I was a teenager finishing up my time at military school before going to college, at that point I was only going through the motions until graduation. The school was in the middle of nowhere, and was a serious walk to anywhere of interest, not that we were given much freedom to roam around the countryside. Most weekends were spent doing homework and trying to figure out the best way to cause some trouble and not get caught by the rent-a-cops patrolling the campus. Major Andrews, the dorm supervisor and retired Army officer, started a judo club to hopefully help curb the violent impulses of us wayward teenage boys. The first class was mandatory for a few of us; myself included.
We did the first training session during a freak snowstorm in the school gymnasium, there was at least two feet of snow to trudge through on the way there. Our sensei, Major Andrews, made us roll out the wrestling mats to cover the hard wooden floor and break our falls. T-shirts and snow-soaked sweatpants were the uniform of the day since none of us had proper judogis quite yet, and it was all fun and games until he asked for one of us to be the practice dummy for demonstrations. Being a bit of a smartass, like many young men tend to be, I raised my hand to volunteer.
I thought that since I was bigger and taller than him, there wouldn't be anything to worry about.
He grasped my shirt collar with an iron grip and with a sure twist of his hips flung me through the air and onto the mat knocking the wind out of me.
My instincts told me that he was capable of far worse.
That day, I learned that the most dangerous man that I had ever met wasn't someone that looked like Captain America or a meathead straight out of a Hollywood action movie. Instead, it was a balding middle-aged man who looked more at home in a library or at a HAM radio convention than a battlefield.
We kept training with Major Andrews throughout the year, and stopping by his office to chat between classes and military training, and learned a bit more about his long career. When he was younger he earned black belts in judo, jiu jitsu, and hapkido. He graduated Ranger school in the 1980s and then went on to become a Green Beret and had some old framed photos of him with his unit but didn't give a lot of details.
I learned a valuable lesson to not judge a person by appearances alone. Despite how he looked, that man would absolutely be someone to have on your side in a fight for your life.
Photo by Patrick Schöpflin on Unsplash
