No Regrets

Chapter 4

     Today was the first day of my Brazilian Jiu Jitsu class! And I couldn't be more excited! The whole school day I couldn't sit still from the anticipation. Jaime heard my ranting the whole morning and recess. And he was excited for me, a bit jealous even. He told me how he wished his mom let him join.

     "Why won't your mom say yes?" I asked him as we walked towards the jungle gym.

     "She didn't say. Just that it was a no, and she wouldn't change her mind," he explained saddened by the idea he wouldn't do something that sounded fun with me at his side. He wished that his mom was less strict on him and allowed him to be a kid, but she never allowed it. Even his plan of breaking them up ended in disaster, which as a six-year-old, it would obviously never have succeeded. He tried to tell them that he could get a second dad if they just broke up and they yelled at him wanting to know where he heard this absurdity from. When he told them it was me who told him, they explained in screams and anger, that my mother was allowed to re-marry because she left her husband. But they were happily married and would never divorce. And as far as my mother let it be known, they were a happy couple and their problems stemed from Jaime.

       I pat him on his back to make him feel better, "I'll tell you how my class goes! Maybe we can sneak you in one day." I joked; we both knew there was no way we could sneak him in. I did however, plan to teach him what I myself learned in the class, that way, he wouldn't miss out on anything. I smiled, content to have thought of such a plan that would work without failure.

     It cheered him up a bit and by then, we arrived at the playground and we joined the group who was sliding down the slide and shocking one person who held hands with someone else. This resulted in everyone in the line, holding hands, to be shocked. The game both terrified and excited me. I was terrified that it would hurt after each shock traveled through us with different levels of power. Some, you could barely feel, like someone was tickling your finger, and other times, the shock would hurt so bad that it made us all unlock our grasps and go tend to our affected fingers. But it was exciting nonetheless.

      After school mother picked me up and we began our drive to the class. School ended at two and the class started at two thirty. We were fifteen minutes away so it meant I wouldn't do homework until the one-hour class finished. Thrilled that I wouldn't do homework before this class, I thanked mother despite her not able to control when school ended, and the Jiu Jitsu classes began.

     Because it would take thirty minutes to go back home then pick me up. And then the drive back home. Mother decided to walk around the plaza for an hour to kill time. She didn't mind it, as she could let her own thoughts wander as she walked every aisle of every store. Looking at everything on the shelves and debating whether she needed the thing she was staring at.

      She found a parking spot two stores away from the Brazilian Jiu Jitsu building. We got out and walked over to the place. I held her hand the whole way through, shaking from how nervous I was. Although the class excited me, it also got me very nervous. It would be a new place with new people and deep inside me, new things made me anxious. Not knowing the place nor the people, made me wonder if I would have fun and be able to make friends.

      We walked inside, seeing a group of kids around my age a few feet from the front door. They were talking about something that I wasn't able to hear thanks to everyone else's chatter. The class fit twenty students from the ages five to eight. This was the first class, the next ones took place every hour and would be from kids ages nine to twelve, thirteen to seventeen. Adult classes after all of them, at seven thirty.

      Mother let go of my hand and walked towards the instructor who was being asked questions by the parents. I was left alone, but being an extrovert, I quickly found a kid who was all alone. The others were in small groups talking amongst each other, clearly already friends or barely getting to know each other, like I would be doing with this new yet welcoming stranger.