Truly Backwards

I rifle through the unfamiliar kitchen drawer until I find some food scissors. I dutifully cut up the homemade eggroll into 3 pieces, revealing the unmistakable pink meat of pork at the center. I should have known from the bite of the first eggroll as it had been too savory to be vegetarian, but at that point I was distracted, lifting the shirt of the doctor examining his chest for any signs of internal bleeding.

This struck me as odd, since that seems to be the sort of thing a doctor would suggest, but from the look of pain on his face I didn't think he was thinking very straight.

"Eat, eat, or it'll all go to waste!", he tells us.

Max and I exchange uncomfortable glances. We are both strangers in his house, and I hope to avoid the awkwardness of explaining our presence here upon his wife and children's return.

Max dutifully reaches for more eggroll, which, given that he's the one who is somewhat responsible for our host's injury makes me feel a bit better.

I discover that half the eggrolls are shrimp, and also delicious, a good stratagem would have been to eat these slowly, letting the big Russian Max eat the remaining pork ones, but my lack of lunch causes my stomach to ditch the plan, and soon enough there are no more porkless eggrolls left.

It doesn't help that Mike, our host, isn't eating any. He is mainly holding his side in pain. We take a break from eating while Max fills a ziplock bag with ice, and I fetch some ibuprofen from a high shelf that Mike cannot comfortably reach for.

"Now when your son asks Mike, you make sure to tell him that it took no less than twenty-seven ninjas to do this to you."

"Stop making me laugh you bastard," he groans doubled over.

Note to self: apparently you can't distract someone from broken ribs with humor.

A few minutes earlier I was alone in my car, trailing Max driving Mike's minivan. We turn down unfamiliar streets, and I am morose. This is the second time I've seen an injury at training, and the second time it has been a friend. It has me shaken, angry and sad. Max has at least 40 pounds on me, and I have at least that many on Mike. Mike knew better, should have gone easier...

Back at the dojo, the instructor is making jokes at the expense of Mike, which pisses me off. It took conjoling just to get Mike to agree to let someone drive him home, and the fact that he eventually requested help taking off his shirt and carrying his bag couldn't have been easy requests to make. If he could have walked it off, he most certainly would have. Levity is all fine and good, as injuries make everyone nervous, but once the guy can't move under his own power it is time to shut the fuck up about it.

In any other situation I would be telling the instructor off, converting my anger into words of eviscerating force, but not here. There is an explicit pecking order we all wear at our waist, and while I don't respect the jar-headed instructor, for some reason I respect the order of belt inside the "dojo". Even if that dojo happens to be a windowless narrow space in a stripmall with 70's wood paneling and stained drywall.

Respect aside, I still feel the frustration of the dog who has abruptly discovered the end of my yellow-striped leash, and swallowing the bile I had intended to spit does not improve my mood.

Others claimed to have heard the "pop" from across the room, I hadn't. I was fully concentrating on the man I was wrestling with, a tall lanky guy a full belt rank above me. He was making pretty good headway on attempting to bend my arm in its opposite direction. I thought I could get out of it if I rolled a certain way, but was unsure... For a single moment I had to decide, "tap and start over" or "go for it". I decided to go for it, yanked my arm free, and was so delighted at having not lost that I had ignored that I had ended up in a position of particular advantage, but it was just as well since my partner had just noticed that someone wasn't getting up off the mat.

As I walked to get my glasses I glanced around, trying to figure out who had been injured. Specifically hoping it wasn't Mike, desperately willing each upright blur to be the short good-natured Vietnamese man who had taught me so much. My heart sank as my glasses defined the truth of the situation. A quick interrogation of his opponent Max told the story.

"I told him to tap, that I had the arm bar, but he thought he could roll out of it. He ended up landing on my elbow and there was a pop."

Far too many of the people present seemed intimately familiar with the injury. "That's at least a month and a half.", "Definitely replied another, if he's lucky".

Many months earlier, Mike is patiently trying to teach me a move in open gym. I am exhausted from the hour of training and am stupid and slow. I have lost count of his attempts to teach me it. My ears redden from the embarrassment of it. I am unaccustomed to being so incompetent. It makes me again wonder why I do it. Why I have continued to attend martial arts for three years, overcoming some amount of dread each and every time I leave my house.

The exact answer still elude me, but for the next few months I know for certain that I have one less reason to go.