Blue Belt

Chapter 11

                                                                XI.

        A month had passed since my birthday.  I was so busy I did not have much of a chance to reflect.  One thing I was sure of was that I was getting into more of a groove with our classes.  I felt like I was in much better shape than I had been in, even in my peak during high school track.  I also had some better times with Mr. Vargo, including having lunch with him down at the pier.  Even though I had a long ways to go in developing my skills in martial arts, and some days were as frustrating emotionally as when I had begun, I felt like I was more accustomed to life here.  Knowing that next week we would be testing to receive our green belts, the mundane was coming to an end.

            But first there was another Friday night "kata" class.  I was heading down with Jed, Tomas, Charles, and a friend of Jed's named Lonnie.  I had not been all that faithful in my attendance of these form classes on Fridays, mostly because so much time is devoted to the higher forms, which our group really does not know.  Tomas probably attended more of them than anyone in my class.  Certainly tonight felt somewhat different than others I had attended as well.  For one, Vargo had hyped this one up -- it was to be a big prep for us since our exam was coming up, and in some sense we would be "featured".  I had done this two weeks ago as well, and it for some reason seemed easier when Zhou had led the class versus Cammie.  Tonight now of course it was Cammie; who I was always pleasant to see, but it gave me one more reason to feel pressured to perform my best.  We had gotten down our moves by this point, and for the most part our class could perform all twenty-four moves together in unison.  But lately Vargo and Tiara have put much more focus on the "implementations", and every part of the body needed to have almost perfect positioning to make it look right.  Getting to that point was still out of reach for us, with perhaps Tomas having the most success.  But others showing up for this knew that my group would be testing, and as such could be expecting something better than what we, or I, would be offering.  I could sense a heightened level of anxiety among us as we got prepared that Friday night.

            It was a fairly crowded class as Cammie lined us up to begin.  As usual I thought Cammie looked quite cute.  She had her light brown bangs out just held slightly off the front of her forehead, and then she had the sides feathered back.  She also had the light pink lip gloss on which I had seen before.  We started off by performing a new form, which I recognized right away to be the form that went with the green belt.  We had never worked on it, but I had read about it in the OKI manual, and recognized it by the description.  But curiosity and amusement about us and the rest of the class performing the same form quickly turned to frustration as we were the only ones not keeping step even with Cammie announcing the moves.  We did the new form twice, with my class not doing much better on the second go round.  We were not ready for the rapid changes in direction, with different stances on both sides, which this form required.  It almost had twice as many moves as the one we had been working on.  So early on in this form class we were already feeling frustrated and it showed.

            Once finished with that ordeal we were asked to remain on the floor as the rest of the room took a seat.  All eyes, including Cammie's, gazed at us as we performed our "Hinode" form together.  Normally when we perform our orange belt form we had gotten to the point that we focused in as a group, and were working together in unison.  But this time, and with us already on edge, I did not even remember noticing any of my other group members in this performance.  With the idiocy of having us do that other form first as practice in the larger group, and trying to sort all that out, it took more focus now in putting together what we already had worked on for our current routine.  I thought through our moves much more than I usually do.  Do this, do that; I was clearly talking to myself, thinking my way through it instead of performing it.  And when we got to the end, sure enough, we finished in slightly different times, not usual for us at this point, and even though I know I had gotten through all the moves correctly, God help my execution.  We sat down and I think we were honestly just glad to take a seat.  We did not whisper a word amongst each other.