ARRRRRRRGH!!!
This weekend, I was in Charleston, SC. The weather was nice, the women were hot.
We went out with some good friends of ours who invited some rather less good friends of theirs out with us. This culminated in a very large meal at an acceptable steakhouse.
Unfortunately, while I was plowing into a 22oz prime rib, I hear:
“Oh, James is like you, he’s into fighting and the martial arts and all that stuff,” from one of our friends.
Not so bad. My curiosity was piqued. However, the conversation began and I realized rather quickly that my major organs were going to leap out of my abdomen, through my neck, and choke out my own brain in an effort to avoid this encounter.
A sampling of the conversation:
In this man’s tongue, Jiujitsu became “The Jiujits.”
Yes, his moves are deadly.
All Judo moves are lethal.
Hitting somebody on the bridge of the nose will drive their nose bone into their brain and kill them.
He does a Shaolin art…FROM Korea…that has a Japanese name… He didn’t realize it was Japanese, but it sure as hell wasn’t Korean. Remarking on that it didn’t sound like a Korean name lead to a 10 minute exposition about…something…that hurt my brain so I smiled and nodded…
Please understand that I dealt with this for over an hour. Further, I was sending every nonverbal signal I could to indicate that I really didn’t want to talk about this any more.
I received a general grilling on “the jiujits:”
Did I know any of the Gracies? (I’ve met several but don’t KNOW them. “I’ve had no real dealings with them” leads to “Oh good, good. They’re bad people.” My response that several of them have been nothing but nice to me and others I know was drowned out by some other tangent… )
Don’t you have to learn it from a Gracie? (5 minutes spent trying to make him understand that BJJ is bigger than the Gracie family, many have never met a Gracie or learned from one, etc)
What’s your lineage? (I have no idea. We get back to my instructor’s instructor and…)
How can you be certain what you are learning is legit if you don’t know your lineage? (5 minutes spent explaining we have these things called competitions. We don’t care who you are or who taught you. You win, you’re golden. You produce champions, you’re a great coach teaching good stuff. Total incomprehension.)
My favorite, and the one that effectively ended the conversation was:
“If you don’t mind my asking (why would I?), how does your style address throwing and takedowns?”
“Huh?”
“You know, like, if somebody tries to throw you or take you down, what do you do about it?”
“I’m not really sure I understand your question exactly, I mean…”
“Well, in my style, you know, we try to root, sink the stance and resist the throw. Do you try to do something like that or do you try to, you know, use the other guy’s momentum and reverse him?”
I had a fleeting moment where I briefly considered formulating a detailed response to this, but ultimately decided he wasn’t going to get it, so, I led with “That depends…there are a bunch of throws where you’re just not reversing them and…”
with look of incredulity “Well, YEAH, but you don’t want to be in that situation in the first place, do you?”
“Well, you don’t want to get knocked out either, but it happens to people all the time.”
That gave him pause for a second, somebody remarked on “Stone Fist Style” or something, where-upon he began vigorously talking about…something… and I was able to get back to eating my (now cold) steak…and thank heavens the check came.
