Tito Chavez-Nguyen - How to Fight

 

I take my first step onto the mulch. My suit uniform is fresh-pressed and I tighten up my belt. I've seen this battlefield a dozen times before and I look to the high ground. On the mound, there's the structure, there's five guys there. I've trained extensively for this event. I march forward, and we lock eyes and there's pure silence. It's just me versus them. I choose to break the silence. I say, “Hey, come down from those monkey bars.” [audience laughter] 

 

So, just for a little bit of context, I'm eight years old. I've traveled all around the southern states, particularly rural places. I'm one of those people from a situation where I'm really a branch grafted onto a different family tree. There's always a different family. There's always a different town. There's always a different school. But the thing that always stays the same is recess time becomes my war zone.

 

I take a step onto recess every single time. I go to the monkey bars, because that's my favorite. I'm immediately punched, pushed, yelled at, made fun of, secluded into a different part of the yard. But this time, it's going to be different. I'm living in a different place, not in the south. In Maryland, in a place called Taneytown. You really should just change the A to an I, Tinytown. But I'm there. It's summertime. It's a couple weeks out from school and I've been staying up late. I see on the TV something I've never seen before. It's really late. There's some weird stuff that goes on and I love it. [audience laughter] 

 

There's a guy on the screen who looks like me. He's smart, confident, sexy, even a little bit dangerous. It's in the best movie of all time. It has danger, has an awesome villain, it has fights. You've probably heard of it, Enter the Dragon, starring Bruce Lee. [audience chuckle] So, I watched this thing 20 times in a row. I love this film. There's a scene in particular that I-- It's my favorite thing ever. Still to this day. Bruce Lee's on a boat and he's being bullied, taunted and he says, “Hey, what's your martial arts style?” Bruce Lee turns to him and says, “My style, it's the art of fighting without fighting.” The guy looks confused and challenges him to a fight anyways. Bruce Lee says, “Yeah, let's hop on the smaller boat and go to the island.” The guy says, “Sure.” Goes onto the boat. 

 

Before he realizes there's not an engine, there's no paddles, Bruce Lee pulls the rope and drifts him off to sea, [audience chuckle] wins the fight without even throwing a punch. Damn, that's smooth. Now, I've seen this so many times, I'm just starting to ask the guy taking care of me, Chuck, to do martial arts classes. That's all I want to do. So, every 15 minutes for the next week, I just ask, “Hey, I would be really good at this. I should learn how to fight. There's great discipline in martial arts. That's definitely what I need.” He eventually relents. I go into my first class. I get the cool uniform with the cool belt. I do the 45-minute class. I come out of it. I've inherited 2,000 years of combat knowledge. [audience laughter] I'm the baddest kid in the world, no one can stop me. I know this.

 

School starts. I sneak my uniform in my backpack. [audience laughter] Things go according to plan. Class happens. The bell rings. It's recess time. This is my first illegal thing ever. I go to the teacher's desk and I grab a Sharpie and I go into the bathroom. I put on my uniform. [audience chuckle] I get my white belt out, tie it around my waist and start painting it with a Sharpie. [audience laughter] It's cool. It's fine. No one will know. 

 

Now, I go into recess and all the teachers know how cool I am, because they're all smirking and chuckling because they know like, wow, I've learned some stuff. All the other kids in the playground are wide-eyed, they know I'm a bad, bad kid. So, this brings me back to those five guys looking at me and I say, “Hey, do you want to see a front kick?” And their eyes just bug out, their face contorts. I've seen this. I know this intimately. It's a face I typically have whenever I go into recess, it's terror, it's being scared. 

 

I think back to Bruce Lee saying, “My style, it's the art of fighting without fighting.” I look at them and I say, “Hey, do you want to see how to do a front kick? I can show you. It's really cool.” They're quiet, they're whispering to one another and then they start all running right at me. I close my eyes and I think, this is where I get my black eye again.

 

Now, I open up my eyes, and they're to the left and the right of me, and they're looking at me and they're like, “Hey, yeah, can you show me that front kick?” I smirk a little bit, I'm like, “Oh, yeah, I can show you this.” This is one of those moments where I know, true, things can change again. I say, “Yeah, let's do that front kick. But you have to promise, we have to go to those monkey bars afterwards.” And with that, I do my first front kick with a new group of friends. I take one step with a new group of friends and I finally get to swing on some monkey bars with some friends.