My Son Is A Mugger
My youngest son is a mugger.
Oh, but you should have seen him! He was the prettiest, most adorable baby: a round laughing Buddha-belly, bright red ringlets, twinkling eyes, and fat dimpled knees. He was the sweetest, gentlest, kindest little boy I’d ever known: he loved animals, and babies, and old ladies, and he cried for five days when Laura Ingalls Wilder’s dog Jack died.
He was even a fun adolescent, this child. He dyed his hair an unearthly shimmering emerald green, buzzed it into a perfect spiral, and wore mismatched Chuck Taylors. He wrote poetry, and joined a Shakespeare troupe. In high school, he was always a do-gooder: he volunteered with Habitat For Humanity, a mobile street needle exchange program, Congresswoman Barbara Lee, and the rain forests in Borneo. He cheerfully worked his way through college selling t-shirts, and spent his summer vacations in Kosovo, teaching leadership skills to war-traumatized teens. Always a good kid.
But now, at 25 years old and 6’4”, what does he do?
For the past four years, it turns out my baby boy has been donning a creepy looking black mask with eye holes and assaulting women. He insults his victims, swears at them, grabs them and pins them down.
He doesn’t care if they’re young or old, weak or strong, or whether they have disabilities. He even attacks blind women! Teenagers! Grandmothers! Hell, for all I know he goes after blind teenaged grandmothers. I can no longer keep track of all the women my youngest son has mugged.
Because my child has turned into a hideous beast called a model mugger. This doesn’t mean he mugs models (though he very well might). It means he’s a trained certified instructor at Model Mugging IMPACT self-defense classes for women.
He dresses up in a huge padded helmet and suit so women can practice defending themselves with full force. They kick him in the knees, in the head, in the groin. They gouge his eyes. It's all very violent, but he’s well padded and well trained. A lot of women reflexively shrink at the idea of causing harm, even to their attacker, but with this kind of hands-on practice, they learn to get over that fear.
Now here’s the real kicker: for Christmas my magnificent boys and their wonderful partners (who are themselves proud graduates of the advanced Multiple Assailant and Armed Assailant programs) all pooled their money and enrolled ME in a three-day IMPACT self-defense workshop!
So, lo and behold, I found myself tootling over to Houston to learn how to stomp me some Texas mugger butt. Stay tuned to find out how that big adventure turned out.
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Vibrating Liz |
| About the author: |
| Vibrating Liz is an avid writer, dancer, gardener, weight lifter, and cancer survivor who firmly believes that 50 is the new 18. She lives in a small rural village in the quirkiest part of the deep south with an engaging assortment of flora and fauna |
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