Claire practiced the motion. Stomp. Elbow back. It was clean. It was sharp. It was a thing of martial-arts beauty.
Just then, his dad, Bill, walked in from the garage, holding a power drill. He surveyed the scene: his wife in a fighter’s stance, his stepson curled in the fetal position amidst the remains of a beloved giraffe, making sounds like a deflating balloon.
Claire’s brain, in a beautiful, catastrophic misfire of maternal instinct and newly downloaded self-defense programming, interpreted “light pressure” as “imminent threat to her true crime podcast addiction.” She stomped— hard —directly on Mark’s unsuspecting instep. He let out a squeak that belonged to a much smaller mammal. When Teaching Stepmom Self Defense Goes Wrong -...
“The giraffe!” Claire gasped.
Claire spun around, fists up, eyes wide with adrenaline. “Did I do it right? Was that the solar plexus?” Claire practiced the motion
Claire finally lowered her fists, a look of dawning horror on her face. “Oh, honey. I’m so sorry. Do you want some ice? Or… the ashes of the giraffe?”
He never finished the sentence.
Bill sighed, the sigh of a man who had long ago accepted the chaos of his blended family. He put down the drill.
“Good! Now let me just apply light pressure so you feel the resistance—” Mark said, wrapping his arms around her in a loose bear hug. It was clean