Close Call

I went to lunch with a group of my martial arts girlfriends yesterday.  One, who happens to wear a hijab (she's a Muslim of Egyptian descent) told us a story while we ate.

Seems that she was in the grocery store parking lot recently putting her shopping in the trunk of her car when she looked up to see a woman running at her full tilt, a total stranger.   As she noted, it would have made sense just to get into her car as quickly as she could, but in the moment that didn't even occur to her.  In these days of batshit crazy politicians encouraging anti-Muslim sentiment, she assumed the woman was coming to harm her, and she was standing there mentally going through the moves she's learned in taekwondo and jujitsu (this is NOT a woman you want to attack, for the record...she's a bad mo-fo black belt) and deciding how best to defend herself when she realizes that the woman is smiling at her.

The woman gets to her, gives her a huge hug and says, "I'm so sorry our president is such an ignorant asshole!  We all support you."  And walks away.

I love the sentiment.  I love that this happened in my white-bread small town.  And most of all, I love the fact that my friend would have absolutely beaten the shit out of that woman if she'd come looking for a fight instead of in friendship and solidarity.  She is physically small but she takes no crap whatsoever and I think its awesome that she was ready to take on a bigot had push come to shove.