Camille Wilson can probably kick your butt. Mine, too. That cane she’s leaning on? If you attacked her, she’d steady herself ... then go oops-upside-your-head with it. She is, quite possibly, Nevada’s most dangerous disabled grandmother.
Four years ago, the 50-year-old Wilson took up Kali, a stick-and-knife-fighting form of Filipino martial arts, to counter the physical ravages of Multiple Sclerosis and a spinal-cord injury that put her in a wheelchair. Walking had become a tightrope act. “I lost my sense of balance,” she says. “I was worried if I was going to be able to keep my job as a teacher.”
Today, she no longer teaches, but publishes an education-focused magazine. And those jittery legs have been steeled by learning the finer points of Kali, so much so that she’s poised to become Nevada’s first female and disabled stick fighter. Quite a sight it is to see her slicing the air with two baton-sized sticks, no hitch in her gait.
“It’s like playing piano,” she says of learning Kali. “The right hand has to play the treble clef, the left hand pays the bass, and there are pedals on the floor. The bass is never doing what the treble does, and your feet are pumping the pedals. You have to know how to isolate each limb. This is a challenge for MS sufferers. Your brain has to work with the body to cooperate.”
Wilson, who’s adept at wielding sticks and is now moving on to knives, says anyone can learn to defend themselves.
• People with canes: “The tip of the cane is the most important part,” she says. “It will do the damage. I can cut you.”
• The wheelchair-bound: There are multiple options. “Striking the joints. Using a person’s wrist to gain leverage. Being in a wheelchair gives you leverage.”
• Children: “If you have a backpack, aim for the temple. Swing high and come down like you’re making an X, letting the weight of the books act as the weapon. If there’s a zipper on the side, swing with that side. It can lacerate an attacker.”
If nothing works, use what you can. “Be like MacGyver,” she says. “Anything can be a weapon—pens, lighters, even string. Imagine holding a handle bar; if somebody reaches at you, wrap their wrist with a string, step back and take the person down.”