Dating : Love Is Mace in the Face

My father sprayed me with mace once.

I’m pretty sure he did it out of love.

And you could say I asked for it.

Dad’s Are Protective, After All

I was 19 years old at the time and leaving for college in a couple of weeks. I was a little nervous about moving hundreds of miles away from home, even after living in Europe for a year as an exchange student. I already knew college campuses were magnets for pervs and predators.

So I asked my father, a sheriff’s deputy, how I might get some mace to take with me. (I was referring to the original Chemical Mace still in production at the time. It was used mostly by police but available for personal defense.)

Dad paused for a moment, then he voiced his thought process: “Wow, Lisa. I don’t know what the laws are in Oregon regarding mace. Here in California, you need a license to carry mace. In order to get a license, you have to take a special class. In order to complete the class, you have to experience being sprayed with mace. There probably isn’t time to take the class before you leave.”

My resigned “oh” had barely passed my lips when he said, “C’mon, let’s go outside. We’ll do the class ourselves.”

You see, although my father was a cop who also happened to hold a law degree, he was somewhat of a libertarian. The former altar boy whose knuckles still showed scars left by ruler-wielding nuns wasn’t the strongest rule follower.

Regardless, Dad held himself to a strong ethical code. I’m pretty sure that, in his view, my ability to defend myself was more important than the strict letter of the law as long as the spirit of the law was honored. So off we headed to a roughly cleared back section of my parents’ five-acre, eucalyptus-wooded property. I was unwisely barefoot.

The Mace Lesson

The first thing my father wanted me to know was that mace is a temporary weapon. It stings like hell and blurs vision, but those effects are limited and short-lived. Spray then run, he told me. Take immediate advantage of the attacker’s surprise.

The second thing he wanted me to know was how far the cannister could spray — at least eight feet if I remember correctly. The point being: I didn’t need to wait until the attacker was in my face.

The third thing he shared was a story from his days as a young deputy. He was struggling to subdue a squirming perp he held in a headlock when he decided to mace him in the face. The guy twisted his face away, and my father basically maced himself. I’m not sure why he shared that story since it was unlikely that I’d ever have someone in a headlock, but he did mention one of his favorite life instructions: “Don’t do what I did.”

The fourth thing he wanted me to remember was that any weapon you carry has the potential to be wrenched away and used against you. I needed to know what it felt like to be sprayed with mace so the element of surprise was diminished and I could react more quickly.

Dad stepped back about eight feet and instructed me to cover my face with my hands. (I was his daughter after all, not a dangerous assailant.) He sprayed, observed my sputtering reaction, and then instructed me to blink my eyes rapidly.

“Notice how you can still see shapes, even though they’re blurry?” he asked.

I nodded, tears streaming down my face. The only other time my eyes and mouth have experienced such burning pain was when I accidentally bit into a super-hot pepper.

“Now you know you can still run and avoid obstacles,” he coached.

With that, the class was complete. There was nothing to do but wait for my physical reaction to dissipate. Dad wasn’t much for waiting.

“You can come inside to rinse out your eyes,” my father said, “but you should wait for the smell to disappear first.” Then he turned and walked away.

I don’t think I lasted more than two minutes before I hobbled slowly back to the house, treading painfully on sharp-edged eucalyptus seed pods I couldn’t see through my burning and blurry eyes.

The fifth thing I learned that day: Never follow Dad outside without shoes on.

Tough Love

My father’s unorthodox mace lesson — which I never actually applied since my cannister was confiscated by airport security a few months later when I accidentally left it in my coat pocket — may seem a little extreme, but I knew even then that he was preparing me for a rough world.

It wasn’t the only time. He taught my siblings and me many life skills.

My own curriculum included how to drive defensively, operate a manual transmission, change a flat tire, split logs, start a fire, swim better, pack an emergency kit (which should include cigarettes for bartering), unlock handcuffs with a flat bobby pin, safely load and shoot guns, even repel down a cliff (however unwillingly).

Besides the focus on self-defense, I’m suspect my father considered the mace lesson another opportunity for me to push myself outside of my comfort zone, to try something new, to keep experiencing life fully.

With the fifth anniversary of my father’s death approaching, I can’t help but look heavenward wryly and think, “Thanks, Dad. I’m still trying new things. And I’m still alive, either because of you or in spite of you. Probably both.”