Amongst men, if you want to pick a fight with another man, you should enter the room in anger and throw something at him. Other acceptable forms of the invitation to fight are the two-handed push to the chest, the finger poke to the sternum, and insulting his mother.
This formal invitation is often seen in movies, and is most famously done in Westerns in a bar. However, the fight frequently escalates into a shootout, and so it is not recognized as being a fight, but rather a gun fight. Of course, to invite someone to a gun fight, you need only throw your poncho over your shoulder and rest your hand on your holster.
The following do not qualify as official invitations to fight, and may be safely ignored by the invitee without loss of dignity:
- A one-handed push to the shoulder (you can turn with the push and back away).
- A slap in the face (no sissy-fights please).
- A chest bump (what is this, the NFL?).
- A vehement stream of insults (I’m rubber and you’re glue.)
The following forms of invitation are for street fighting:
- Spitting
- Sucker punch
- Any form of weaponry from handgun to candlestick or beer mug (see gunfights, above).
Street fighting, of course, is not bound by the Marquis of Queensbury rules, and may be met with a chair over the head, a knife in the back, or a knee to the groin (preferred).
These used to be unwritten rules, but are codified here for posterity sake.