I was mortified but after 3 months can put things in perspective. I'm a 26-year-old woman with various physical fitness certifications. My family owns a small gym/spa in a suburban strip mall and on Monday evenings I teach a women's self-defense course. I am physically fit, good at what I do and more than a little boastful. Three weeks before
Christmas while my husband was home with our daughters I came to the gym early on a Monday evening to decorate for the holidays. It was four o'clock and my self defense class starts at 7:30. At five I ran out to the cafe next door to get a salad, brought it back to the gym ( no more than three minutes) and was confronted by two young men who grabbed me, flashed a knife and demanded money. I am good at self defense but not stupid and there was no way I could fight off two big men with weapons so I complied. They left me face down, hogtied and gagged. Not only was I bound very tightly but I was recovering from a broken arm and did not want to aggravate it so my struggling was minimum and unsuccessful. I desperately hoped someone would find me before my students did but at about 7:20 a group of the girls arrived for class and found me still bound up, gagged and highly embarrassed. When they removed my gag I tried to make a few jokes to cover my agony and embarrassment but I probably just babbled and tried to regain some composure and dignity. Class, of course, was cancelled that night but we continued the following week and I started by acknowledging my failure and emphasizing the idea of not being stupid in any confrontation. Thankfully, aside from asking how I was doing, my class did not want to dwell on my ordeal (maybe they were being polite) so things got back to normal but for weeks I wondered what they were saying and thinking. It took me almost until now to stop torturing myself.