“OK,” I can hear some of you saying already, “What in the world is Cran talking about now?”
Well, I’m not talking about places you shouldn’t eat, like on the treadmill at your gym. And I’m not talking about calories and cholesterol, (says the guy who ate half a large pizza the other day!). I’m not even talking about a meal being dangerous to, or for YOU.
I AM talking about why it is dangerous for a bad guy to accost you while you’re in the cafeteria, kitchen, restaurant, or in the break room having your puffed rice cakes with a glass of soy milk (or caramel drizzled cheesecake with a chocolate milkshake).
Now I understand that even a “friend” who interrupts any type of cheesecake snack is taking his life into his own hands. However, I want to address why any bad guy has made a drastic mistake approaching a woman with food (she has food, not him). Although many of us men are absolutely content to have a meal that consists of a sandwich, pizza, or some other food we can eat with our hands (insert male grunting noises here), I think women are far more likely to enjoy a meal (or a dessert) with socially appropriate silverware. If your family is like mine, that silverware is much less likely to be “silver” and far more likely to be stainless steel, or even picnic plastic (to avoid having to wash it later). But that will work as well for what we’re talking about today.
Silverware of destruction
We’re going to use this “silverware” as a VERY effective tool of self-defense!
Most people, when thinking of kitchen utensils as “tools” or “weapons” think of the horror movie classic butcher knife. But I’m not even going to discuss knives today. Think of this: when you are going through the cafeteria line with your soup and salad and you get to the silverware tray, what do you grab? That’s right: a fork, a soup spoon, and a teaspoon (to mix the honey into your green tea).
No “Hell’s Kitchen” butcher knife.
No meat cleaver.
No machine gun or chainsaw.
Two spoons and a fork.
And with only those 3 simple utensils, you are ready to joyfully eat your vegetable broth and plate of baby kale. However, you are also ready to make any attacker realize that bothering you during your lunch break was his worst idea of the day!
“OK,” I can hear ALL of you saying, “How in the world am I supposed to use a flippin’ teaspoon or fork to fight off a bad guy?” And you are right to ask this.
Since a fork has scary pointy tines on it (whether its an oyster fork, salad fork, serving fork, or dinner fork), we will use the SPOON instead! Why? Because once you realize you can use a spoon to fight someone with, a fork is just for amateurs! No, really the fork would be used in the same way as the spoon, ok?
If you have a teaspoon handy, go ahead and grab it. If you don’t have one, imagine grabbing one. By the way, when you actively practice something in your mind, it is called “Visual Motor Rehearsal.” That is a very important topic that I will be discussing in a different article.
Now take that spoon and grip it in your fist. Chances are, whether you are physically or mentally doing 
this, you grabbed it with the “spoon” part up, like you’re holding up a stop sign at a crosswalk. But I want you to flip that spoon over and hold it the same way you would hold a knife that you are stabbing into the leather seats of your boyfriend’s new Lexus after you found out he was cheating on you. (wow, let’s calm down just a bit, ok???) The crazy thing is, LOTS of you are now perfectly clear on how you should be holding that spoon (even without the photo!)!
There are 2 very important reasons to hold the spoon that way. Since the “action” part of the spoon (the part that usually goes into your mouth) is so much wider than the handle, that wide part will keep it from sliding through your hand when you’re using it against an attacker. The other reason is that the “action” part of the spoon is now on the “power” side of your hand.
The power side? That’s right. You see, you have much more muscle involved when you are pushing DOWN with your arm (the stabbing motion). When you are pushing “up” with your arm, like when you are trying to screw a hook into the ceiling to hang your new plant hanger on, you are mostly using your bicep and shoulder muscle. However, when you are pushing “down” with your arm, like when you’re scraping your name into hood of your cheating boyfriend’s Lexus (the one with the cut up seats), then you are using your shoulder, back, tricep, and forearm muscles. So, as you can see, you are much stronger pushing down rather than up, and that’s why I’m calling the bottom side of your gripping fist hand the “power” side.
Now, what to do with that downward pointing spoon of bad guy fate, right?
Before I get to that, let me talk about the “skin sandwich” effect. That’s not really a thing, since I just made it up literally 15 seconds ago, but that’s what I’m going to call it nonetheless. The skin sandwich effect is not the response you might have to a Hannibal Lecter dish (anyone see Silence of the Lambs?). Think about what happens when something soft (like your skin) gets “sandwiched” between 2 hard things. For instance, when you’re rushing around the kitchen trying to get the kids fed before they miss the school bus and you smack the back of your hand on the corner of the counter where you just spilled coffee on your child’s homework. Your soft skin is suddenly sandwiched between the hard bones in your hand and the hard corner of the counter top. In that small but high-energy collision, chances are your skin is going to get torn and your kids will learn a few new words that mommy just shouted.
OK, that same skin sandwich effect is what you are going to CAUSE with your spoon of fury (or fork of doom). But you are going to create that effect on the person who is attacking you or a loved one.
This part may be a little graphic and gross for some of you, but its very important.
Your target for the hard downward pointing edge of that spoon, in most cases, will be your attackers face. Your intended action is to stab “in” and rake downward toward you in one smooth but forceful movement. It’s exactly the same action you do when you’re trying to scoop out really hard frozen ice cream.
You see, all around the face and head there is just a thin layer of skin and thin muscle laying on top of hard bone. That means that when your silverware is forcefully raked against that thin skin, it should react like peeling off old wallpaper! This can also work on other places on a bad guy’s body too. The point of doing this, since this is not likely to create life threatening injuries, is to cause your attacker pain and lots of it (that’s why instead of doing it ONCE, you’ll keep on doing it until you can get away).
Anywhere you’ve created a spoon dragging injury on your attacker’s body will become very sensitive to any contact that area may receive. That means that, if you must continue to fight, those damaged areas you’ve created will cause him more pain every time you hit, scrape, scratch, or bite them, creating more opportunities for you to escape.
One great benefit of targeting the head and face with your silverware of choice, is the psychological effect of having his face damaged. EVERYONE has strong, automatic, and immediate responses to our faces being attacked or damaged. Our body instinctively protects our eyes, ears, throat, and breathing holes. Therefore, just the physical and psychological shock an attacker experiences from your self-defense response with a spoon could be enough to stop his attack and allow you to escape to safety. Of course the marks you leave on him will also help the police to identify him.
So, since you have just learned how to take that simple ultra common piece of flatware and turn it into a fighting instrument that Bruce Lee would be proud of, I need for you to understand this next paragraph completely:
What you have just learned can permanently injure, scar, or even blind someone. You ONLY do this when someone’s life is at risk. If you do this to someone just because you’re mad or jealous or drunk or whatever reason that is NOT for the preservation of your life or someone else’s life, you will be held criminally liable and you will probably go to prison. That’s no joke.
Here at LaBCaF, our goal is to teach you to save yourself (or to help save someone else) from a very bad person or a dangerous situation. That means that some of the things we teach can seriously hurt the person you apply them to. Those things are ONLY for your escape and survival! ONLY! Got it? Good.
One final thing: don’t do those mean things to your cheating boyfriend’s car, OK?
Until next time,
Cran
