I told him I wasn’t going to fight him, and I sat back down. He exploded and challenged me to a fight. I got up because he was dangerously close to dashing his brains out on the concrete pillars whizzing past his head. He was loud and obnoxious and extremely drunk, and he was showing off in front of his two friends by prying open the sliding doors of the subway car and sticking his head out into the tunnel. We were on our way to the suburbs, to ring in the New Year with my in-laws, when a man-a big, thick guy in his early twenties-decided to pick a fight with me. We had been skating at an outdoor rink near our downtown apartment.
My wife and I were on an eastbound train.
