Street Stories

Real life experiences on the street & in the dojo

A Loud Voice And Assertive Attitude

By Timothy J. Schutte

Editor's Note: This post recently appeared on a martial arts e-mail forum, and we thought the incident would be an interesting addition to FightingArts.com's "Street Stories" column. Tim Schutte granted us permission to post it here.

We have been discussing self-defense here (in the forum) quite a bit recently, so I would like to relate an incident I experienced just a couple of hours ago:

I was sitting here at the computer, playing poker online when the phone rang. It was my next-door neighbor who asked "Did you know that there is someone in your car?"

"No." I replied, "Are you sure?"

"Yes. He propped a bicycle against the back of your car!" my neighbor said. So, I went to check things out. Sure enough, there [was] a guy in my car, sitting in the driver's seat rifling through the box in the center console of my T-Bird.

"What the hell are you doing in my g-d car?" I hollered. The guy jumps out, obviously surprised at being yelled at by a guy in a wheelchair.

"I-I thought it was my car!" the guy said fuzzily. He seemed high.

"You get the hell out of here %&(%&^%$&$%!!! I'm going to call the cops!" I roared, closing the distance between us to increase my advantage in case he swung. He didn't swing — he jumped on his bike and pedaled off as hard as he could!

I was — and am — totally amazed. A loud voice and an assertive attitude saved my chubby old butt!

It just goes to show you.

If you have an interesting real life story that you would like to share with our readers, please email it to us at: street_stories@fightingarts.com

Timothy J. Schutte
Timothy Schutte was born with spina bifida and is paralyzed from the hips down. Despite this limitation, he has trained in Isshinryu Karate for 38 years.