Mighty Mickey

True Story Time!

Inevitable background. When I was a wee laddie, my parents were rather worried about me attending school for a number of reasons. We moved around a lot and seldom lived anywhere near ‘Indian Country’ so I was always with people who were not used to being around Native Americans. I kept skipping grades, so I was around kids who were older and bigger than me. And having paedogenisis (now usually called neogeny) I was a small and rather scrawny for my age anyway, although it also causes you to reach sexual maturity early and usually leaves you very strong and quick for your size.

Anyway, my parents insisted that I master the martial arts (Kyokushin Karate) to the point that I could easily defend myself against anyone, even much larger than myself. And for the same reason, Melinda insisted long ago that I had to train Mickey to defend herself. She’s surprisingly quick and agile, which she gets from her mother - Melinda had a gymnastics scholarship for her undergraduate work and she was the one who taught me to snag wild animals, explaining that all animals have a range of motion limited by their bone and joint structure that you can use to immobilize them (what I call The Ancient Veterinary Arts).

Well, get to the story already! The other day between classes Mickey and her friends came upon a group of girls seriously roughing up a couple of younger girls. Mickey has a strong protective instinct - eighth generation Apache Medicine Woman in the making here, and not forgetting that she’s distantly related to Geronimo himself! Her friends reported that they knew that she was preparing for battle when she pulled off her sandals (she does all serious work barefoot - more genetics at work) They also say the battle itself probably lasted 10 seconds at most, and all they could see was a flurry of long black hair and big eyes. She put three girls on the floor in short order, hard enough to knock the breath out of them. The entire group drew back and declared an immediate truce, possibly so surprised at being trounced by a 55 lb Apache that they were lost in confusion.

Well, happy endings all around! Mickey was prepared to be in trouble for fighting, but the official position on the matter seems to be that nobody saw nothing, with private appreciation that she was defending others, never actually hurt anyone, and ‘please try not to do that again’. And since at least a hundred students saw what happened, Mickey now has enough street credit that no one is going to cross her!

Fun Fact: One problem of living in the age of generic off-the-shelf shoes is that many times they don’t fit Native Americans. When I was growing up, most of the schools I attended were very tolerant of my wearing sandals, moccasins and even running barefoot. These days a couple of manufacturers make cross trainers and ‘institutional’ (medical) shoes in Native American sizes.