(Photo: Karen Dolley in training)
Karen Dolley, 43, of Indianapolis woke up in the middle of the night to find a strange man in her bedroom. She's a member of the Society for Creative Anachronism--an organization that, among other things, practices medieval martial arts. She knows how to hurt people the good, old-fashioned way.
She immediately began punching him, landing about 10 blows and sending him reeling back into a corner of the room. Then she reached into a nightstand drawer for her gun. But, in the confusion of the encounter, she couldn't find it.
So Dolley reached for her backup weapon: a ninja sword. With her ninjato, she held the intruder at sword-point until police arrived to arrest him.
Dolley described her training to the Indianapolis Star:
Dolley would don armor and engage in unchoreographed fights using rattan swords, which are safer than steel. She fought against men who stood taller than 6 feet and had 20 years experience.
In the beginning, her opponents could guess her moves because she was afraid she was going to hurt someone, she said, so an early lesson was to move confidently and aggressively after someone.
Now Dolley is using those lessons to help in roller derby, where she's a new recruit known as Foul Morguean with Naptown Roller Girls.
The lessons helped during Thursday’s break-in too, she said.
“I definitely don’t need to work on my aggression, I guess,” Dolley said.
-via Glenn Reynolds