Years ago, when my husband and I were just starting our family, we owned a commercial cleaning company.  We purchased the business in our twenties as a way for my husband to use his Master’s Degree in Business toward something of our own. We worked nights because that’s when companies that needed to be cleaned were closed.  Eventually we hired some help, but in the beginning we did the work and the business upkeep.  It was a dream, really, to be business owners at an early age and making money doing our own thing.

As I started to have children, I could no longer work in the evenings and so my husband would drive 45 minutes to some of his commercial accounts.  He would work into the early morning hours, and drive home. He never compromised his personal security.  He was very alert, perceptive, and aware.  He is a martial artist, too, and he always took pains to think about self-defense from that perspective, especially when working alone.

Around 3:00 a.m. one morning, on his commute home, he was driving through a toll area where several lanes had to converge into just a few lanes.  There was not much traffic and he was eager for sleep after a long evening working. Just because he was a brown belt, he didn’t necessarily feel safe all the time in these late night business ventures, but he was cautious.

The few years before we purchased the business we both had been studying martial arts and held brown belts.  The classes had a layered approach, including skills, drills, sparring, stepping motion patters, escapes and katas.  There was something for everyone, and each student liked certain aspects more than others, but all students participated in everything that was taught and had to show proficiency.  Combat situations were explored too, but there was a balance and moderation.  Nothing had a particular emphasis. Not just combat. Not just skills. Not just one thing and not another.

Sparring was a favorite amongst many.  It was a great catharsis to all the learning and a good physical application of the various techniques learned throughout class. What you really learned, without noticing it, was the art of patience; waiting and watching, as the opponent circled, aware of his eyes, blocking patiently before striking, and waiting for the right moment to score a point.  This kind of martial art patience and mindset is paramount to winning any battle.

My husband wanted to explore some other styles, so he tried a combat martial art school. It was completely different from the martial art dojo.  This place had a hard sell, required a contract, and just about everything had a price tag.  There were no smiles, no high fives, and no compliments.  You learned hand-to-hand combat and that was it.  Fighting to submission was the point, but even so, the place lacked spirit.  Uniforms were sweat-soaked by the end of each class but everyone understood what it felt like to face an opponent up close and personal.  While training at this combat style school, he met one instructor there with whom he could relate; a gentleman older than he was, who taught him some of the combat methods.  Of all the instructors there, this was one to whom he felt a good, professional respect.

Would what he learned from this instructor really help if he needed it? Would these combat hand-to-hand techniques work in a real situations?

The reality is that you can never fully prepare ahead of time for every scenario that might happen to you.  You can be going along on your merry way when the very thing you’ve always wanted to avoid just stops you in your track like a hard cold slap to the face.

As my husband was driving through a toll section of a road on his drive home one night, another car purposefully tallied with him to get through the toll first.  They exchanged a few glances and a few words as they both pushed through the interchange and he flashed his high beams, but after a few minutes he conceded and just let the other car go in front of him and just figured that he would forget about it.  But, that didn’t happen.  The car in front of him slowed down, while another pulled up alongside him, effectively boxing him in and forcing him to slow down, too.

It didn’t take long for him to realize their intent. He could see that each car held several individuals and both vehicles were positioning themselves in a way that would make him unable to jockey into a new spot on the road. Eventually, the car in front of him came to a complete stop and the car beside him pulled up directly next to him and stopped as well.  He was forced to stop.

“Who are these people and what do they want?” he wondered, but he had no time to prepare, either.

Before he had a chance to roll up his window, a fist came at him through the opening and grazed his face. At the same time, he noticed another person sneaking into the bed of his truck from the back.  He stepped on the gas and took off before any other physical contact occurred, but as if deja vu, it all started to happen again.  One car blocked him from the front and one from the side.  This time he slid into the left lane hoping to maintain some control.  He realized that they probably wanted to steal his vehicle, but he also knew that he could not let them gain control or force him out of his truck.  Even though he was a martial artist and knew hand-to-hand self-defense and combat measures, he didn’t know if any of that would work in this situation.

He remained in the vehicle and continued in this constant slow-paced chase, sure that they were not after him, but that they would do whatever they could to steal his vehicle.  The problem was, if he got out of the vehicle, he was sure they would kill him. He continued to drive, passing exit after exit that would lead him into potentially bad neighborhoods.  With no cops around, he just kept going.  There were no cell phones and no other means to contact anyone as he weaved his way through the streets with this unexpected entourage.

He decided he would eventually enter our neighborhood and if still being followed, he would blast the horn all the way through waking up residents and me to an issue.  Somewhere in his pursuit, he had memorized the license plate number to one of the cars that was following him.  When he finally took the exit for home, they stopped following him.

We called the police, but they suggested my husband may have instigated the problem and thought that we should not press charges.

At the time I was working as a Private Investigator.  I looked up the vehicle tag number to identify the vehicle owner.  I obtained the owner’s name and address.  We found the neighborhood and drove through and spotted the culprit car and the perpetrator.  He was sitting on his porch steps looking like he had a hangover with garbage interspersed around him and abandoned cars in a ghetto.  He had no hope, we realized.  He already had his punishment.  Day in, day out, he would live out his life this way.  His behavior made him remain in this environment, and he would breed it into others, causing them to lash out all their lives.  You can’t do evil to others without evil eventually descending upon you.  Every day this thief would witness his own family living in the depth of poverty and crime.  I can’t think of anything worse.

So, the real question is, did my husband use his martial art training at all during this strange confrontation?

The answer is yes. Even though it was an unfair situation, martial arts helped him see the truth.  He had to decide what his goals really were. If he had not been smart about it and allowed rage to control him, he could have ended up in a situation where he would have never made it home.  These thoughts entered his mind during this ordeal. He didn’t let anger control him. That is a martial art mindset. He explains it as if a movie in slow motion.  He was patient and didn’t panic.  He was able to desensitize himself when he saw it that way.  He stayed calm and stopped “reacting” by trying to figure out the logic behind it.

Everything went into slow motion in this situation; either that, or his thinking accelerated in order to process what was happening.  Initially, he could have let pride and anger direct him, but instead he kept asking himself, “why are they doing what they are doing?” He didn’t look at his response as weak; he didn’t want rage to cost him his life. It was very similar to sparring where timing is everything and poor reactions and rage can make you lose quickly.  This mindset brought him home safely.

One day, not long after his own ordeal, he was reading the newspaper.  He saw that the same gang had pursued another vehicle in just the same way.  They blocked him in as he was driving.  The difference was that the victim got so angered he actually stopped his vehicle and got out to fight.  The gang members were standing about ten yards back from him, one pulled out a gun and shot him dead, and then left him on the side of the road. There was no opportunity for defense.

The whole twist to the story was who the victim was.

He was the combat teacher under whom my husband studied at the combat training facility.

Martial arts teach so much more than a physical component. The martial art mindset is more intricate than just learning how to have a good life, feel better about yourself, or overcome personal obstacles, although those are all important aspects that I apply to my life continually.  The martial art mind also understands timing, reactions, and consequences.  If used properly it knows to not put the body in danger just because of an emotion. Physical defense and hand-to-hand combat will work in certain situations, but not all. It is the mindful discernment of this fact that can save your life one day.

The greatest martial art lessons and the most pertinent questions to ask yourself are these: Who is back home waiting for you? Who loves you, depends on you, and needs you by their side?

If ever put in a situation like the one I’ve just described, make sure you understand your final goal, and that is simply to get home.  To live.  To be with your family.  Never allow rage to put you in harm’s way. Keeping calm and using a controlled martial art mindset can very well save you, depending on the situation.  When your focus is to get through an escalated situation and get home to the ones you love, you must put down your physical defenses and use your mental ones.

I’ve learned a great deal from this story. Every time I tell it, I wonder what I would have done.  The truth is that I don’t know.  There is just no way to prepare for everything ahead of time; however, you can determine your goals long before you’re forced into a confrontation.  If you must, use combat or martial art skills for up-close protection; otherwise, take the time now to think through what you would do in a similar situation.

Thinking about it now might save you from being blindsided later.  

Andrea

 

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