Can you give details about what exactly happened to get you thrown in the slammer?
>>> It just started as a run-in on the road, with another driver. The guy was an older male, Caucasian, maybe late 30's early 40's. I was 18, fresh out of high school and had just gotten my first "fast" car, which was kind of an "in" car at the time; an IROC-Z28, 1990 model. So, I was driving , near my high school actually, I had graduated earlier that summer, and he was on my a$$ really bad. I recall it very vividly, how he was on a cell phone and he was driving a Cadillac Allante (which is an old no longer made model of Caddy). He looked like a d*ck to me, in my rearview mirror. My testosterone level was high, you know how it gets out there sometimes, and so I just kept riding slower and slower until we were down to like 25 or so and he still wouldn't come up around me. So finally he did, and as he tried to pass I kept gunning my car forward (mine seemed to be faster) and not letting him pass. Then he would have to fall in behind again. He got next to me again and I gave him the finger, and then he started giving it back and we were both hollering at each other through the windows and all that, and he started yelling at me to pull over up ahead where there was a parking lot to a little strip mall type of place. So, fatefully, we both pulled in there. He got out and started marching toward my car and I got out, but I brought out with me one of these steel retractable batons. Kind of like police might have? And he got in my face and was yelling , and I shoved him off, and it got physical, and I whipped that baton out (you have to like whip it downward to make it come out) and I cracked him right in the rib area with it. He went down against my car from that, and then I just , basically, put a real good f*ckin beating into him. I broke four of his vertebrae , two of his ribs, and his jaw because I also kicked him square in the face when he was down. Other people had pulled over by that time and saw me giving out this beating and I got in the car and took off , and awhile later cops came to my house. Somebody had got my plate, obviously. So since it was my very first offense it cost me a lot of money , my family rather, and I was able to plead it down into less than a felony (they initially wanted it to be agg.assault & battery w/grievous bodily harm) if I pled guilty, so I got 363 days in County and a fine, and had to pay all court costs and take anger management classes while in jail, and one year of parole after the served time was up. They kept me in there for the maximum possible before they have to send you to a state prison ( you can never be sentenced to anything more than 364 days in a county jail ; those who are in there longer are usually guys who are awaiting trial on real heavy cases and cannot make bail). Lesson: though it may have momentarily felt/seemed that way, I was not the "alpha" male in that situation. I was just a young kid with an anger/ emotional problem who got caught up in the heat of a moment and could have killed someone. ( In which case, incidentally, we would not be having this conversation right now). ~Dino~
