Violent Old People on the Upper East Side

Last Wednesday afternoon, though, you'd have found Kaufman standing in the basement of an E. 74th St. community center in front of a group of old people, mostly ladies, teaching a class on self-defense for seniors, which Kaufman does as a volunteer from time to time. Today Kaufman had drawn a crowd of about 25, and, on folding chairs in the center's vast, dim basement, they listened to him attentively as he stood before them in a black karate outfit and a pair of white leather high-tops, holding a cane. When Kaufman addresses the elderly he's less the martial artist than a big, teasing tummler, every old lady's favorite, joshing nephew. He's the author of a book called Zen and the Art of Stickfighting, so he would seem to have been the right man for today's job.

But couldn't?the question arose?old people be held liable for beating people silly with canes and umbrellas?

"You're not walking around with a weapon," Kaufman explained. "You're walking around with a device that helps you get around... There are some canes that if you press a button, you pull a sword out. That's a weapon."

Legal issues clarified, Kaufman turned to streetfighting, producing a keychain that he held up in his meaty hand.

"If a guy comes near you?" he slashed with the keys at the air in front of him "?across the eyes." He nodded his great head solemnly. "Across the eyes," he intoned.

The audience seemed to like that. One old woman said, "Wow!"

"Another thing that you might consider when you're walking," he continued, "is carrying a pencil or a pen. Now you're going to say, who walks in the street with a pencil or a pen? Smart people. Smart people. It's a deterrent. It's not a weapon. It's a deterrent. Okay? So if you're walking with a pencil and a pen, and somebody sees you, they know that your consciousness?that your consciousness?is such that 'Hey, here I am. Who wants some?'"

"Someone's gonna make the approach to you and they see this and say, 'Hey grandma, what're you gonna do with that?' Just tell 'em, 'Find out!' Tell 'em, 'Find out!'"

Then Kaufman returned to elucidating the warlike uses of the cane.

"If you're walking with a cane or an umbrella, you are armed. Okay? When somebody comes near you, and they start to threaten you, if you go?" he waved his cane feebly above his head?"'Go away,' you're gonna get hurt. But if you're standing there like this, and you just go bing, you're not gonna get hurt. You're not gonna get hurt. What's gonna happen is?and some of you might get upset by this?but something's going to come back to life in you that you've always had." Kaufman emitted a sudden, loud, guttural, "YEEEAH!" Faces lit up. "And you're gonna love it! You're gonna enjoy it! You'll feel good about it!"

The bing, needless to say, was accompanied a particularly vicious gesture with the cane.

Role-playing exercises followed, during which Kaufman's students took the floor with him to learn how properly to deliver a cane-end to an assailant's throat.

"What I want you to do," Kaufman explained to a certain Marie, "instead of doing this?" Kaufman held the cane high above his head in a posture that left his body vulnerable to attack "?I want you to just go like this. Bang." He helped Marie hold the cane and smoothly raise it from the floor upward in an arcing motion, directing its point straight at the spot where an attacker's Adam's apple would be.

"Like that?" asked the tentative Marie.

"Yeah," nodded Kaufman. "Right into the throat. Go ahead, right into the throat."

A certain pleasure seemed to wash over the woman's face as she mastered this infernally effective bit of self-defense.

Next Kaufman ran his charges through the old handbag-in-the-face trick.

Near the end of the class, Kaufman found it necessary to temper his students' expectations.

"You're not going to be able to be a killer after an hour, an hour and 20 minutes," he announced.

"How long does that take?" a man in the audience asked.