Although I could always throw (and land) a few punches, I wasn’t much of a fighter. In the heat of the moment I found my body considering several options (jab to the neck, kick to the groin, a punch to the solar plexus with a powerful chi cry) but it usually resorted to the easiest: run.

Sure, I was an expert at TV-mimicked numchucks and was very proficient with the bo but for some reason those weapons were never at hand when I actually had to fight. Even if they were, I have the nagging suspicion that I probably would’ve knocked myself out.

Be that as it may, most of my fights did result in flight because I’ve always prescribed to discretion being the better part of valor. And whereas I was a loudmouth, argumentative brawler when it came to a single opponent most of my attackers came at me en masse so I would discreetly, and quickly, run away.

I distinctly remember one time (in the seventh grade) when my then overweight cousin and I were surrounded by a group of twelve and I punched him in his oversized backpack and (embarrassingly) screamed “Run, Carlito! Run!”

For a frozen moment of time me and the attacking hoodlums stared in unified awe as that two hundred pound boy tore off down the block and around the corner. I actually looked at my attacker for a moment and he at me, saw the spark of rekindled memory in his eye that he was in the middle of attacking me and then ran off after my lightning fast then-fat cousin.

Sure I outran them (again) but I will always remember arriving home sweating and finding my cousin not even winded.