Judge Me By My Size, Do You?

When I was in the third year in high school, a Muay Thai group gave a special presentation on our sport orientation day. Along with two other guys from my school, I found them exciting and cheap enough to try and join. This group was mostly made up of legal adults, soldiers, and police, in fact, but they were accommodating enough. All three of us could join from next week. 

The club had training thrice a week, two hours. The other two from my school guys were a year older than me, and a lot bigger; the difference was mostly made up of fat, but it was still enough that they could bully me.

We started training; the first two lessons, despite the other two pestering me, were good. Then, the third time came.

This was the first time a girl came into the studio. She was tiny, maybe 90 pounds, and five feet tall. She looked like she was around our age, with spiky short hair and a suit and boots. I thought it was strange, but the group behaved as if they knew her, so I didn’t dare to say anything. The other two guys from my school started catcalling her, though, which got ignored. The girl simply changed into training clothes, and we started the lesson.

My schoolmates were pestering her, the only girl in the class, giving her advice on basics and telling her this was a manly sport; she never answered, just concentrated on breathing. She took a break twice, in fact, prompted by the coach, once using an inhaler. Then, at the body touch exercise, those other two guys crossed a line; they were quite blatant about trying to grope the girl. She mostly just evaded, and as she never said anything, just like any of the guys, my schoolmates started to get braver and braver, harassing the girl.

Then came the fighting part. The coach said, “Okay, [Boy #1], [Boy #2], [My Name], get into the ring with [Girl]. She is a beginner just like you. One by one matches, two minutes, everyone goes a round against [Girl]. Keep to the rules.”

The boys started leering, and I started to get a bad feeling. I let the other guys go before me, and the coach went over the hits with me… I don’t exactly know what happened, but only maybe half a minute passed with the sound of hits, then a loud bam! I looked up, and the bigger bully was on his back, gasping for breath, the girl apologising with a grin. She had somehow knocked out the guy twice her size in half a minute!

The second bully only lasted the same time against the girl before he fled the ring. I was the last, and I went down even faster. I was trembling the whole time! It was surreal! I could barely believe how easily she’d knocked those two out! The tiny girl was not even so tiny; she was well over 110 pounds, it turned out, merely thin.

The other two guys didn’t come next week. I did, and I lasted until I left for university.

And that is how I met the woman who inspired me to get into disaster management. She was actually well over thirty, and started Muay Thai training a year before. She had some kind of lung damage from the job, but it turned out not to diminish her fighting prowess. While she couldn’t keep up against the coaches or the prizefighters training there, she could sure kick the a**es of three newbies!