Last week on Monday, I was having the kind of Monday that Garfield is talking about. A teeming ratking, equal parts insults to my intelligence, quasi-stink eyes, a group text starting “hey girlies!” followed by a deranged suggestion for how to split a six-person dinner bill, and a mix of cold brew and popcorn at 3PM that always makes me feel bad but I’ll never learn my lesson. By the end of the day I was dejected, weary, and raw, unraveling to the brink of breakdown every time my heavy tote bags slid off my shoulders on my long walk home.
Lucky for me, and less for them, I have a deep bench of people I can call when I’m having a bad day. I have my mom, who gives me highly actionable sometimes annoying advice for making things better. I have my friends, who tell me exactly what I want to hear (“that sucks,” “you’re gorgeous”). This evening, though, I needed the nuanced response that only my big brother Harry can deliver. I needed his unyielding scorn for things that are annoying, his singularly anarchic contempt for authority, and I also needed someone to laugh at how pathetic I was being.
“I have to really bitch, okay?” I said, and I did, and he sat for the explosive rant I’d been composing since my second ill-advised 100 calorie pack of Skinny Pop, breaking into fits of giggles every time IT got worse. Our phone call was the perfect echo chamber for my rage, our gleeful pessimism pin-balling back and forth with abandon. I could feel myself indulgently collapsing inwards, a dying star, as I gave voice to all the things going wrong, woe is me to the nth degree. It was then, in the very instant I was shouting myself hoarse about how awful and unfair everything was, I got PUNCHED.
Punched! Hard! In my left arm. My phone arm! I got punched in my phone arm on Atlantic Avenue, the sun not yet set. The street was busy and I felt secure enough as I looked over my shoulder to watch him walk away, my puncher. All I know about him is that he might have been wearing a neon yellow beanie and that he did not really like my general vibe. That could be anybody with a neon yellow beanie!
Harry was saying something, the content of which I cannot remember. I couldn’t hear him over the sound of my jaw hitting the sidewalk and the tears rushing to my eyes. “Harry, I’m going to have to actually stop you. You will not ever believe what just happened to me.”
“Waaiiit hahaha wait what?” Harry said. “Seriously? HAHAHA… Wait. Are you like, safe?” I was safe. I didn’t feel scared. My arm hurt a little. I certainly felt surprised. Most of all, though, I was thrilled. In the moment that I’d been punched, one of my favorite things had happened to me — I’d been proven right. Everything really was that bad. I hadn’t been overreacting, and I had proof. The run-on sentence of my no-good-very-bad day had an exclamation point.
I was awash with validation. Like when you twist your ankle and rejoice that the X-Ray shows a shattered bone, just so you can say “I told you, Dad.” Or like how the best part of getting a massage is the moment that the masseuse says, “oh, my god, you’re incredibly tense.” I’d been convinced my life was a shambles, and then I got physically assaulted in the street and I thought, “NO THAT’S EXACTLY WHAT I MEAN!”
As soon as I got home, I told everyone that I’d been punched and isn’t that kind of funny, but they mostly just thought it was bad. Even when I said that metaphor about the broken ankle and the X-Ray they still weren’t totally on board. Everyone was aligned, though, that we couldn’t believe it had happened to me.
But that, my moment of cosmic affirmation, soon proved to be just that — a moment. By the next morning, the thing that had once just happened to me was happening to everyone, worse. Group chats buzzed with Tik Toks of girls bearing giant welts on their foreheads, video testimonies given mere moments after they’d been socked in the face. The Cut and the New York Post and Time all shared some version of the same story, with variations on a headline with key words “Girls,” “Viral” and “Punched.”
Within hours, my individual experience of an event I’d believed to be an aptly timed fluke changed completely, becoming instead a mere statistic in a terrible trend. When offered in contrast to the visible swelling and post-traumatic stress reported by the “Viral (...) Girls,” their videos accruing a combined 70 million views, my punching verged on slapstick. More like a wedgie or a “got your nose” than a true battery. In turn, my status as a case in point, a tally in New York’s 10% increase of misdemeanor assault, felt tenuous at best.
I became a sheepish pundit on a panel of people more qualified than I, a lackluster ambassador for an issue from which I felt twice removed. “Where were you?! Oh, God, Kate, I’m so sorry. Who was it? Does he match the description of the other guy? Oh, the arm? Oh, so not the face.” No, not the face, just my stupid arm. It didn’t even leave a mark, I’ve checked.
With every new account, and my continued lack of bruising even a little bit, I felt the sun setting on my heavenly validation, replaced instead by a new message. I’d thought my punch had been an ending, definitive proof that things were the worst for poor little me. But when it became what it would be after one night’s sleep — just the least-bad punch on a spectrum of truly bad punches — it was a humbling reminder that things could always be worse. That self-indulgent whining typically doesn’t age well. So things are a little more annoying than usual, Kate? “At least it wasn’t in the head.” Yeah, okay. At least it wasn’t in the head.
You must pay better attention to your surroundings Kate! Love, Mom
Crazy this happened to you!!!!!! Glad you’re okay but dammmmmn