5 Things You Should Know – Part 428

jazz

August 9, 2021

Here are 5 things you should know.

1. Discount Tires, Les Schwab, and several other tire chains offer free air checks and flat repairs.

2. Despite popular belief, most self-defense instructors say you should NOT use your keys as a weapon.

First and foremost, you risk dropping your keys or having them taken from you, which means you have now lost access to your vehicle and/or home. Worse, if your attacker gets them now THEY have access. Getting inside your home or vehicle can be imperative to escape, and you don’t want to lose your access.

Secondly, the Wolverine key-hold is ineffective and is more likely to hurt you as nothing is actually holding the keys from shifting laterally in between your fingers. If you really have no other option it is better to hold your longest key like it’s a knife coming down out of the bottom of your fist for a stabbing motion.

Third, keys are not sharp and are not nearly as effective as a weapon as you think. The most common thing people say is to poke your attacker in the eye, but just how dexterous are you? Can you actually poke a 2.5 inch long key into the 2 square inch eyeball of someone who is attacking you? Probably not. Your thumbs are infinitely more effective at gouging eyeballs.

Fourth, holding your keys in your hand means that your hand is now dedicated to holding keys. If you keep both hands free you can use either hand at any time to gouge an eye, hammer on the nose, grab an arm, jab the throat, stop a knife, squeeze or strike the groin, grab a nearby object to use as a weapon, etc.

There is a lot of self-defense information out there, but listening to the wrong information can give you false confidence in a method that may fail you when you need it. Knowing what works and what doesn’t in actual situations can be the difference between life and death.

3. The weight distribution on a dolly/cart matters.

With the lighter load at the front, a cart/dolly will be able to roll over cracks, bumps, and other obstructions much more easily. With the weight at the front, a small obstruction can easily bring the whole thing to a dead stop.

4. You are free to be sad, just because someone might have it worse elsewhere, does not invalidate your own feelings.

People will sometimes say something like: Well, just be lucky you’re not homeless, or that you’re not in a third world country or not a single parent, or with an abused partner or this and that, trying to invalidate other people’s feelings. That is wrong.

Yes, there are people who have it worse. But that shouldn’t need to be said, whenever you feel sad, angry, or have any negative feelings. You are allowed to feel negative. That is a way to grieve, to start healing.

Pushing your feelings back is not good. That just makes you yell at others, or become quiet, not willing to share anything.

Not saying it’s good to overreact, because it’s not. Just saying that your own feelings are important as well, no one should tell you it’s nothing to cry over or nothing to feel negative over.