It was October and my last year of University. Four or five of us were hanging out on the front steps of our apartment, probably drinking and probably waiting for our hot neighbours to walk by. For whatever reason, we got on the topic of martial arts. We’d all, to some degree, taken karate, or tai-kwon-do, or judo, or knife fighting, or some frigging thing over the course of our childhood, and so we started sharing stories about the cruelties visited upon us by our respective senseis. I told the story of how, for the week I’d taken karate, I always had to be wary of surprise crotch-kickings. Whenever we did our kata (standing in a line, punching the air, and screaming) our sensei demanded that we keep our thighs rock-solid to prevent an attack from behind (because when you’re walking down a dark alley doing your kata, that’s something you have to worry about.) To keep us wary at all times, he would walk up and down the rows of students and occasionally hoof people without warning....