At least, I wasn’t on my recent trip. You know you’re in Texas when everyone wants you to know they’re Texan.
I texted this to my Texan friend and wrote, “I’m in your state! Can you feel it?”
He said no and texted back a pic of himself at the beach… in California!!!
I relayed this to Hubby back home, so he promptly texted this friend: “You’re in my state! I can feel it!”
We double teamed to get a good laugh out of our friend. 🙂
You may have noticed that I’ve had fewer Jiu-Jitsu stories to share lately. I suppose my getting better at it is to blame for my lack of entertainment for you.
We all knew it was bound to happen eventually. Probably for most people, it would’ve happened months ago.
However, I did majorly screw up recently. (Let’s pretend I did it just for you.)
I was partnered with Instructor’s younger brother, Surfer Dude 2. The last portion of class is Mount Drills, where you try to throw the other person off. I had already successfully thrown SD2 once within the 60 second allotment and was prepared to do so again with a cool new move I learned from a Jiu-Jitsu video, not from class.
Suddenly, I became aware of Instructor, SD1, and another upper belt standing there cheering me on.
I had SD2 locked up and ready to roll left, yet I kept attempting to roll him to the right. In that direction, he wasn’t going anywhere.
“Toward me, Betsy. Roll toward me,” came Instructor’s voice, yet I kept pushing the wrong way. Finally, I gave up and heard a collective, disappointed chorus of, “Ohhh,” from the bystanders. One lamented, “It was all set up,” before they walked away.
I was mortified. What the heck happened?! For the rest of the day, I couldn’t let it go. Several times, I asked Hubby to assure me that they’d forgotten the whole incident. (He dutifully complied.) The next day I dropped a fork or something, and he said, “Did that happen because you rolled the wrong way?” which, though funny, brought the memory of the embarrassment crashing down again.
My next class was a week later. I brought my youngest daughter with me for a trial class. It was an unusually small turnout, with only three other students. So, when Instructor needed a demo partner, he chose the most senior student there, which happened to be me.
I gave a delighted little hop skip away from the wall when he called me up. (Obviously, I was super professional and kept my cool.)
You may recall my failed attempt to get a reaction from my Taekwondo “Sensei” when I convinced my compatriots to count our 25 jumping jacks in Korean.
So, you know, a normal person would leave it at that.
And then there’s me.
“New plan, girls,” I told my daughters. “Sensei spent the first nine years of his life in Germany. Next time, let’s count auf Deutsch!” (I know a little German from my semester in Austria.)
“Groan,” said Youngest Daughter.
“Eh, whatever,” said Middle Daughter.
“That would be hilarious,” said Oldest Daughter.
“Yes! She gets it! Let’s do it!” Apparently one vote was all I needed.
And this time? THIS time, Sensei…
The next class after Taekwondo testing is the belt ceremony. As you can guess, we get our new belts. Then we eat stuff.
I had the “brilliant” idea of making churros tied in the shape of belts. Easy peasy. My daughters helped. It probably would’ve been better had I left them to it and stayed out of the kitchen.
The recipe said something like 1/4 cup of water only.
“That’s not enough water. It’s too brittle. They’re falling apart,” said I, who has little successful baking experience.
So I added more water. Then, since I had more water in the cup, I tossed in the rest, thinking, why not?
Welp, it was no longer brittle. It was an icky sticky mess.
And, OF COURSE, the piping bag broke. One daughter shoved batter through the little pipe piece by hand.
But you know what else works? Cutting off the corner of a Ziplock freezer bag. We eventually got there.
Anyway, the consistency was off, our fingers were a mess, getting the batter to the tip was difficult because it preferred to stick to our hands and the inside of the bag–not where the hole was. So we had to shove it down with our dough-covered fingers. Then get it back off our fingers, shove again, repeat, etc.
We eventually got them out of the bag and tied into knots like martial arts belts. Amazingly, they still sometimes broke despite my excess addition of water.
Then again, it’s not amazing since this is me we’re talking about.
Sensei tried to extricate one part from its “knot,” so, clearly, the desired effect was lost on him. I had to explain that they were belts.
We left some the normal color for the person receiving her orange belt. And for the four new purple belts:
So, not a total loss. I joked with Sensei that I accidentally left the one we burnt black for him at home.
He didn’t laugh. He did eat like three of them, though.
When he was packing up his gear, I tucked another churro into the package of cookies he brought. I thought it was a nice gesture. Hubby thought it looked like I was trying to get rid of them. What do you think?
My girls and I are now officially halfway to our black belts in Taekwondo.
I thought it would be fun to jazz up our testing and surprise Sensei by counting off our 25 warm up jumping jacks in Korean instead of English.
I can’t tell you how excited I was to see his face when we began: “Hana, dhul, set, net, daseot…” I imagined him, eyebrows raised, failing to fight down a smile.
And how did he respond?
With nary a flinch. When we finished, he said, “Okay, next drill…”
Zero acknowledgement whatsoever!
I was so disappointed.
During testing of the form itself, two people test at once. Because it’s always been my style to mess something up, I turned right when I was supposed to turn left. Fortunately, I had the sense of mind to course correct and continue unfazed.
On the way out, I said to Sensei, “I trust you were looking at the other person when I messed up?”
“Yes. I didn’t see your 17 mistakes.”
So he CAN still be funny.
“Furthermore,” I continued, “how can we count in Korean and you not react at all?”
“I can react with my ears. I heard you. And was that to earn bonus points?”
“Well, if it helps.”
“Do you know the next number, or did you only learn what you needed?”
“Sumul yeoseot.”
He nodded. “Good.”
If anything, I earned points in that moment.
BTW, I was out of town for several days. You know how when you board a plane, there’s that patch of walkway from airport to airplane where there’s no AC? When I stood in that spot, waiting my turn to board, I thought, “Whew! What is this heat?!” So I checked my phone.
A man in a parking lot complimented Hubby on this t-shirt. I stepped back out of the car to say, “I got him that shirt!”
The man looked at Hubby and said, “Hold her close.”
Okay, even I admit this is getting ridiculous.
In Taekwondo, we were doing jump spin crescent kicks. Sounds cool, doesn’t? Looks cool, too.
When Sensei does it. When I do it, I look like I’m having a mid-air seizure.
But I land on my toes.
Not in a graceful ballerina way, but in a, “Crunch. There go my toes,” way.
No idea why my toes are 90’s male stoners.
Aside from the above, I had planned to stop posting bruise pics, but I was oddly excited to discover not a bruise, but a bump!
This did eventually turn into a delightfully colorful bruise.
One part of last night’s Jiu-Jitsu lesson involved utilizing the triangle choke if your arm bar fails. Instructor emphasized trapping your opponent’s head while doing so. “It’s like a balloon. If you let go, it floats away. You don’t want it to float away because then you have to spend another $50 to get another one for your kid at Disneyland.”
The funny visual aside, I was reminded of the triangle choke class where I kept forgetting to trap my opponent’s head. He’d pop it up and say, “Your balloon is getting away.” Then I realized my partner from that class was standing next to me. I looked at him to find him looking at me, clearly thinking the same thing. We quietly chuckled.
Another nice thing: the guys greeting me by name and with a smile. One such gentleman I hadn’t met, but he still said, “Hello, Betsy,” with a friendly smile. Yes, I know his name now. It’s an uncommon one, so that makes it easier to remember. There are three pairs of people with the same name, and one name being utilized by three people. One of those is Li’l Trejo. Maybe I should just call him that instead to vary things up. Do you think he’d mind?
And now for a bit of throwback from January:
Quick martial arts lesson: Rolling is to Jiu-Jitsu as Sparring is to Taekwondo.
Quick blog lesson: Instructor is to Jiu-Jitsu as Sensei is to Taekwondo.
I’m now at the point of my Jiu-Jitsu journey where I get to attend Reflex and Development class. Your opponent gives indicators like step back, push away, post a leg up, etc., to let you know what move you need to do.
Often I ask, “What do I do?” because I’m not very good at this. The answer is usually Arm Bar or Elevator Sweep or Americana.
“Oh, right, yeah,” I’ll say then do the move.
At the start of 99% of the regular classes, we practice The Clinch. It’s a standing move that leads to getting the bad guy on the ground. We do this so often, I could sleep through this part of class.
Then in Reflex and Development, Instructor stood in front of me.
And stood there.
“What do I do?”
“Clinch me.”
Ugh! Face palm!
Visual interlude:
The hits keep coming
My Jiu-Jitsu instructor explained how to trap someone’s arm when they go for a punch so you can more easily roll them over and get on top of the fight. Someone asked, “What if the other person doesn’t try to punch you? How will you trap their arm then?”
“You can say something like, ‘You hit like a kid!’ That will make them want to punch you.”
He didn’t say “like a girl” because I’m here.
Then Instructor added, “I would’ve said, ‘You hit like a girl,’ but Betsy’s here and she hit me once and it wasn’t fun.”
Knew it.
The guys on either side turned to look at me, but I kept my face forward and smiled. I’ve never hit Instructor! But it was funny.
Also funny: when Instructor leaned sideways to demonstrate something and said, “I didn’t have my V8 today… That used to be a thing.”
One guy on the other end of the line stuck his head out, looking at the rest of us with a giant grin that bit back a laugh. Everyone else ignored him, but I caught the smile and sent it right back. Seeing other people enjoy Instructor’s jokes is almost as much fun as the jokes themselves.
The Return of Surfer Dude
Remember when I named my first practice partner Surfer Dude because he had the look of one, not because I knew he surfed? Another guy was talking to him about his big yellow van. After class, I saw the van. There was a wet suit hanging to dry over a side mirror and these stickers on the back.
Relating to Li’l Trejo
Thanks to Mark reminding me of a Disturbed song, I was able to say to Li’l Trejo, “Guess what song I heard on the way here. I’ll give you a clue… maybe. ‘Oh-wa-ah-ah-ah.'”
“Oh! Down with the Sickness,” he said immediately.
“You got it! I wasn’t sure I could do that well enough.”
“No, it was great. That was the song that got me into Disturbed. When I first heard it, I said, ‘Mom, Dad, you gotta get me this CD.’ They got me the clean version. I had to wait until later to get the real version.”
How young IS this guy?
Regarding ET
There was a moment after a class when I could’ve said something to Instructor about ET’s extra attention, but he was intently working at his computer, logging our classes, maybe. Lots of room for human error there. His expression carried with it an invisible “Do not disturb” sign around his neck, so I let it go.
At the start of the next class, everyone moved away from the wall to partner up except for me, ET a few feet to my right, and Lopez a few feet to my left. I gave ET an apologetic smile as I stepped toward Lopez. ET threw his arm up in a “what the heck?” gesture. But because there were an odd number of people and Lopez is an upper belt, Instructor pulled him from me, put me with ET, and had Lopez roam the room, assisting as needed.
I’ve realized a few things about ET: 1. He’s harmless. He did make some comment about how something would make me “just a little bit prettier.” I missed the first part of what he said. I ignore half of what he says anyway. But clearly there was only one response I could give to this:
Writing and Martial Arts 