In college, I accidentally got a reputation of being a tough guy. A guy on our floor got hurt bad enough that he needed to go to the emergency room, A bunch of us packed him into a car and headed off. We lived in Birch Hall at the time and the drive into those dorms is a U-shape and very narrow. We got behind a car full of guys from another dorm, who decided to do a Chinese fire drill in front of us, not once, but twice.
With our injured guy moaning in pain, I'd had enough and on the second drill by the idiots, I got out of the car and yelled at them to, "Move that piece of $hit or I'll move it for you." I'm kind of a bigger guy, who wouldn't harm a fly, but you never saw anyone move so fast in your life as those guys.
Well, when we got back from the hospital, it was all over our floor how I had beaten up five guys from Barton Hall. A guy on our floor who knew some of the guys in Barton Hall said it was all over their floor too, although they had no idea who I was.
So, fade to a couple of months later and I'm beginning to believe my own press and feeling pretty pleased with myself. That's when me and another guy, both drunk, were walking down the sidewalk outside Birch when we encountered another guy who was looking for a fight. I told him to move on and he sucker punched me, knocking me flat on the cement.
I got up, brushed myself off and asked him what the hell that was for. He apologized, saying his girlfriend just broke up with him and he wasn't in a very good mood. I made the guy with me promise that he wouldn't tell anyone that I got knocked down because I kind of enjoyed my tough guy image. As far as I know, he never did. But it was still embarrassing for a "tough guy" to get knocked on his ass.