Hello, my name is Stephen and I am not a violent person. I shouldn’t have probably begin with that but I think that I should make a point of that. So I will start from the beginning. About 7 years ago give or take several months I was on a kids summer camp. I was a chubby kid more on the fat side which was just beginning to go through puberty. Suffice it to say going to the camp wasn’t my idea. My father decided that I need toughening and he sent me in the middle of nowhere for a summer full hiking, biking, swimming in the lake and away from video games. None of my friends were going there and basically it was like a hell for me. The other kids made making fun of me a kind of sport so I stayed away from them as much as possible. Probably my only real friend in the camp was one of the instructors - Avi. He was an ex-Israeli Defense Force soldier and had a very strange sense of humor but I liked him because he treated me like adult and not like a fat piece of lard.

Anyway every morning around 6 am he would go near the lake and train some moves for a week or so I thought it was Kung-Fu but eventually I understood that it was Krav Maga, "the Isreali Kung-Fu" as Avi put it. After several days watching him (I was getting before everyone else because this made getting away from them easier), I convinced him to teach me. And so my Krav Maga training began. It wasn’t long before I realized I really enjoy practicing the moves and later training with him. By the end of the summer I was really hooked on the concept and the idea of this martial art and not surprisingly when I went back home I looked for Krav Maga schools in the NYC and found several. As I continued practicing it I lost weight and the abuse from the school bullies stop. Everything would have been just peachy if it wasn’t for my father who constantly mocked me about training Krav Maga, according to him a real man didn’t need to train fancy jumps and kicks. So he decided to prove me that I wasn’t ready to protect myself, but his plan backfired.

While I was sleeping he barged in my room with a mask while my big brother was recording the whole thing on camera. He expected to freak me out by grabbing my shoulder and screaming "This is a robbery" in my ear, he didn’t expect my just woken up self to hit him with the night lamp in the face and then to almost instantly to proceed kicking and hitting him. The video was quite spectacular actually, the type of which turns viral when it goes in the web.

As a direct result from this adventure my father had a broken nose and lots of bruises. He now attends my Krav Maga School too and my mother keeps the tape and shows it on Christmas and family gatherings for much of my father’s annoyance.

In conclusion I want to say that I am not violent man, but when the thanks to my training when the situation expects it I will react properly even if it is my father.