So here's a question.

Why's everybody gotta be fightin' late at night in Broad Ripple?! You people are bugging the crap out of me. Seriously.

I seem to be going out a lot lately, inevitably ending up in Broad Ripple, probably because it's so close and I don't feel like driving downtown or to J.Clyde's where my other friends probably are. Some evening last week, while leaving a bar, I saw a brawl just erupt in front of Bleecker Street - there must've been a dozen people involved. And I, in my monthly hormonal rage, began tearing up when a girl jumped into the fight in an effort to get her boyfriend out of it, only to be toppled over and thrown to the pavement ("She just wanted to save her man!" I kept crying to my friends). The cops quickly diffused it, and right on to them, but it seemed like they were only able to find two or three of the eight or 12 people that were actually in the fight.

An evening or two later, my boyfriend helped escort two feisty boys from a bar. They, in turn, began harassing my boyfriend, following us as we walked down the street. Fights make me tense. I do not like fights. I do not like people getting hurt and I do not like people getting in trouble. I've always said that, yes, I can talk a helluvalotta talk, but I won't ever back it up. That's not what I do - I'm all hippie flowers and peace symbols. So I decided to diffuse the situation by telling those two crazy boys I was calling the police. I fake dialed, fake pretended to have an emergency and explained to dead air on the other line where I was located and that I was being harassed. The two dudes threw some expletives our way but left, assuming I had really dialed 911. Surprise. I had not. But yay - no fighting.

And, after recounting this to a friend, he mentioned how, the evening before, he'd seen a fight between a couple girls in the street, too.

"And women?" he said. "Don't ever think girls don't like to take it out on each other either."

What's with all this fighting!?

I assume it's a combination of many things, the foremost ingredient being alcohol. A normally interesting, caring, non-fighting person can turn just nutty and fight-crazy when they drink. I've seen it happen. It's not pretty. And I've known entirely too many people who laugh when they tell me which county has the best jail food after they get into a drunk fight.

Stop laughing when you tell me these stories. It's not funny and I don't think it's cool. You're making our community unsafe. You laugh when you tell these stories because you're trying to make us laugh along with you, trying to get us to give you the go-ahead, to let you know it's okay. You fought over your dude nobly, that guy called you some slur and you had to protect your reputation, he made some smart comment to your girl, or maybe she just looked at you the wrong way. You want me to tell you it's fine for you to've fought over that.

I won't.

And I'll respect you all more when you just walk away.