Everyone was Kung Fu fighting...

Evildoers beware - 23 of Jasper's finest flowers have hidden thorns, thanks to a free self-defense course offered by Fawcett's Black Belt Academy last week.

Women ages 14 to senior citizen turned out to learn how to ward off an attacker. They were advised to wear loose clothing and bring a friend to practice with, because this was no passive classroom lecture.

Academy owners Gary and Paula Fawcett said they were concerned "about the crazies out there;" specifically, cases like the young single mother, Bridgette Gearen, who was apparently kidnapped and murdered a month ago at Crystal Beach.

Two of Fawcett's students, Nick Griffin and Joshua Gomez, played the part of attackers. They are both tall and athletic, and fortunately for them, trained how to fall.

Fall they did, as the women learned to use the attackers' size and momentum as leverage to flip, twist, and flatten would-be bad guys.

Tiny girls in pink shorts learned to "turn into him, apply pressure here, push him down," as Gary Fawcett instructed.

At first some women were timid, and one older woman kept apologizing every time she floored a young man. But within 30 minutes of the two-hour class, you could sense confidence building as the women learned to take control of situations.

Soon they were cheering each other and saying, "This is cool. This is fun."

Instructor Paula Fawcett reminded them, "This is serious, too. Don't ever let the bad guy abduct you. They want to get you away somewhere, and if you let them, you're dead."

The women learned to use pressure points like the radial nerve in the arm, how to use the hand to chop a neck or break a nose, how to sweep-trip an opponent, how to use keys as a weapon.

Gary Fawcett said, "It does not matter how strong a man, you can take him down." Using a pressure point on the wrist, the smallest in the class easily made Gomez dance on tiptoes.

It may seem unlikely that a woman would remember the moves to disarm a weapon-wielding attacker, but Jasper police officer Wanda Dare, who took the class with her daughter, said, "You'd be surprised. When you practice like this and it's your life at stake, you can do it. It just kicks in and you do what you have to do."

The class included some grim statistics: "389 women are raped every day. More than 60 percent of sexual assaults are committed by someone we know. One woman in every three will be sexually assaulted in their lifetime."