The day the dropkick died

If you could be any character from any film for one day, who would you choose?

For me, the answer is obvious.

Selene, the ass-kicking, werewolf-killing vampire from Underworld is my celluloid hero. In many ways I would make a crap vampire: I can’t even give blood without having a minor panic attack; I don’t like guns; and last week I got really freaked out because I accidentally squashed a beetle, so ruthless killing is probably out of the question.

But.

Selene knows how to kick ass. And she can do that triple spinny thing in the air before throwing a roundhouse to a guy’s head whilst simultaneously drop kicking yet another person’s bottom.

That used to be me. Well, sort of.

Six years ago my mum and I decided to accompany my sister to her first kick boxing class just to give her initial ‘moral support’. We got hooked. Soon we were kicking and punching our way through three hour-long classes a week.

My mum: Don't be fooled by the friendly smile. This woman could probably take you in a fight.

For the first time in my 23 years, I felt like a total badass. Embarrassingly, I still didn’t look quite as hardcore as my mum, who kicked my ass in every class. (Only because I let her, of course. I’m just, umm, really nice like that.)

My love affair with kicking lasted three wonderful years. And then disaster struck in the form of a twisted ankle, and it was all over.

Rather embarrassingly, whenever my friends ask what ended such a promising career of crime fighting, I can’t tell them that I got injured during a kickboxing competition, or because I tripped after dropkicking a mugger on the crime swamped streets of London. I have developed a nasty habit of telling the truth. Which is, unfortunately, this:

“I fell off my shoes”

Sympathetic friend: “Wow. You must have been really drunk! Or scaling an impossibly high wall in impossibly high heels. Or defending a helpless elderly lady whilst scaling an impossibly high wall in impossibly high heels… drunk.”

“No.”

Awkward Silence.

“I was sober.

At 7am.

At a networking event.

In the House of Parliament.”

In fact, I had just successfully networked with another person at the event. And I know this because we both felt comfortable enough to admit that we really needed a pee and so set off to find the loo together. And that’s what all the pro networkers usually do to seal the professional bond at networking events in parliament, right? So off we walked. And as we walked across the grand hall in our high heels, with no intervention from anyone or anything else, I somehow managed to fall off my own shoes.

So that’s it. In Underworld, it usually ends for a badass vampire because she is ripped apart whilst triple dropkicking through the air to avenge both a 400 year-old feud and the annihilation of her entire family.

For me it just ended because I needed the loo.

Doesn’t quite have the same ring to it.