I'm not a Charlie's Angel yet

Last summer for one of our Enrichment activities we had a local self defense school come show us some basic moves. You know, get the girls all geared up and able to protect themselves. It was pretty neat how they showed us we could support like three times our body weight if we held our arms just right and let us beat the tar out of some poor soul wearing huge protective pads. We all left feeling empowered, strong and physically able to kick some kiester. Sounds great, right?

I thought so.

Monday night I was at a party and goofing off with my friend Dan. Now, Dan is huge. Not huge in the he-could-suffocate-me-by-sitting-on-me sense, rather he's at least a foot taller than I am and solid muscle. To add to it, he's a professional Muay Thai boxer. Or was. Not really sure anymore. I thought I would be really, you know, COOL and start beating on him a little- playfully of course. Not only was his fit of laughter a slight distraction, but the move to keep someone at bay was really ineffective. With one light nudge on my shoulder I completely lost my balance and nearly fell over sideways, even though I had my feet braced the way we were shown. In addition, we realized that his arms are soooooo much longer than mine that no matter what I did it wouldn't make much difference in his ability to get to me. All I succeeded in doing was keeping myself busy and my arms out of the way.

Well, isn't that just great?

It's a good thing Dan is a friend, and not an attacker. He'd totally kick my butt. With little or no effort even. One of these days he's going to give me boxing lessons, and then, he says, I'll not "punch like a girl" anymore. Good thing. I'd hate to be mistaken for one of those.