of them, he grabbed the boken and ran down the street after them. He caught up to the very sober one, who was absolutely petrified of Matt, and coolly gave him his phone number and demanded that the pathetic asshole call in the morning to apologize. Of course, he never called, but I appreciate the sentiment anyway.

Karie came back to check on me, and we inside one of the grad students' homes so that I could wash up. Matt came back, and we decided to drive to the grocery store so that I could ice down my swelling eye with its extraordinarily flattering contusion.

On the way out though, we noticed that the pathetic asshole and his friends were wandering around the streets, seemingly lost and looking for their car. We slowed down as we approached them and heard one of them say, "Keep walking." And with that, we drove off.

The above took place in a span of at most three and a half minutes. Bizarre.

We spent the night watching DVD's, eating Snickers Ice Cream Bars, and laughing about the lunacy of the night's events as I kept a frozen package of California Medley Vegetables on my sore face.