How I stopped a fight at Osheaga

I was at the Montreal Osheaga Music Festival yesterday when a fight was about to start. I was standing in line to use the outdoor bathrooms with my partner.

Photo by CloudVisual

We were carrying out a pretty cerebral conversation about what it meant to be agreeable and in which contexts, when we were interrupted by a guy that showed up behind us asking if we were in line.

We told him we were, he was apologetic for interrupting us, we said it was all good, and we talked about nothing with him for a few minutes as we waited. The person in front of me went into the stall, so I was up next. As that person came out, a guy talking on his phone walked past both of us and started going for the stall. I walked towards it too, but he was ready to shove me off, so I decided to let him pass and that I wasn’t about to escalate the situation. In fact, I was in a state of mind of pretty pure acceptance. It slid right off my back without a second thought.

But the guy waiting behind us started flipping out. He was livid. He was trying to get me to be upset too, but I wasn’t. I told him that I believed in karma and that everything is exactly as it should be and that it all balances out in the end. He said something like he hopes that guy gets raped, and me and my partner were like, “Woah there, I wouldn’t call that balance.” He concurred it was overkill, but kept riling himself up as I tried to bring him down. He said he was going to punch the guy in the face when he gets out. I told him not to do that.

So the guy gets out of the toilet and this guy behind me starts telling him he can’t just cut in front of people and is yelling at him. I’m in the mindset to de-escalate. I didn’t see the situation as worth fighting over and the guy that was waiting behind me (I had offered to let him go in front of me even) was just being belligerent. He didn’t seem drunk from what I could tell, but I’m not always the best judge of that.

I put myself in between them because they were about to step into each other’s faces. I’m only 5'10", but am not a ‘small’ guy, and both of these guys were at least a few inches shorter than me and not nearly as wide.

So all along, I’m of the mind, “Yeah, the guy who cut the line isn’t very nice, but if that’s how he treats people in his life, he’s probably hurting pretty bad inside whether he knows it or not.”
We’re all just trying to get on, be fair, and this cutter doesn’t want to obey the unspoken rules of standing in line. Sure, he’s wrong, but he doesn’t deserve to get knocked out for it. Maybe some booing was in order, but that’s about it.

So now, standing between them, the guy who was waiting behind me shouts out at him, “Faggot.” Now, if I were in a less de-escalation state, I would have turned to that guy and called him out for using a hate slur in 2017. But instead, I turned to the guy who had cut in line and was apologizing for this nincompoop, trying to get him to turn the other cheek.
I turned back and forth between them, trying to get them both to calm down and let this end. The cutter started walking away and the guy waiting took a step back. I stepped out, thinking this was done and stepped over to my partner five feet away. Then the guy waiting shouted something at the cutter and the cutter ran towards him and shoved him, it looked like it was going to come to blows. The cutter backed off, put space between them, and then, like an utter fool, the person who was waiting started shouting again. They were both not too far from me at this point. I put myself between them again, looked at the guy who I had been waiting with and told him in an affirmative tone (whereas before I had been quite Zen-like), “If you don’t cut this out you’re going to have a fight with me.”

He apologized to me. The crowd convinced the other guy to actually leave the scene instead of continually coming back, and that was the end. I went to the bathroom, and when I came out, I was still pumping with adrenaline. I wanted to call him out for using hate speech and thinking that’s acceptable language. I was ready to do it. I didn’t see him again though. He was gone.

I don’t find myself in these types of situations too often. But I’m feeling better and better equipped to manage them if they do arise. I still hold regrets for not calling him out for the slur, but in the heat of the moment, I was focused on stopping a really dumb fight from occurring.

Have any suggestions on what I could try to do differently next time? I’m all ears.

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