The time I kicked Nate in the crotch

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. Believe it or not, the leg-tensing worked.

Story told, some of my friends had doubts. So I stood up, tensed those marble columns otherwise know as my thighs, and said, “Go ahead.” My roommate Josh stepped up and tried for a field-goal. No dice. I can’t say it made my thighs feel great, but the goods remained intact. Then my friend Nate stands up. “Try me,” he says. I walked over, wound up, and gave him a nice shot in the groin. Nate hit the ground like a bag of crap.

What we’d all forgotten was that Nate weighs about one-hundred and ten pounds soaking wet and wearing a ten pound hat. He’s got legs like chicken bones and my kick met no resistance on the way up. I still remember the feeling of my shin bone colliding with his pelvic bone. Poor bastard.

Maybe sometime I’ll tell the story of when I kneed Sarah in the groin, though that one’s not so funny. Well, not ha-ha funny.