When Teaching Stepmom Self - Defense Goes Wrong -...

Claire, wearing her favorite cashmere sweater and holding a can of pepper spray like it was a TV remote, nodded seriously. “So, no going for a nice drive with the kidnapper. Got it.”

Claire’s brain, in a beautiful, catastrophic misfire of maternal instinct and newly downloaded self-defense programming, interpreted “light pressure” as “imminent threat to her true crime podcast addiction.” She stomped— hard —directly on Mark’s unsuspecting instep. He let out a squeak that belonged to a much smaller mammal.

The air left his body in a single, silent whuff . He folded like a cheap lawn chair, slid off her back, and collapsed onto the pile of giraffe shards, gasping like a fish in a parking lot.

Claire spun around, fists up, eyes wide with adrenaline. “Did I do it right? Was that the solar plexus?”

Then came the elbow.

“Okay, Claire,” he said, adopting a gravelly action-hero voice. “The number one rule: never let them get you to the secondary location.”

“Forget the giraffe!” Mark yelped, nursing a bruised elbow. “Let’s move to the basic elbow strike.”