She wasn't a fighter. She was a woman who hummed while she gardened and bought the wrong brand of cereal because she was still trying to learn my favorites. When I lunged, a standard drill to test her reflexes, she didn’t pivot. She froze. My palm caught her shoulder harder than planned, and she stumbled back into a stack of storage bins.
The judge’s response was scathing: “You are not a police officer. You are not a security guard. You performed a painful, unauthorized seizure of another person. That is assault.” when+teaching+stepmom+self+defense+goes+wrong