Tiny Tim

That is, until my workload changed. Apparently, being a programmer and doing things with computers others don’t understand, makes you the default go-to guy when someone’s hardware refuses to comply. So, whenever the printer in accounting didn’t work, I was called over. When someone accidentally hit F11 and put their Pornhub browser window in fullscreen-mode, that someone showed up next to me and discretely asked for quick help. Same went for their personal and private devices. I soon made it a habit to come to the office directly after school and stay for at least one or two hours. Normally I would do all the programming and maintenance from home, so I’d only come in if we had something to discuss. But I could do that just as well while in the building, and this way I could actually look at the stuck printer.

It didn’t take too long for the others in the office to get friendly with that chubby kid that was fixing their stuff. For the first time in more than a year, I had people I could have an actual conversation with, even if they were more small-talk, since we had little in common because of the age difference. That helped somewhat. It also didn’t take long for Bill to notice that something was wrong with me and called me into his office.

“Alright, kid. The fuck’s up with the bruises?” he asked in a gruff voice.

“School stuff” was all I could say to that.

“School stuff. As in ‘you’re part of the wrestling team and just bad at it’? Or ‘the wrestling team is using you for sparring matches without you being a member’?”

I shrugged my shoulders. I did not want to tell my boss, who employed me in a security firm, that I was incapable of defending myself against other kids at school. Even if I was just the IT-Guy and not part of his operative staff.

“I’m pretty sure John said he had two nephews ... Doesn’t your brother go to the same high school as you?”

“Logan, yes, he does. So does my sister. You could say they’re part of the wrestling team. My family ... doesn’t like me very much.”

Bill didn’t say anything for a moment. I also couldn’t see any change in his expression. Did he already know? Or maybe it was just his character. Or he did the job long enough to not find this unusual anymore.

“How long you gonna be here today?” he finally asked.

“Well, I like to stay ‘till five, when the office-dwellers leave, so I’m here if something comes up.”

“Yeah, I heard about that. I’m still only paying you for actual work done, not for sitting around.” I smirked at that “Come back in here at five.”

And that’s what I did. After meeting him in his office, he led me to the gym. As it turned out, unbeknownst to me, the operative part of his employees met every day after the others left for their training sessions.

“All right everyone, listen up!” he called out to them. “This is Tim. Most of you probably seen him around by now fixing your shit on company time. He’s gonna join us in the afternoons from now on. Be nice to him, he still has soft bones. Drop him on his head and it’s probably gonna leave a permanent dent.”

Most of them laughed at that, I was still a little confused.

“What is it you train here? Something like Krav Maga or something?” I asked excitedly. To my even greater confusion, most of them laughed even harder at that than after Bill’s joke.

“Listen Kid,” Bill started in an exhausted tone while pointing a finger at me. “If you want to learn how to throw a killer punch, go boxing. If you want to learn how to use your knees and elbows to strike, learn Muay Thai. If you want to learn how to throw people around, learn Judo. And if you want to learn all of those things, just not even half as good, learn Krav Maga. We don’t do that crap here.”

“But ... wasn’t that, like, some army thing everybody learns now?”

“Yeah, once upon a time it was that legendary martial art the IDF teaches.” he explained with much sarcasm in his voice. “But ever since it got popular in Los Angeles, it’s more of a means to slim your waistline using a punching bag. In the end, all popular and widely known martial arts you can learn in schools or dojos are either meant for competitions, against a single opponent and judged by a guy who makes sure everybody abides by the rules, or are simply a collection of made up scenarios you can’t apply to the real world. The drunks at a bar always come with friends as backup, burglars in Texas are most likely carrying, and the desperate ones will use whatever they can to take you down. Martial Art styles will give you some degree of confidence in a real fight, but that’s it.”

“Sooo ... what are you training then?”

“Our own little style. Call it MMA if you must put a name to it, but it’s simply a mixture of whatever we all learned works best in the field. What we train in these sessions is meant to teach you how to take an attacker down as quickly and effectively as possible, so by the time their buddies try to help him out by jumping you from behind, you’re already done with him and ready for the next one.”