In the south, college football is huge. This week, everyone was talking about the "Game of the Century" this weekend, LSU vs. Alabama. From how the rivalry and rankings were explained to me, it seemed this game might be epic enough for even an NFL girl (go Steelers) like me to enjoy, so we decided to watch it. One of M's coworkers is a huge LSU fan and took us to an LSU bar for the game.

The game itself was intense and went into overtime. The bar was stuffed but somehow I had landed the one chair next to the heater we were all huddled around. As regulation time ended, I started to notice a guy that was standing next to me and kept bumping into me. "I'm a New York girl," I thought, "I know how to handle this." I pulled out all the tricks I had learned. I even stuck out my purse so I would take up even more space and he'd feel a noticeable corner when he got too close. Nothing worked. I wasn't about to leave my treasured spot on the one seat under the heater and the bar wasn't crowded enough that he needed to be sitting on top of me, I decided I should just ask him to stop. I mean, afterall, this isn't New York City, people are friendlier down here, right? And he probably didn't even realize it.

After a prolonged lean on me, I decided it was time. I politely asked him to stop leaning on me. You would think I had just cussed out his mother. He started calling me a crazy "b**** and insisted he hadn't touched me. (I felt an immediate de ja vu from the previous week's jaywalking incident being called that name again.) I ignored him and continued talking to the girl next to me. His rudeness escalated and included foul things about the girl I was talking to. She had had enough and couldn't ignore him anymore...

What followed was basically a blur. I remember giving up my seat in an effort to get away and watched the scene unfold like I was watching a movie. They started yelling and before I knew it, M joined the argument, again defending my honor. A few of his coworkers started saying stuff too but this guy seemed excited that M had jumped in, I'm sure because M seemed like a much more worthy opponent than a girl. When M told him to, "Be a man, walk away and go shave that soul patch," it finally sent the guy over the edge and he pushed M!

I was so frightened. Was M really going to be in a bar fight? This guy looked pretty huge, what if he seriously injured M? And a bunch of M's employees were there, what would they think? I later learned that everyone involved in a bar fight gets arrested in Texas... Was I going to be bailing him out of jail later that night?

I held my breath for what M's response would be and... he didn't push him back!! I don't know if I've ever been as proud of M. I knew he wanted to but he did the right thing. The guy's friend came over and eventually the guy walked away. He was standing outside the bar for awhile so I was scared to leave and even once he was gone, we had a group escort us to our car for safety. The rest of the night I was convinced he was still following us.

As scary as that was, it made me more thankful than ever to be with a good guy like M that can do the right thing even in the heat of the moment.

I will also note, however that I had incidents of crazy guys freaking out at me two weeks in a row when I never had any in NYC! Maybe Texans aren't as nice as I thought... Or maybe I just fit in even less than I thought!