When I lived in Denver, Colorado, while attending the Precision Measuring Equipment (calibration technician school) course, the neighborhood I lived in was less than desirable. I say that for several reasons. First, the neighborhood was a high-crime district. If you know what a high-crime district is, you know that police and other emergency vehicles frequent the neighborhood with the red lights on. Second, there was at least one murder and several shootings per week in the neighborhood. Third, there were a lot of druggies in the neighborhood. How did I know they were druggies? Excellent question. The cigarettes they smoked were not store-bought. And they were usually misshapen. Plus, whenever these guys walked around, a small cloud of smoke always followed them. That small cloud of smoke had a peculiar odor, and it was always present even on a sunny day. Finally, my neighbor in the house to the left of our townhouse apartment complex had a Pitbull chained up in his front yard. The chain holding that Pitbull was one helluva thick ass log chain. But every time somebody walked by that house on the sidewalk, that damn dog would lunge at them and damn near snap that chain. For all of the above cited reasons, my wife and daughter were scared to go outside when I wasn’t around. And I gotta tell you, I was scared to go around that damn Pitbull at first. I decided to fix that little dilemma. I started carrying a set of nunchucks (nunchaku), whenever I went out jogging in the neighborhood or when I had to go around that dog. In my first confrontation with that dog, it came within a foot of me. I snatched out my nunchucks. And in my best Bruce Lee imitation, I yelled as I twirled the nunchucks. I caught the dog with a light blow to the head. That blow briefly stunned the dog, but it got the dog’s attention. When it started to growl, I immediately went into a defensive stance. I growled back softly. When the dog quieted, I looked at it and said, “You and I are going to reach an understanding, or I’m going to pop you again.” Then I spun the nunchucks in a figure 8 pattern until the air was whistling. Once I figured I had the dog’s attention, I moved closer to the dog. When the dog gave no sign of trying to attack me, I moved even closer. Soon, I was standing next to it and petting it. I said to it, “From now on, you better remember who I am and who is the boss.” Then, I growled again just for good measure, and I walked away from the dog. From that day forward, I carried those nunchucks everywhere I went, well when I was off duty. There was a park about six blocks east of where we lived. I think the name of the park was Aurora City Park, and I usually stretched and worked out on the monkey bars in that park to do chin-ups. Whenever I worked out, I wore a gray sweat suit with a hoodie. I usually kept the hood pulled over my head with the string tied to retain body heat. I would go on a long run that looped west, down to Highway 2, North along Highway 2 to Martin Luther King Jr Boulevard, East along Martin Luther King Jr Blvd around the south side perimeter of the old Denver airport down to Peoria Street, South on Peoria to 16th Ave, and west on 16th Ave to the park. And when I got to the park, I would stop to stretch and work out. One night when I stopped in that park after running, a group of four teenagers surrounded me and began to hassle me. I guess they figured I looked a little too much like Rocky from the Rocky movies. “Rocky II” had recently been in theaters, and “Rocky III” was coming soon to theaters. The obvious leader of the four started jeering and calling me names, “Hey, are you the great white hope? Is that what you’re supposed to be? Our hero. The great white hope. Why don’t you impress us? After all, you are the great white hope, right?” The four kept inching closer and closer to me as the loudmouth kept jeering. I didn’t say anything. I simply dismounted from the bars where I had been doing chin-ups and walked slowly toward them. As I moved toward them, they surrounded me. However, I was expecting that. The leader looked at me and said, “What? Are you some kind of tough guy? Do you realize that there are four of us and only one of you?” I slid out my nunchucks and snapped them up under my arm. Then I said, “As you said, there are only four of you.” Then he asked, “Do you think you’re some kind of martial arts Bruce Lee Billy bad ass?” I said nothing and just stood there. Some other guy had started crossing the park and noticed these four guys surrounding me. So, he came over to check things out. Apparently, the four kids knew who he was because the leader of the gang said to him, “Mario, check it out. This dude is harassing us. He’s trying to pick a fight.” The dude named Mario looked at me and said, “What’s your story, man?” I responded, “Well, these guys got it half right. I was over there on the bars minding my own business, when they came over and started calling me the great white hope and a bunch of other bullshit. So, I walked over here, and they surrounded me and threatened me further. They’re right about the fight. But they’re the ones that picked it. I’ll be the one that finishes it. If you want to step in, that’s on you. But I won’t guarantee how it will go for you.” Mario looked at me, then he looked at the four teenagers, and then he said, “Well, you all started this, so you all can finish it. I’m out.” Then he walked off. Suddenly, the four kids looked worried. Finally, the loudmouth leader said, “Look Mister, we didn’t mean anything by what we said. I’m sorry if we offended you. Will you accept our apology?” I looked at him and said, “That’s the smartest thing you’ve said all night.” “Do you seriously think you could have taken all four of us?” “Once I brought my nunchucks into the equation, the outcome was never in doubt. The real question is, how many times would I have had to hit each of you to knock you silly? I suspect only once, but you never can tell.” “Are you really that good with those things?” So, I gave them a little demonstration. When I had the nunchucks moving at speed, I think they were impressed. Then, one of the other teenagers asked me where I learned to fight. I told him that my first lessons came at Fort Benning from a sixth-degree black belt in kung fu. Later, I took up hapkido from a black belt master in taekwondo in Korea. We talked a little while, and then I departed for home. My stop that evening in the park had almost become an exercise in futility.
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