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by Loren W. Christensen
Right after I had passed all the tests to be a Portland police officer, I was told there was a 12-month hiring freeze. To bide my time and get some practice in police work and real-life application of my martial arts, I took a job in plainclothes security for a discount department store in a rough neighborhood. I was training hard for my second-degree black belt at the time, and I felt confident I could handle anything that came my way. I was 25 years old and all that that means.
It was in the 1970s, and there was much hype about the rapidly expanding martial arts world. Imported Hong Kong kung fu movies had just hit our shores and, while we laugh at them now, in the early days we loved them and identified with their fantastical heroes. On the surface, we knew their three-story leaps and invincibility against large numbers of attackers were the stuff of cartoon-like fiction, but we also wanted to believe we too had some of their awesome powers. There were not as many people in the martial arts then as there are today, so these movies made us unique, mystical, and not just a little scary, a reputation we fully enjoyed.
I spent my shift at the department store behind a two-way mirror watching shoplifters hide merchandise in their shopping bags and on their person and then slip out the door without paying. My job was to follow them out, identify myself, bring them back to my office, and call the police. After two months, I had arrested lots of thieves, mostly without incident.
One day, my attention was drawn to a skinny guy wearing a black leather jacket on a hot day. He was trying so hard to look nonchalant it made him stand out. He strolled over to a stereo component display and pretended to read the labels, though his eyes were darting about like a nervous animal’s. Then he scooped up the stereo receiver, slipped it under his jacket, and headed for the door. I was on his heels, and the instant his last foot left the premises, making the theft official, I identified myself as store security and told him to come back inside. He gave me a slow, measured look before he pulled the receiver out from under his jacket, set it on the sidewalk, and turned to walk away.
I grabbed a wad of his jacket from behind, but in one slick movement he slipped his arms out, leaving me holding it as if I were his personal valet. I tossed it aside and reached for his arm but, as if defining the adage, “The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry,” a big, hairy-knuckled fist hammered into my mouth, sending me butt first onto the sidewalk and then onto my back. I was hit so hard that if a referee had held up two fingers in my face, and asked, “How many?” I would have answered, “Wednesday!”
The first thing that came into focus as I stumbled to my feet was the thief casually picking up his jacket and saying something to another man, whose eyes were focused on me as he bobbed and weaved, and jabbed the air like a boxer. Two thoughts entered my slowly clearing mind: (1) I was getting real tired of how casual the thief was about all this, and (2) the boxer dude must be the guy who—as they say—“came out of nowhere” and sucker-punched me.
A couple of seconds after my revelations, the boxer danced into range, and I quickly snapped a roundhouse kick toward his groin. I say “toward” because he twisted away at the last second, and my kick struck his upper thigh. I still expected him to fall down, but instead he turned and ran off with the thief, albeit with a pronounced limp. This wasn’t how I saw the situation unfolding in my mind. As blood trickled down my chin, and my lower lip inflated and my ego deflated like a punctured tire, I was suddenly aware of people standing around me, some of them laughing. High fives and fist bumps hadn’t been invented yet, but if they had, there would have been a lot of them going on.
For the next two days, I replayed the confrontation over and over in my mind. Six years of karate training, a year of hellacious fights as an MP in Vietnam, and I get sucker-punched like a card-carrying dork. Then when I did get a shot at one of the guys, he simply turned away a little and my kick missed its intended target, something that never ever happened to the heroes in the kung fu movies. Maybe my karate instructor could make sense out of it.
In a voice that probably sounded like a little boy whining about a big kid taking his ball, I told him what happened. “How could this be?” I sniveled. “I’m a black belt, almost a second degree.”
When I finished, my instructor nodded his head, not with empathy but with disappointment. “Who do you think you are?” he asked. “Superman? You can’t block what you can’t see, especially if you’re not fully aware of everything and everyone around you. Understand that your knowledge only gives you an edge, and that’s all. Real life isn’t a kung fu movie. No matter how good you get, there will always be someone out there who can lay you out. Sometimes, training in the martial arts means you have elevated yourself to the level of a good street fighter, a guy who has never had a lesson but has learned through experience on the streets or in prison.”
He paused for a moment and when he spoke again his voice had softened. “The martial arts is like life: you get ahead a couple of steps, and you get knocked back three. What’s important is you keep getting up and moving forward. That’s what being a martial artist is all about.”
My teacher’s words brought me back to earth. I had been living in a fantasy world where I thought I was an unbeatable, invulnerable character in a “chop-socky” movie. My sore butt, swollen lip, wilting ego, and his words showed me how immature I had been. I might have been a few weeks away from earning my second black belt, but I still had a long way to go as a martial artist.
I finally did get on the police department, and over the next 25 years I got hit by surprise a couple of times, blows that hurt my body but no longer hurt my ego. Today, with nearly 50 years of training, I accept the fact that my knowledge and experience give me an edge, and I accept the reality that there are lots of people out there who can knock me on my butt.
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Loren Christensen is the author of two dozen Paladin books and videos, including Fighting in the Clinch, Fighting Dirty, and Restraint and Control Strategies. Loren was a military policeman in Saigon during the Vietnam War and retired from the Portland, Oregon, Police Department after more than two decades of service. He has been training in the martial arts for more than three decades. He can be contacted through his website at www.lwcbooks.com.