Back in the eighties (nineteen eighty-seven to be exact ), I was driving along in my 1976 Volkswagen Rabbit (a tiny four-door knock around-car that had been around the block a few times). It was late (around 11 pm if memory serves). I’d just pulled up to the red light at Columbia Pike and Glebe Road while waiting for it to change to green with my peripheral vision I noticed a man approaching my car from the passenger side. Rotating my head back and forth from the light to him, I couldn’t make out what he was saying as he was waving his hands in the direction of a large building a few blocks away and making I don’t know gestures. I began to look towards him and back into the direction that he was pointing as I followed his hands. On my third successive look towards the building – when I wasn’t looking at him – he opened the passenger side door, got in, and stuck a gun into my ribs.
At first, what was happening didn’t seem real (in fact it felt quite surreal). Dumbfounded and aghast, I began to stammer what do you think… That was when he jabbed the gun, forcefully, into my ribs and said: “shut up and drive”. As the car trotted along heading toward 395 my head cleared and I realized that what was happening to me was real, and I had better do something about it. I knew that not only did I have to stay calm, more importantly, but I also had to keep him calm. I went into my best gangsta, hood, impersonation in an attempt to establish empathetic bounding I looked at him and said, “Say my man whatz up? I know what the deal is I’m for real you feeling me? We don’t have to drive around, why not, just, take the money and truck on?” He looked at me with malice in his eyes and said, “ cause I’m going to take you somewhere where I’m going to do to you what I gots to do.”
My heart sank. Suddenly, I could smell that distinctly acrid mixture of sweat, fear, and anticipation that assaults your nostrils just before competing in a big event. The odd thing was that it wasn’t coming from me, it was coming from my assailant. I, on the other hand, was calm and collected. My mind was working like a computer desperately trying to solve a calculation within an incredibly short amount of time. Scenario, after scenario, flashed through my mind as I acted fast to develop a plan. Before going onto Interstate 395 I could run my car into another car and cause an accident; I could drive onto Interstate 395 and speed down the highway until a cop pulled me over. I decided against both of the choices because of the risks of injury to others. I wasn’t worried about myself because in my mind injury was better than death. I entered Interstate 395 right where Washington Blvd and Columbia Pike intersect; my instructions were to go south.
We passed the Glebe Road off-ramp and I was told to exit the highway at the Shirlington exit. Proceeding to the Drew Elementary basketball court, I was instructed to “pull over and stop the car”.
I did.
When I pulled over, I was still deeply concentrating and thinking about my options. My assailant had narrowed my choices down to one (fight) since he said that he intended to harm me and I was determined to survive. But I had to have a plan since he was holding a gun. After surveying the area, I assume to make sure that no one would intervene, my assailant turned to me and say, “Okay, give me your money”. Before I handed him my money, I forced myself to start crying and begging for him to let me see my family again. The reason that I did that is that I needed him to let down his guard by thinking that I was so scared there was no way that I would be a threat.
Reaching into my pocket I gave him my money. Then I got the break that I was hoping for, he started counting the money and turned the gun away from me. He did it so fast that I did not have time to respond to it then.
I had to get him to do it again.
After counting the money, while he retrained the gun on me.
I blurted out, “Hold on! Wait a minute! I’ve got more money in my wallet!”
Actually, my wallet was empty but I was hoping that he would commit the mistake of turning the gun away from me again when he looked into my wallet and -- he did.
As he turned away from me to look into my wallet, I jumped him. I had both of my hands on his hand that was holding the gun, (forcing the muzzle of the gun away from me. A look of ultra surprise washed over his face and I could see that he did not expect me to attack him. While holding his gun hand with both of mine, I thrust forward with my forehead and hit him squarely on the bridge of his nose as hard as I could; a river of blood erupted onto my arms and shirt as I heard the cartilage break.
In desperation, he freed his right hand from my hold and racked on my forehead and cheek.
Though the pain was sharp and biting, I refused to let go of the gun. I tried to hit him again with another head butt by he brought his forearm up and blocked the strike. Don’t ask me how he did this, because to this day I still don’t know, but somehow he brought the sole of his right shoe up and stomped on the side of my face, but I still refused to let go.
We struggled back and forth for what seemed like hours (both of us trying desperately to get control of the gun). Somewhere during the scuffle, he reached behind him, got hold of the door handle and began struggling to open the door. As he struggled to get the door open, I reached into the magazine holder on my door with my left hand and searched for the penknife that I kept in it to clean my nails. Though the knife wasn’t very big, I figured that if I could jam it into his eye or thrust it into his throat and the day would be won.
As I was hunting for the knife I heard his door open and he began to exit the car, quickly I put both hands back on the gun because I didn’t want him to jerk it away from me and start shooting.
Because both of my hands were grasping the hand he was using to hold the gun when he exited the car, he wound up dragging me over the passenger seat and out of the car with him. With my feet planted firmly onto the ground, I was able to quickly dispatch him and end the nightmarish ordeal.
The police came and my assailant was arrested, turns out that he was out on bond for doing the same thing.
Not long ago I wrote an article entitled Karate VS Golf which one would win?
In the article, I pit a make-believe golfer against make-believe karate fighter to see which sport was better at instilling analytical and critical thinking into its participants. Although both instilled both mental concepts only martial arts provides those concepts for personal safety. Above was a real-life situation where both concepts (analytical thinking and critical thinking) were necessary for survival. But there is another concept that is additionally needed in a survival situation, poise.
Poise:
Poise is the ability to stay calm and collected under pressure. Martial arts in and of itself do not instill poise it’s the side venues of the sport (testing and tournaments) that do that. In both a tournament and a test format students need to be able to control their emotions in order to do well. As for the question of whether a kicking style will do well in a close encounter the answer is an unadulterated yes! Because personal safety is really based on presence of mind. The kind of presence of mind that only competition can give you.
Critical Thinking:
As mentioned before, critical thinking can be gotten from any number of venues but only martial arts gives it to you in a safety format. All martial arts cover WHAT IF safety scenarios, but the real insertion of the skill set is acquired in an atmosphere that is as close as one could possibly get to real life, tournaments. Tournaments rip the protective shield of comfort off and put students in you can or you can’t situation without the insulation of excuses. You can either think on your feet and pull off a win or you can’t. So again, whether you or your child take a kicking style doesn’t matter; what does matter is whether your style provides a competitive forum like a tournament.
I don’t think of what happened much now, but that incident was front and center on my mind for months after it happened. The thing that was invaluable, as I was going through the ordeal, was my ability to stay calm. That is one of the least talked about the benefits of taking a martial art ( staying calm and planning what your options are). I sincerely believe that if I had not been in a tournament-style martial art I might have been prone to behave like must people with panic and indecision. Instead, even though my style is one that promotes kicking I was able to “literally” use my head and come up with an alternative to using my feet when my life depended on it.
Martial Arts gives you the presence of mind when dealing with tough decisions, and here is the best part ALL martial arts do it. We live in a world where young people get themselves into trouble because of the inability to control themselves.
When we think of martial arts, we think of a person being able to hold their own in a fight seldom do we give credit to someone’s sudden ability to control themselves when they otherwise would have come to blows. The ability to control one’s emotions is worth much more than the ability to punch and kick.
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