Some Habits Are Hard To Kick

I studied Tae Kwon Do up until college, and I dabbled a little throughout college. I was nothing great, but I did get up to second dan black belt. (Trust me, that really isn’t as impressive as you may think.) I lacked stopping power, given my size and lack of aggression, but I did develop a decent focus on defense and being hard to hit, as well as covering large distances quickly to be able to move in and out of my opponents’ reach.

Not long into my first job out of college, I was joking with a colleague. I forget the details of the conversation, but eventually, he jokingly threatened to hurt me for something, including pantomimed kicking me.

I wasn’t expecting the mock kick. It took me by surprise so much that my sparring instincts kicked in the moment the leg started to come up and I immediately tried to slide back out of the way of a potential attack. I rapidly slid across the room, until I ran hard against the wall behind me; we were in a much tighter space than I usually sparred in, so I’d tried to slide back much further than there was space to cover.

What I didn’t realize was that my manager’s office was behind my coworkers’ backs. My manager didn’t have a clear view, but he had enough of a view to see my coworker move as if to kick me followed by my flying across the room. He ran out of his office, all set to fire my poor coworker for apparently kicking me across the room for no reason. I had to rush in to assure him that I wasn’t kicked and everything was fine.

After we had assured him that my coworker had not snapped and gone on a wild kicking spree, my manager found this hilarious. For the next two years I worked there, my manager would jokingly tell the story of how I “tried” to get my coworker fired for attacking me to anyone that would listen.

I guess you could say he got a real kick out of it.