I was on my way out of a business seminar yesterday when I was stopped by a pair of Street corner Shoeshine Guys. I saw the pair of them get escorted off the property of the hotel five minutes before, so I knew they weren't supposed to be there. As is my rule with people asking for money on the street, I was polite and smiled but said I wasn't interested. I apply this rule to the homeless as well as to save the whales/support X politician/sign this petition types. I do not feel comfortable handing someone money on the street, no matter how good the cause.
Most of the time I don't have a problem with this strategy and they move on, but not this guy. He gets down on his knees in front of me and starts poking at my shoe. I am stuck at a red light, and his buddy is on the only other corner I could cross to. There are people all around us, but I still start to feel really, really trapped and stuck and scared. Despite my continuing insistence that I did not need my shoes shined, the guy squirted polish stuff on my shoes and started polishing them anyway! This was a surprisingly violating experience. By this point I felt like I had to go along with the unauthorized shoe shining. As he polished my shoes and I missed my green light and got stuck for another stoplight cycle. All the while in my head I was just praying this would be over as fast as possible. I felt strangely used and dirty and trapped and embarrassed and just STUCK.
This is not an entirely uncommon feeling for me, as I am terminally afraid of offending someone or hurting their feelings, even if they are in the wrong and are offending me/hurting my feelings. Every time I get stopped on the street for something, which is often since my office is on a busy/touristy part of Michigan Avenue, I feel bad turning them down and spend the next five or ten minutes wondering if my refusal was too rude or if I made them feel bad. It doesn't take much force to override my refusal and guilt me into listening to the pitch/buying something/signing a petition. Heaven forbid I walk away from them and they "don't like me"! I don't like that I'm such a push-over, but I totally am.
Yesterday afternoon I was telling my therapist about the unauthorized shoe-shining and my general exasperation at my pushoverness, and she suggested I try a self-defense class. Not that I'm going to go all kung-fu on someone to keep them from shining my shoes, but such classes can help with the pushoverness that I have such a problem with. My reaction surprised the heck out of me - I had a mini panic attack.
The thought of taking a self defense class terrifies me. First of all it is a physical activity in a group of people I don't know. I really hate that, and have since my very first day of Phys-Ed in elementary school. I am roughly as coordinated as a drunk hippopotamus walking through a fun-house on stilts, and I live in Great Fear of injuring myself in a stupid way in front of witnesses. Secondly, I just cannot get behind the idea of using the self-defense moves, even if I need them. I was assaulted on my way home from work almost two years ago, and the thought of turning back time and using self-defense moves to change the course of that assault makes me more sick to my stomach than the thought of re-living the assault as it happened. I know I "should" feel empowered by gaining the ability to defend myself, but it is quite the opposite. Why, you ask? Because the thought of hurting that guy, even though it would have been to stop him from hurting me, makes me want to throw up. I just can't do it. He might not like me then!
I am well aware that is a completely unhealthy (and crazy) way to react. Therapist agrees, and thinks I should look into a self-defense class purely because the thought of it pulls such a strong reaction out of me. Maybe during lunch today I'll peruse the Internet and see what I can find.
Have any of you taken a self defense class? How did it go? And if you happen to live in Chicago, where did you go? Do you want to come with me and give me handfuls of Xanax during the class?
