Ok, this will probably be boring for most of y'all and you don't have to read it. But I went to all the trouble of writing it down for an email: why not go ahead and post it on my blogger as well? That way it looks like my blogger is active, even though it isn't really!

Below is what BonnieJean wrote on her blogger. After that is the email that I wrote in reply.


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Ginger called Ben a little before lunch and got his permission for us to put on pants and do a little self-defense stuff in one of the empty classrooms here at the school! Of course, not all of the girls were interested, and Jo is currently under doctor's orders not to use her arms, but Ginger and I were pleasantly surprised to have 5 very enthusiastic students. We all did a lot of laughing and stuff, of course, but each one of them were serious about learning and would actually torque their hips, etc., and throw everything into their moves. It was so fun and refreshing! We had them all warm up and stretch first, and then we went over some choke-hold defenses, grab defenses, basic weak spots, rules of self-defense, how to make a good fist/punch, etc.. And then Ginger and I got to do some sparring on a nice wooden floor with no washer or hot water heater to watch out for. :-) We all loved it, and the five girls are hoping for a chance to do it again with us sometime this week. :-D

One girl in particular -- Sarah -- really surprised me. I had assumed until our karate time that she was anther girly-girl. Not so! She's pretty tall and got me from behind with her arm crushing my throat, (after warning me that she was going to do it, of course). She wanted to see if I could get out of it, and told me to honestly fight her. I was uncertain as to whether or not she was really willing to get hurt, but I managed to get my chin tucked and my fingers in between it and her arm. And then...I began to alternate between totally dropping my weight on her and shoving backwards as hard as I could, like Mr. Burnette taught us for breaking out of a bear-hug. She really did hold on, though, and didn't let go until I knocked her into the wall/floor with me partially on top of her. I was even more pleasantly surprised when she got back up and asked if we could do it again! She liked the technique and wanted to see it one more time. That next time she started to really crush down on my throat, and scared me for a second, but I broke out of it again and I'm sure now that she wouldn't have actually hurt me. Then, she wanted to try it, but I'm afraid that I didn't attack her as seriously as she'd wanted me to. I didn't want to be responsible for anyone or anything getting damaged, (and I also had some real trouble reaching her throat). Still, she was serious in her defense. Now I'm really curious about the best way to get out of a choke-hold like the one she used. I'll have to see if I can manage to get the idea across to the family on the phone, then if they can communicate it to a teacher at the dojo, then if they can learn a good defense from that teacher, and then if they can manage to get it back across to me on the phone. :-P


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Hey, sounds like you handled it really well. Obviously the most important thing is to keep your air, and tucking the chin and grabbing the arm are probably the best ways to do it. (NOTE: for the email below I assume that you have grabbed her arm with your opposite arm. For example, if she has her left arm choking you, then you grab with your right arm. If you've grabbed her differently, then your on your own!:) )


The problem is that you can't REALLY do anything to the girl that you might actually do on the street (breaking ribs, fingers, shoulder). You'll need to explain this to her next time, so that you can do something and then tell her to loosen her grib, because you just broke a rib (or whatever).


Dropping and throwing around your weight is good, but I've found that it works mostly with a bear hug and with somebody your size or smaller. (of course, the best thing to do with that you couldn't have done: dropping so her head comes down and then throwing your head backwards into her face). So while it worked, you wasted some time when you could have gotten out sooner.


First of all, if it's a guy, simply snake your hand behind your back and grab his groin, HARD. He WILL let go. Problem solved.


If it's a girl, you've got a couple options. The most simple one is to start ripping the fingers off the hand that is choking you. If she is double jointed and you can pull them all the way back to her watch, then grab the pinky and pull it down to the striking area for a shuto. Did you ever learn the pinky joint lock from Mr. Burnett? If not, don't worry about it: it's hard to describe and I can show you when I get there. At any rate, break a few fingers and she'll start to reconsider grabbing you.


If you can't get her fingers (it's possible she may be big enough that her arm goes around your throat and behind you again), then you've got your elbows. Clear the way with your hips (in other words, get your hips out of the way) and start having fun with her ribs. Once she has loosened up, you've got all sorts of stuff you can do. Personally, I like to duck underneath their arm (right arm going underneath her left armpit or left arm under right arm pit) and pull the arm that was choking me up on her back in a shoulder lock. From there it can be anything you want: elbow to the spine, shuto to the neck, knee to the tailbone (hey, they won't be able to chase you!) or whatever.


One final note about elbowing the ribs. If she's a lot taller than you this won't work, but when I did it to Ethan (who is just a tad bit taller than me) it worked very well. As you clear your hips, pull down with the arm that's saving your air and up with the shoulder that is connected to the elbow that's about to wreck havoc (am I making any sense?) What your doing is pressing your shoulder up into the soft underside of the arm that is choking you. If your lucky you'll get a nerve center: if your not lucky you simply cut off the blood flow to her arm. Either way it's a good thing. And once you've got that pressure on you can go ahead and start to elbow at the same time.


Anything from behind is harder than from in front, because you don't have all those basic week points of the body availible to you. Try to think creatively. Is she bare foot, or in sandles? Stomp on her toes. Heal kick to the shins, or put the bottom of your foot on her shin and rack down. Can you step to the side and throw her around your hip? Get together with Ginger and have her hold you loosely in the choke hold: just experiment some and come up with ideas.

Oh, good heaven, where to start? I'm mad, and tired and happy and excited and lonely and nervous and...and...and a complete basket case, I guess.
Ok, I'm mad at the author of the book I just finished reading, 'cause I hated the way she finished it. I'm mad at Dad for being so emotion-based and his seeming inability to get anything done these past few days. I'm tired from six days of re-roofing that seems to be getting nowhere. I'm happy because I finally got to talk to BonnieJean again today, although only for a short time. I'm excited about going to Kinmen. I'm lonely because Mom took Anna and the little boys down to Archer for the family reunion and we had to stay here and work on the roof. I haven't seen most of the relatives in...I don't know...a long time. And I'm nervous because I'm testing for my purple belt in less than two weeks and I have to break three boards with a knife hand strike, and I haven't had time to condition my hand, and I'm going to be doing the fighting for my purple belt in less than a week and I haven't been able to run since we started the re-roofing, so I'm probably going to loose my wind halfway through the fights...
Ah, yes, the re-roofing. We started on Friday. Getting the shingles off the back side of the house took about a day and a half...not great, but not bad. Then we started on repairing a couple places where the wood was rotten. It's a very strait forward thing to do. Yet between the rain and Dad's amazing slowness we still haven't laid a single peice of tar paper. We hope to start tomorrow, but we've still got some stuff to do first.
Do you realize that we had been remodeling our garrage for over three years? In that time we've had friend build entire houses for their families. Those of you who haven't worked with him do not really understand how mind-numbingly slow he is. He does good work, yes, but it takes him more than double (and often more than triple) the time it would take a normal handyman. I'm almost to the point of yelling at him when I see him staring at the work that needs to be done, spending over half his time figuring out exactly every little detail before he'll do anything. I want to scream "GET IT DONE! STOP WORRYING ABOUT MAKING IT LAST FOR THREE THOUSAND YEARS AND GET THE ROOF UP!" After supper today I tried to talked to him about it, but he kept changing the subject and when I finally nailed him down to it, he kept telling me "what I've found that works" and I'm telling him "It doens't work! I've never worked with somebody as slow as you!" but I don't think anything is going to change. Dad is expected back at work on Monday and we've only got the roll-away dumpster for a week and we are rapidly running out of time, but he just wants to keep doing everything like he's always done.
I need to go to bed now. Sorry this turned into a long rant against Dad...maybe I'll feel a little nicer tomorrow.