Don't mess with me!

Because of my large size, natural strength, and just general beefcakiness, I'm not really a prime target for pushing around. But when I got an invitation to my student email address for a free self-defense course taught by the Alexandria police, I remembered Mindy had taken one and really enjoyed it, so I decided to sign up. Besides, we should all have all the best knowledge available to us to defend ourselves, right?

Our first class was last night. We had a little classroom instruction, and then we got to go right down to the mats. I was so grateful for that, one of my pet peeves is talking things to death without letting people put what they know into use.

We first learned the fighting stance, and where to place our arms to best protect the face and ribs and deflect blows. In the practice for deflecting, I got really uncomfortable, giggling and shutting my eyes and just not dealing with it well. I didn't understand at first why I was acting so strangely.

Then it occurred to me that in trying to always control my temper and manage my anger, in this situation where I was supposed to be aggressively protecting myself, I wasn't letting myself get mad. I have a temper naturally, but losing it is so immature and useless that I've tried really hard over, oh, the last year or two, to not let myself boil over like I used to. Whether or not I've had much success with it is for those of you that are close to me to decide, I suppose... At any rate, I was really struggling with being aggressive with the instructors like we were supposed to.

At first.

I don't know what happened, but somewhere between learning a one-two punch and a double groin kick, I let loose. I still didn't yell overly much, but oh my god, I was hitting and kicking as hard as I possibly could (we were hitting pads held by the instructors, not human flesh). I punched the mat so hard at one point my hand hurt for the next five minutes. Let me tell you, when you get positive feedback for hitting hard, it only makes you want to hit harder. I was on a roll.

Then class ended and we all filed back to our classroom to get our stuff. As I walked out, two of the teachers told me I was the most improved over the course of the night. By the time this class is over, oooooh, you better not try anything with me or you will wish you hadn't!