I had recently moved to the northern California coast about thirty-five years ago with my wife at the time and we made friends with some neighbors. The man was a commercial fisherman, and we were invited to an end-of-the-salmon-season BBQ at a beach near the harbor.

Although I had never been to sea, I was able to drink like the saltiest of the salty, and proceeded to do so at this BBQ.

At one point the partiers set a derelict boat wrecked on the beach afire, and as the flames grew, a deckhand and I sat on the deck passing a bottle of brandy back and forth until the flames forced us off.

Just as it was getting dark I heard a woman scream, and turned around in time to see her get slapped in the face by a man. This kind of behavior always sends me into a rage, so I invited the fellow to "Come hit a man, ya son of a *****!" and stood ready to fight, full of amber bravado.

Some fishermen grabbed him as he was about to charge me, and it was at this moment I realized how much bigger than I he was, and decided that fighting this dude might not be a very good idea, but as soon as he was let go by his fellow fishermen he lunged towards me, and I was committed to fighting.

We crashed into each other, and as luck would have it, I managed to pin him on his side in the sand. I was in control, but there was little more I could do besides hold him down.

All of a sudden the index finger on my right hand was in great pain. My foe had managed to get it between his teeth and was biting down hard. It hurt like hell.

I put all the fingers of my left hand in his eyes and said:

"Let go my finger or I'll pull your eyes out!"

To my great disapointment his reply was:

"Go 'head!" through clenched teeth.

I did what I had to do, and dug my fingers into his eyes as hard as I could. Fortunately, he decided trading his eyes for one of my fingers was a bad deal, so he opened wide, I pulled my finger out of his mouth, got up and got the hell out of there.

The very next day I was standing in line at the local liquor store. There was only one customer in front of me. It was the guy I had fought with. I noticed a great deal of redness under both his eyes. He didn't say anything to me. I didn't say anything to him. We paid for our booze and went our ways.

My finger still hurt quite a bit. There is a small scar on it to this day. About six months after that fight I got my first job on a boat. I fished and worked the docks for about fifteen years. I sport a few scars from that, too, and lots stories, such as this one!