The next year, I was a freshman in High School ...

I went out for the football team.  The main bully lined up against me in the drills.  He charged at me ...but when we collided, he bit the dust.

He jumped up, snarling and threatening to get me good the next time, but I knocked him down a second time ...and a third time.  

The second week, he wasn't there.  Word was that he had quit the team.  I liked these new set of unwritten rules.  In my High School, it was uncool to fight.  If you thought you could hold your own, you went out for sports ...and played by the rules.

Some would refer to these new set of rules as ...maturity, other may call it entering early adulthood.