The Fighting Ethridges

Neck hug
 

When everyone living in your household trains various martial arts, displays of affection sometimes vary from the norm. For example, it is really difficult for us to hug each other without fighting for underhooks! One of my daughter's favorite greetings is to come up behind me and put me in a full nelson (by the way, if you're flexible enough, grabbing someone's fingers and prying them off is an excellent way to get out of a full nelson!). My primary form of saying hello is with a lion killer. Joe doesn't usually attack, but he has massive counters. When I'm sitting next to him and he puts his arm around me, there's a 50/50 chance I'm going to try to armbar him. If I do, there's a 100% chance he's going to wrist lock me.

As Skyler was leaving to go back to college last weekend, she didn't say "Give dad a hug for me.", she said "Jump on dad's back and choke him for me." When we go out in public, Joe has to remind Skyler and I to not attack each other (or him). Depending on where we are, we will likely ignore him and battle anyway. Why do you think Skyler and I have such a close relationship without the typical mother-daughter drama? It's because she knows I can whoop her butt! Actually, the feeling is quite mutual.  When Joe gets on our nerves, we both like to warn him "Don't make me Jiu-Jitsu you!".

Some people think we're weird, but we enjoy it, and we're not just "playing", we're "practicing"! When you're used to being on your toes because you never know when someone you live with is going to try to choke, armbar, throw, wrist lock, sweep, elbow, or punch you, it's going to be difficult for the bad guy on the street to take you by surprise. We've even had situations come up during these free form fights which made us realize that we didn't know what to do in that instance, so we sought the answers from our teachers, and worked it out at the dojo.

There's a scene in Seven Samurai where one of them stands inside a doorway with a weapon, waiting to attack the others as they enter, to test their reaction and defense. That's basically what we Ethridges are doing. Someday we hope that the constant practice will lead us to the level of the one Samurai who was able to sense the attack waiting, before he even got to the door.