Friday, May 7, 2010

The Greatest Defense

The call came as we were getting ready for bed. My step-son had been injured in a bar fight at college. He told his mother that he had accidentally stepped on an obviously inebriated gentleman’s foot and without warning, the guy head-butted him. As he gathered himself to fight back, he was blinded-sided by another guy who bashed him across the side of head with a beer bottle. He dropped to the floor where the two men, and possibly up to two to three others, kicked and punched him while he lay on the ground.

He came home the next day and we took him to a doctor who confirmed that his nose was indeed broken as I had suspected, but thankfully did not have a concussion from the beer bottle though the wide gash across the right side of his forehead disappearing into his hair served as a painful reminder of that cowardly attack.

I asked him for more details, and knowing my stepson, a former high school football lineman, full of bravado and not a small amount of attitude, I suspected that the head-butt and beer bottle, cheap shots to be sure, were not entirely unprovoked. He told me that he did indeed accidentally step on the guy’s foot, and the guy made a typical drunk “tough-guy” response. My stepson responded with an expletive-laced, “tough-guy” remark and was suddenly greeted with a forehead across the bridge of his nose. He said he was able to swing at the guy a couple of times, missing, but then he was struck with the bottle which knocked him to the floor.

I shook my head as this scenario was not fully unexpected, yet I was glad that he wasn’t more seriously hurt. He looked at me, kind of embarrassed that this big “tough guy” with an ego as big as his biceps, was so easily subdued, albeit overmatched by a group of drunken idiots. He said, “Well, what would you have done? You’re a black belt in aikido. You would have gotten your ass kicked too.” I said, “Absolutely not. I would have used my aikido training and none of them would have been able to touch me.” He looked dumbfounded. “What would you have used, nikkyo or sankyo or something?” he asked.

I said, “No, none of that. I would have just said ‘sorry’, and walked away.”

3 comments:

Judy Warner said...

Beautiful, Scott

Marcella Sarkozy, Instructor said...

Scott, Great article! Thank you for sharing it.

Judy said...

A great story about true power. Thank you!