#1.5 - ¨I Used to be a Cage Fighter...¨

This story doesn´t really have a set place on the Peru timeline. It began before departure, but continued for the duration of the adventure.

To begin:

My parents were a little nervous about me travelling around South America, in a small group, mostly by bus, without reliable means of communication, and without much of a plan. So naturally, excellent daughter that I am, I tried to set their minds at ease. I think the facebook message read something like this:

¨Don´t worry. I´ll be with boys. Older boys. Two of them. Jordan´s practically fluent and Jeremy used to be a Marine. Between the two of them I´ll be fine.¨

In hindsight, the majority of those descriptors probably made the situation sound worse, especially coming from their teenage daughter. What can I say? I tried.

I was semi-joking when I told my parents about Jeremy´s stint with the armed forces. I knew he had originally planned to be a Marine, and that he had spent his freshman year in ROTC. If something went terribly wrong, I´m pretty sure he could have handled it, but I said it mostly to make my parents feel better, not because I was counting on Jeremy to be the body guard of the group. Apparently, he took his role a little more seriously than I did.

We ended up going back to the Donoso house (Jeremy´s host family) for awhile between when our bus was supposed to leave and when it actually left. During that time, I was sitting on the floor in Jeremy´s room, probably talking to myself, ¨helping¨ him repack. He was digging through a desk drawer on the other side of the room, when he asked me:

¨Would you feel better if I had this [pulls out 7-inch switchblade] on me? Because I´ll carry it if you want, but I used to be a cage fighter, so I can also protect you that way.¨

At that moment, a litany of questions started running through my mind -

Why on earth would anyone need a knife that big? Do I look like I need protection that badly? Are we really expecting to have problems big enough for that kind of weaponry?
Am I the only one not worried about getting robbed/kidnapped/shanked?
Ohmygoodness, what the $%&(! are we going to do if something does happen?
And, most importantly,
What the blazes is a cage fighter? *

I assured Jeremy that the machete was unnecessary, though it was thoughtful of him to offer. But, of course, I couldn´t let the cage fighter comment pass, so it became my fallback and motto for the rest of the trip. For example:

¨I think we´ll have to cross the border at like 11pm.
- That´s okay, you used to be a cage fighter.
¨Are we sure we want to ride the bus that late at night?¨
- Yeah, it´s okay. Jeremy used to be a cage fighter.
¨Will Jeremy be alright by himself for two days in Cuzco without any means of communication¨
- Of course. He used to be a cage fighter.

Nothing happened, thankfully, that required Jeremy´s cage fighting skills. But, strangely enough, as much as I teased him about the comment, some small part of me did feel a little safer knowing someone was not only concerned about my well being, but ready means of ensuring it.

* Cage fighting - ¨is a full contact combat sport that allows a wide variety of fighting techniques and skills, from a mixture of martial arts and non-martial arts traditions, to be used in competitions. The rules allow the use of both striking as well as grappling techniques, both while standing and on the ground. Such competitions allow martial artists of different backgrounds to compete.¨ - wikipedia.org