Jan 6: Peer Pressure

Tell us about a time you bent to peer pressure.

Hmmm… I’ve never been one to give in to peer pressure… I’ve always thought that it was ridiculous and I always wanted to be in control of making my own decisions, y’know, like a normal person.

I was always the one person thinking ahead when others would make suggestions for things to do… and being the pessimist that I am, I would always anticipate the worst-case scenario. I would make calculated decisions to remove myself from situations that would otherwise make me feel very uncomfortable – however in doing so, had an impact on my social life and the friendships that I had.

The more times they all wanted to get together and do something, I would always politely decline or make up an excuse not to get involved, and when you do that too many times, you just stop getting invitations, and friendships fall by the wayside.

I remember one particular night, I was back home visiting during the holidays. it was the year that I had moved to Melbourne, and everybody else from high-school had also come back to town, and we had all planned a big night out altogether to have a great big catch up. It was tipped to be an incredible night… it just didn’t turn out that way.

It started off great. A group of us met up at a friend’s place, and then we walked around the corner to another friends place to get some more people, then we headed down to the first pub / club / bar and over the course of a few hours, more and more people joined our group and the fun began to build. People were drinking, music was pumping, there was laughter and dancing and although I had not been wanting to go out and see these people, I found myself actually having a great time.

By the time we arrived at the next venue, more people had arrived and everybody was having so much fun…

Then one of the girls ended up having one too many drinks and started shooting her mouth off. She then started tension with another group of people that were at the same venue, but then when she was confronted, pretended as though she had no idea why they were so upset with her. Finally one of the other girls she was antagonising had had enough and pushed her and told her to “shut (her) fucking mouth”…

…and then it was on.

Allow me to express this with gifs…

It all starts like this

and then after a few drinks, it turns into

and then in turn becomes more along the lines of

and our friend was all like

and then when the other girl had moved away, our girl, C, would be all

which would piss this girl off even more, and so she’d be all

and then our generally calm and mild-mannered girl, would turn into some kind of nutcase and all of a sudden threw her drink down and was all up in this chick’s face like

And so whilst everybody else is trying to pull them apart, and suggesting that we leave, a select few of us were just sitting there thinking

So eventually, our friend gets taken out by security, so we decide that we’ll call it a night, a few people decide to leave, but the majority of us end up walking the entire way down the main street to the other end, and walk one of our friends 3/4 of the way home, before we have our usual pit-stop at the service station to grab an ice cream / chocolate bar etc.

On our way, we start seeing a few cars driving past us very slowly. Some of the people in our group soon recognise that the cars belong to some very shady people from a very shady part of town. Turns out that the girl C was hassling is the girlfriend or sister or something of one of these guys… and these are the type of people who drive around with baseball bats in their cars… just in case. It was at that point all I wanted to do was just leave and go home and basically get to safety.

Everybody started getting nervous, but then the cars stopped passing.

I had a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach.

Sure enough, as we began to walk around the curve of the road, a couple of blocks ahead of us was a group of these people… including the people from the other group at the bar.

AWESOME!!

Being one who doesn’t like physical violence, I knew if I stayed, I’d end up getting my arse kicked and end up in hospital. I voiced my concerns, and said that I wanted to leave, but then almost got into a fight with these supposed friends of mine for wanting to bail and save myself. ‘She’s your friend too, you need to stick up for her. You need to help us protect her’.

Fuck that, I had nothing to do with this. I’m not the one running my mouth off. I’m not the one picking fights. I’m not the one so drunk I can barely walk. I’m not the one who started all of this. I mean for fucks sake, we’re not even really friends… we never were. We went to school together and were always nice to each other and that’s it… Bitch is on her own as far as I’m concerned.

Then it became more about supporting everybody else. Strength in numbers. Stand up for friends. Don’t be such a pussy. Blah blah blah…

I was stuck. As much as I wanted to disappear, I couldn’t.

I remember by this stage it was about 2:30 – 3am and there we were in the main street having a stand off. A couple of people from the rival group approached and wanted an apology. Our girl, C, by this stage, was barely able to stand, and I was one of the people holding her up. She was barely able to string a sentence together, but when she was asked to apologise for her behaviour, she managed to get some words out, it’s just that those words happened to be “go fuck yourself, you fucking slutty cunt whore”… or something to that effect…

Clearly, not the sort of thing to be saying when you’re being approached by a gang.

So rather than having our street brawl be like this

the girls started it off

and then suddenly…

I kinda wished that it hadn’t escalated the way it did, hell, I wish none of us were even put into that position, and before I knew it, I had a few people near me wanting to beat me up, and I tried talking my way out of it, and talking some sense into them ‘hey guys, look, I don’t know you, you don’t know me, I don’t have a problem with you, so there’s no reason for this to get any worse than it has to be’  and they had a moment where they actually stopped and thought it over and then just as they had stopped advancing towards me, *BAM* I got smacked right in the face by some chick who went to hit somebody else who was standing in front of me, but ducked out of the way at the last minute.

I felt immense pain, and everything was a bit blurry, and she actually stopped and apologised for hitting me, but I’d seen red. If I was going to be in a fight, then I was going to be in a fucking fight!!

Just as I grabbed somebody by the throat, the cops suddenly came around the corner and drove past… they didn’t actually stop, they just kept driving, but that was enough for the rival gang to suddenly run off in all different directions.

One minute they were there, then just as soon they were gone.

We continued on our way down the street, bruised and bloodied. Had our ice creams and then made our way home.

Is this what happens on weekends? These people have fights all the time? NEVER AGAIN!! Never again was i going to be involved with this group of people if it’s going to lead to me being involved in fights.

Fuck. That.

I woke up the next day with a semi-black eye and swollen cheek and bruised knuckles. Part of me felt like a bit of a bad-ass, but the rest of me was just in pain and full of regret. Regret that I ever listened to those bitches.