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I was chatting with my old boss today and he re-told the story of when someone tried to mug him. I knew part of the story but here’s the whole thing:
He was tired and it was the end of a long day, like 11 p.m. He was walking home and he was almost there. He had speeded up and he left his significant other about 10 feet behind him. This guy came out of an alley and stuck a gun at his chest saying \”Give me your money!\”
My boss pushed the gun aside (with only his index finger!) and said \”I don’t have time for this\” and kept walking! The guy was totally stunned, and when my boss’s significant other caught up to the mugger the guy said \”I just wanted his money.\” He was too stunned to even try mugging the next person!
My boss said by the time he got to the door he was wondering if he was going to be shot and he was shaking. Just goes to show that \”instinctive\” response needs to be trained! (Though handing over the wallet is probably the best response there)
re:
Your old boss is my new hero! Crazy Bastard. Good thing it ended nicely. Don’t know too many muggers that would’ve stood there.
Sounds like your boss was lucky to run into such a sensitive robber! 😆 But it does show how it can be helpful sometimes to do something strange or unexpected to confuse or throw off the bad guy. Obviously just walking away would be very risky if he had a gun or even knife if you then turn your back and don’t know what he is doing. But if you manage to confuse him a little and just when he’s thinking ‘What the hell?!’ you do a gun disarm and strong counter you could catch him off guard and that could probably help your defense.
Here’s another one!
I’ve started reading the action novels of Lee Child (some incredible fight stuff in his first one, The Killing Floor), and I love this story (From an interview (http://www.januarymagazine.com/profiles/leechild.html):
[interviewer]: I read a story in Deadly Pleasures about your being mugged in a rough area when you were researching one of your books. Tell me more about that incident.
[Child]: It was the Die Trying promotion tour, and I wasn’t mugged. In fact, I mugged the other guy. Promotion tours are hard work, but the compensation is freebie visits to places you might not otherwise go, so I always make a habit, when the day is done, of taking a stroll, usually about midnight. I was in San Francisco, so figured I’d go look at the Tenderloin part of town, which is rough. This guy stepped out and basically said, \”Give me your money.\” … I was amazed how quickly I snapped back through almost 40 years and suddenly became that tough city kid again. I got right in the guy’s face and told him he had to give me his money or I’d break his arms. Just a purely instinctive reaction from long ago. Never back down. Never show fear. He only had five bucks. I gave it to the next homeless person I saw.
Hey Guerriere!
Here’s another story for you. It involves the manager of my apartment building. She is an elderly lady, about 75, 5Foot, overweight (about 160), in other words she would look like an easy victim. Of course people don’t realize that she is a black belt in Karate and served in the Navy when she was young (she’s also done something like 100 parachute jumps in her lifetime!).
So, yesterday, she saw a young man (around twenty) put an old Christmas tree on our property. She confronted him and told him not to leave it there (apparently the sanitation department charges 40 Dollar per tree removed). The guy refused. They argued for a while, then she decided to turn around and walk away. That’s when she heard the guy following her. She immediatly realized there would be trouble, so she turned around and as soon as she did she could see the guy swinging his fist right at her head! She managed to put one arm up and blocked the punch (kind of like a 360 defense), then she turned and countered with a straight right to the guys eye. She said she was really mad and it was a very strong punch with all of her weight behind it and the guy was stunned, but also hurt and took of running in fear!! The punch was so strong, she actually hurt her hand, her knuckles were all swollen and she had a light bruise on her arm from the block,but other than that she’s fine! Shows you, never mess with an angry old lady!! 😉
75 year old out of shape lady punching and hurting a 20-something year old guy.
I don’t believe you.
Either the entire thing was made up, or the truth got distorted somewhere along the line.
I believe it! Cowards who pick on elderly women probably don’t have a lot of fighting skills. Then there’s that element of surprise! He could envision himself punching her then running off, but not getting into a tangle with someone who knew how to fight. haha What if his friends had seen her besting him in a drawn-out fight? That would be priceless! He’s lucky to have escaped.
When I was in 8th grade this kid who had been kicked out of another school for knifing a fellow student got transferred to my middle school and he was in my English class. He was actually quite bright, but he never really paid attention. One day, he started picking at a picture on the bulletin board next to him, probably one that my teacher had bought with her own money. She marched up to him, grabbed his arm and had it in a vise-grip before he knew what was happening. He was strong, but he looked terrified. Despite his well-deserved reputation, he was a model student for the rest of the school year.
Oh yeah, the teacher was a few years away from retirement, hunched over from osteoporosis and wheezy from years of smoking. heh heh But nobody who saw that would ever mess with her!
I have trained in karate for 10 years. Every class I have been in or have seen had plenty of rising blocks followed by a punch. Some call it shield sword. Your taught it in your first class and you did it in your last. If youíre walking in a store and someone tosses a ball out of nowhere are you going to catch it or let it hit you in the face? My father is 84 and if I toss a ball to him when heís not paying attention today, he will catch it or at least knock it away. Thats how it works.So I believe the story.
I didn’t actually see this happen, my manager just told me about it, so I have to take her word for it. But I do believe it. The thing is, she might look like an easy victim at first glance, but she is actually quite tough. You can hear her confronting and yelling at people loitering near our building all the time, telling them to stay away etc, no matter how much bigger or younger they are (a bit over the top I think personally, but that’s just what she does). She also showed me the bruises on her blocking arm and her swollen knuckles. So I do believe it. I can’t imagine she would make this up, there would be no reason to.
I think the guy was just stunned. He certainly didn’t expect that kind of response from an old lady. So he was hurt(physically) and stunned and just ran not quite knowing what to do. Kind of like in the examples Guerriere was giving. Where a gunman, who could simply pull the trigger is so stunned by the unexpected response of his victim that he just stands there kind of lost not knowing how to react.
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