The first rule of fighting is never start a fight. The second rule of fighting is no matter how good you are there is someone somewhere that is better. Why would a father be teaching his daughter about fighting? Of course, because I had trouble with bullies and wanted to learn how to defend myself. I remember coming to my dad and talking to him about a bully at school. I wanted to be able to stand up for myself and put a stop to someone walking all over me. My dad, being the responsible man he was, went right into the reasons why I should not fight. He was a firm believer of taking time to talk out a situation. When it comes to bullies however, you just can’t talk to them. They are unreasonable.
If they were reasonable people, they would not be bullying people who were smaller than they were in the first place. We had such a bully at our school. During this troublesome time in my life, this bully decided he wanted to fight me and for no apparent reason. I was horrified. I was also a tomboy, in a sense, my father’s first son. He taught me lots of things a lot of fathers would never dream of teaching a daughter. He was my rock in those instances and his lessons brought me through a lot of grief in years to come, even after he died at a very young age of fifty-one. Since it was a bully situation, he recognized the necessity of my being able to defend myself at the very least.
His wisdom began with: The first rule of fighting is never start a fight. The second rule of fighting is no matter how good you are there is someone somewhere that is better. The first rule was to prevent me from becoming a bully and the second one was to make me think before I ever felt fighting was a necessity instead of a last resort. Dad firmly believed fighting was a last resort situation. Once he drummed these two rules in my head, he said, “Hold your fists up like you’re going to hit someone.”
I immediately held up my tightly gripped fist with my fingers firmly wrapped around my thumbs. Dad looked me over and asked, “Are you sure you want to hit someone with your fists like that?”
Of course, I had never been in a fight in my life. What did I know about how to hold my fist to hit someone? I shrugged my shoulders and replied, “I guess so.”
“No, you don’t want to hit someone with your fists like that, or you will break your thumbs.” He explained as he took my fists in his hands and carefully rearranged them so my thumbs we wrapped firmly outside of my fingers. “Now, when you hit someone, you won’t be putting all the pressure and force on your thumbs. The important thing about fighting is to know how to prevent you from getting hurt.”
I listened intently because the last thing I wanted was to get hurt. I wanted to know how to take care of myself and I definitely did not want to get hurt. I sat down next to him on the chair and my eyes focused intently on his face. I listened to everything he had to say. His next bit of advice stuck in my memory for many years to come. He said, “When you punch, you need to jab and jab straight in. Don’t try to swing. Swinging takes the force out of your punch. It is like pulling back at the last second. If you are in a position to have to hit someone, put all your force behind it. Don’t go swinging madly like an old wash woman.”
This brought my attention the motion he was making with his own fist, punching straight forward with a forceful motion. Holding his hand up with his palm facing me, he told me to punch his hand by jabbing with a straight motion. I did so, with him urging me to do it again, and again and again. Once he felt like I had the mechanics down on jabbing, he then asked me to swing and punch his hand so I would know the difference. I swung and punched his hand. I immediately realized how inertia could be slowed down with the swing but added force to the jab. This instilled the mechanics of this action in my head until one day, as a grown woman, a battered spouse, it surfaced again just in time to same me from a very abusive man.
Now, when you are face to face and there is no other option but to fight, then it is okay to strike first. “While they are looking at you, jump up and grab them by both ears and scream like a banshee. It will take them off guard long enough that you will have time to drive your knee in the groin area and prepare for your next strike. Most of the time, this action will make them think you are so crazy that they no longer want any part in fighting with you. If they still want to fight, give them all you got and don’t stop until they are lying on the ground or the fight is over.”
I laughed when he explained this part of fighting. I thought he was being funny, but he was dead serious. Daddy was a very small, short man. He was short enough to be a small woman. I think he was five-foot-three or four. He had dealt with bullies any times over the years since they tend to pick on people much smaller than they are, this left Daddy a prime target. He had perfected these moves. The look on his face made me realize he meant everything he said. I took it all to heart. It was many years before I had to use any of his advice because shortly after he began to instill these methods in me, the bully that bothered me moved away. I did however, use Daddy’s methods on a craze wide beating husband one time allowing me to protect myself and stand up for myself in a very important time in my life, but that is another story.
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