Well, not that many kids get into fencing. I wouldn't have, either, if it wasn't for a summer program that got me hooked. Two hours a day, three weeks. By the end of it, I felt weird if I didn't have a foil in my hand every day. I'm inexperienced, I don't have my own equipment, and I don't compete. So what have I got instead of experience? Passion. Loads of it. Read on.
The first thing you have to understand about me is that I am NOT the sort of person who likes to slack off. Fencing class, in my book, is not an optional thing. You don't go when you want to, when you're feeling well, when you're not tired. Honestly, I would go to fencing with a 103 degree fever if my mother would let me. Okay, fine, maybe more like a 100 degree fever. I have very low pain tolerance, and 103 leaves me screaming in agony and writhing around randomly.
1. I want to advance at a pace that is not possible in a class with about 2 absolute beginners in it. Therefore I get really grumpy, even though I don't want to live my life as a "moper" I think I'm headed down that path.
2. I am a very competitive person by nature. I want to win, I want to be better, stronger, more fit, more dedicated, more strategically able than anyone else at my level. This is good because it all
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Don't worry, it was long overdue. When you're the best in your pathetic "Youth" class, it's easy to get complacent. I'd already taken some hard falls when I came back from Christmas break, out of shape but thinking I was. I knew when I came nervously to the Saturday "adult" practice that I would no longer be the best, oh no, I would be the worst.
I would be a liar if I said I wasn't nervous. But learning more was infinitely more important to me than sitting cozy at the head of the class. I h
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Mya. Writer of the blog "Experienced? Maybe Not." fellow student in my fencing class. Friend. Actually more like a sister than a friend.
Mya. Got. Better.
Last time I fenced her when neither of us had the swine flu or some other type of illness was at the beginning of the year. Naturally, it being one of the first times she'd fenced in two years, she wasn't as good as me.
I just assumed that was where she would always be . . . silly me.
Tired. That's how I felt after my first day back to fencing after Christmas. Now, I'd only missed one or two weeks of classes, but during those weeks I had pigged out on tasty crap and gotten absolutely NO exercise save a couple days of running laps around my house until I felt like I was going to throw up.
Breaks, especially from exercise, tend to make me want to slack off even AFTER the designated break time. Everything probably would have been all right if I had gone right back to my dail
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Christmas. The season of love, giving, and all that great stuff. But I think it's also the season of wishing, for things you both have and don't have, for memories, and feelings you don't want to face.
So Christmas to me can be really meaningful, really special, really hurtful. All those things. But sometimes things can be even simpler, distilled down to their very cores even in all their passion and fire.
This Christmas came around lazily, ambling along fairly steadily in the spiral of t
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Okay, so I know that this entry has a weird name. It would actually be considered a great name for a vignette or a memoir. I don't know that much about blogs, so it might be totally fine, but I'm not sure. So I apologize in advance. (hee hee advance really bad fencing joke!!)
Now, to the point. As you may have guessed from the title, this entry has to do with three things. One, getting my fencing coach pissed off because of skittles, two, having a harder lesson than I have ever remembered si
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Recently, with Mya, I went to see the Big One at the Smith indoor track. Believe it or not, it was the first tournament I've ever seen, and I loved it.
We wandered around for a bit looking at various bits and pieces of bouts, before finally settling down to watch the Semi-Finals for Men's Foil. It was three from the same college and one from a different one, so two of the same team competed against each other, which I found psychologically intriguing.
A three-person class, content if a bit complacent. That's what it was, until our coach informed us of that hateful reality . . . the beginners were going to join our class. That is, whichever ones decided to keep on fencing.
I had seen this particular class. They were all boys, sweaty, loud, unfocused boys who would gallop here and there when they were supposed to be advancing. Considering how seriously I take fencing, I wasn't happy to have this particular group joining our class.
When there is only one other person in your fencing class besides the coach, you get a little lonely.
So who wouldn't jump at the chance to have a friend come to this class?
Of course, this particular friend is a bit ungrateful . . . ok, more than a bit. First it's all,
"I'm soooooo into fencing! I love fencing.net! I want to do fencing soooo badly!"
And then suddenly I'm the bad guy for getting her where she wants to be.
(Hint, hint, this friend is Mya from the blog Experienced!
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02-17-2010 09:08 AM 
