This morning I went with my friend C and her friend T to take a self-defence class, taught by C’s excellent kickboxing teacher. I’m not sure how I feel about self-defence training. The only other exposure I have had to it was in high school: one day in my junior year, all of the girls in my gym class were herded into the wrestling gym, where we were led by a retired military character, still sporting his camo combats, in an impassioned unison chant of ‘grab and twist! Grab and twist!’
At first, I couldn’t help feeling that signing up for a class like that is essentially pessimisstic, like we are expecting that an attack is inevitable and thus we should prepare ourselves for the worst. I don’t really like to live that way. Once I was squaring off against C, however, it was quite fun to discover that it was quite easy to escape from a very gentle chokehold, although in life it is somewhat unlikely that anyone shorter than me will ever get me in one. Also, I would expect that the exchange between attacker and victim would be less apologetic. ‘I’m sorry,’ C said, as she twisted my arm, according to directions, into a dislocating angle. ‘Oh, dear, are you okay?’ I said, as I threw her on to a very thin yoga mat.
It was a productive morning: now, if pressed, I think I might be able to fell some putative attacker with a singular blow to the side of his neck. ‘Don’t do this,’ the instructor cautioned us, ‘to some jerk in a bar. It’s quite serious, you know.’ I hope very much that the £10 I spent on learning it will prove to be a waste.
