This is Jocko podcast number 414 with echo Charles and me jocko willink good evening echo good evening

One day a bunch of us were playing

We didn't have slides or monkey bars, so we reverted to basic boy stuff. We found rocks and threw them at things.

Of course, we eventually started throwing them at each other.

In the beginning, we just threw them at each other's feet.

But boys being boys, we were hardwired for warfare.

Before along this kid who had already had a hard on for me being the smallest and

weakest target available was gleefully throwing rocks at my face as hard as he

could. He was a little serial killer in the making. He legitimately got off

on watching me be terrified. I remember

being on my hands and knees asking him to stop as he searched for another rock to

throw. The pretense of any sort of game was by then gone.

He wasn't even throwing them at me as much as he was just dropping them on my head at point-blank range.

I had some sort of a realization that this kid would not stop.

He would just keep doing this forever. If I survived today, he wouldn't just be there

tomorrow and the next day. Or he would just be there tomorrow and the next day. Or he would just be there tomorrow and the next

day. It wasn't fair. Suddenly I was standing up with a rock in my hand, a big one.

And not a smooth rock like you find on a river in the country.

This was a jagged lump of wrecked New Jersey concrete,

the kind of rock that scraped up your hand just by picking it up.

As the bully closed within arm's distance, I threw a haymaker at him as hard as I could.

The punch alone might have rattled him.

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