Meet the Ultimate Lady Warrior: A Humbling Encounter

Ladies, rejoice. What I’m about to tell you is that the baddest creature on this planet is not some musclebound guy of WWE or some action movie star, but a Lady (notice I capitalized that because that’s exactly what she is) I met in one my units

Now as a police officer and as an MP, I’ve had more than a few serious encounters. I’ve had my clock cleaned a time or two, but of course, you can’t stop. You better take the guy at that point. Well, this Lady didn’t clean my clock.  She kicked it apart, put it back together, and then hit the reset button.

Those of us who have experienced such a thing have a term for it. It’s called a cognitive readjustment. You walk out of it looking at the world in a whole different light.

Diane wasn’t exactly what you’d think of as a serious customer. She stood maybe five foot three, blonde, cute as a button. If you looked up the word “Southern Belle” in the dictionary, there’s a really good chance you’ll see her picture right next to the word. She knitted, had very gracious manners, was soft spoken, and wore little square “granny” Glasses.

It was a disguise that Marvel’s Black Widow or DC’s Wonder Woman might have worn. As Roxette would sing, “She’s a little bit Dangerous.” An understatement, but very true.

So, here’s the story.

I first met Diane (not her real name) when I got to my unit. Quiet, cute, and of course all of us testosterone-fueled guys took it upon ourselves to make her life interesting, to say the least. We were always hitting on her and so on. You have to understand that we were all poster children for sexual harassment and respect for the opposite sex was something we were about to learn the hard way.

Well, this went on for about four months, and then it happened on a Wednesday.  Wednesdays in the Army is “Training Day.” Well, this particular day the bulletin board simply read, “Uniform of the day – Army PTs. Fall out to the gym at 0830 hrs for unarmed self-defense training.” So, we all go over thinking “We need to lean this? Get real.”

There are several wrestling mats rolled out when we got there. Diane is standing the middle of them in her little white Karate outfit. She wore a black belt around her waist and looking absolutely adorable and about as dangerous a French Poodle.

She gets the class going, demonstrates some moves, and then says she’s going to show these really work. She needs two volunteers.  “Sgt. Muniz. Cpl. Thomas. Front and center,” she says.  We were the two biggest guys in the unit. Both of us lived in the gym and boxed and wrestled the Field Artillery guys who worked out there as well.

So, we thought, of course, that we were all that.

We joined her on the mat.

So she says, “Guys, come at me.”

Thomas and I both said, “Oh, come on Diane. We don’t want to hurt you.”

“Come on, come on.”

“Diane, we don’t want to hurt you.”

I mean here we are. Both of us were over six foot five, with muscles that made Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson look like the proverbial 95-pound weakling. We were both boxers and wrestlers and with an attitude.

If we went after her, it wouldn’t be pretty.

“Come on, come on!”

We repeated ourselves and this time she just smiled and said, “Come on. Pussies!”

Well, if you insist, I thought.

We made our move.

My last memory of that engagement was seeing her foot in front of my eyes.

And then I’m staring up at the ceiling wondering what the hell happened. She comes into view, puts out her hand, and helps me up off the mat. Thomas was lying a few feet away with that same “Oh my God, what just happened?” look on his face.

I sure didn’t feel like re-engaging this woman.

Someone had timed our match. We lasted less than a second and half against her.

As a unit, we used to proclaim that we were so bad that we got Christmas cards from Chuck Norris.

It turns out she actually did.

Not only had he trained her, but she’d been one of his lead instructors. She had boxes of trophies collecting dust, and black belts in more Japanese, Korean, and Chinese words than you can shake a stick at. And she had stars and a sword and knew how to use them.

She was one seriously bad animal!

Needless to say, we had nothing but the utmost respect for her and women after that.

She had us whipped gentle.