Years ago I went to a community college in the Chicago suburbs called Moraine Valley (Moron Alley). I met a guy named "Buzz" Swanson in the judo club there and we became good buddies. Buzz managed to get himself stabbed one night and here's the story.
When I saw him he was looking OK but his one eyelid was droopy and his voice was shot due to some nerve damage sustained but it healed OK later and he was back to normal. Naturally, I got the story from him on what happened.
He was out late one night and stopped at a Dunkin Donuts in Blue Island for some coffee. There was only the girl working and one guy at the counter. Remember this was about 1972, when it was common for one person to work a night shift alone. He remembered the girl kind of looked at him funny when he gave his order. It turned out she did that because just before he walked in the guy at the counter said to her, "I'm gonna kill the next person to walk in here."
Buzz got his coffee and walked out to his car and the man followed him. The girl called the police as this happened. The man approached him and started a verbal altercation. Now Buzz is a peaceful guy and did what anyone trained would do - try to talk his way out of it because the guy wasn't letting him walk away.
The man wasn't having any of it, and Buzz recalled the man was shorter and smaller than he and didn't seem to be much of a threat. Mistake #1. As Buzz was talking the guy slapped his face, which caused Buzz to turn away to put his coffee on the roof of the car, planning to go to hands-on. Mistake #2.
When he turned back, he had a knife stuck into his neck. The guy took off. Luckily, Buzz was at a donut shop that was only a few blocks from St. Francis hospital, and the counter girl had taken the man's comment and action seriously enough to call the police. Those two factors saved his life.
The cops caught the guy later that morning in the party district of Mt. Greenwood, not far away. When questioned, he said he was "looking for a girl". Chilling.
Buzz survived OK, with a great war story. But he lamented to me, "I broke the first rule. I took my eyes off my opponent". You can analyze it and say he should have thrown the coffee in his face, or whatever. Remember, we weren't there and Buzz was trying to solve it peacefully. He knew he made a mistake and we can use his lesson to learn from. He was lucky to be able to tell the story.
The moral of the story is in the title of this article. The second lesson is that you always approach the situation with an attitude that the opponent knows more and is better than you.
Keep training.
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