Tiny Tim

“Nice!” I commented. This sounded awesome. Bill, however, made quick work of my enthusiasm.

“Now keep in mind, this is going to be very different from what you’ve seen in ‘Cobra Kai’ or some other shitty show. We don’t really concern ourselves with the future health of someone who tries to kill us. If you break his arm and rip his tendons, tough shit for him, but he’ll sure as hell won’t use that arm to pick his knife back up and try again. BUT! We train this for self defense. So, if you use any of this on someone who’s not ACTIVELY attacking you, it’ll no longer pertain to self defense. It’ll get you thrown in jail, and we will not bail you out for that. So, we’ll also include some lessons in discipline.”

After this little speech that left me in a mixture of excitement and downright fear, he introduced me to the other participants and assigned me a partner. From then on, for 90 minutes per session, five days a week, I learned how to defend myself. On three days a week we spent an additional hour lifting weights.

I’m not going to lie, it was fucking hard! Even though the training started out easy, teaching me how to stand properly and then how to apply and get out of choke- and handholds, I was in constant muscle pain for the first two weeks. It felt like the lactic acid buildup in my muscles would never go away. By the time we moved on to A LOT of grappling, and finally all the way to ‘disabling’ armed or unarmed attackers, I had thankfully gotten used to the daily exercises.

Granted, there weren’t that many people coming after me with knives and guns in school, and there wasn’t much in those training sessions I could reasonably use against untrained bullies without being arrested (“Or worse, expelled!”), but it gave me confidence. I could now look my attackers in the eyes and actually see what they were trying to do, instead of cowering away and be taken by surprise with every single punch. And as long as I could see it, I could defend against it. At least that was what Bill kept telling me.

My favorite part about the training, however, was Tess. She worked in accounting and claimed to only train with the guys because she wouldn’t have to pay for a gym membership that way. Twenty-eight years old, 5’4’’ tall, and always holding her long raven hair in a ponytail. I thoroughly enjoyed having her as a sparring partner when we had to get handsy, because she seemed to enjoy herself with me as well. At least that was the impression I got from the genuine smile she gave me while we were going through the different holds. Despite what I hoped, with me being fifteen and all, I didn’t seriously expect to get anywhere with a woman thirteen years older than me. But I did look forward to each time we met, either during training or in the coffee kitchen, talking.

After roughly nine weeks of daily training, I was ultimately forced to use in school what I had learned in the Company. During break time on an unusually lousy Monday in April, I was on my way to my locker to switch books, when I had to walk past Jack Miller, one of my chief-tormentors and best buddies with Logan. He and one of his bully-buddies were making the moves on a petite freshman girl with ash-brown hair whom I only knew by looks. At least I’m pretty sure they thought they were flirting. The girl’s face and comments showed that she had a distinctly different opinion on that, and would rather be left alone. I hadn’t even decided if I wanted to interfere or not, when Jack noticed me standing there, watching them.

“What you looking at, Tiny Tim?” he mocked me.

I noticed at that moment that Bill was right. Those guys were big and bulky football players, but they were in no way comparable to the men I had been training with for months. I wasn’t even nervous about what he and his friend might try. They must have noticed my attitude and decided that I should receive a reminder of why I once feared them. Jack walked over to me, grabbed my collar with his right hand and forcefully pushed me into the lockers.

“I asked, what you looking at!?” he snarled.

I placed my left hand on the one holding my collar, and, for the moment, just looked at him and my surroundings. Like usual, there were quite a few people stopping when passing us, but nobody cared to do anything. When I still didn’t answer, he started raising his other arm, pulling back his fist. He took so long, I think he simply didn’t expect me to do anything about it anyway. Or he wanted to enjoy the fear he usually saw in my eyes when they advertised the pain I could expect. But not this time.