“Don’t forget to get to class a bit early this Tuesday. We have two new students trying us out with the free lesson. I’ll want you to show them the salutes and go over what they should expect.”, Uncle Magnum reminded me.
“Ok. There’s only about a week left of school and then I only have my math and English finals to do. I should be able to come most nights after that.” I’d been working as an assistant instructor at Uncle’s school for around three years. I’m a fifth dan level student, which means that I’m one test away from getting my red belt. A red belt would make me a Kung Fu master and I’d be able to take on my own students, but Uncle Magnum says that I’m not ready to take the test yet. He says that I need to have more striking power and that it’s extremely rare for someone my age to have enough strength to pass the red belt test. I don’t mind waiting though. I’ve been doing Kung Fu for 11 years, but I feel like I’m too young to take on the responsibility of being a teacher. I’m happy to help out Uncle Magnum for now.
“Great! I’ll see then. I’m off. Say hi to your dad from me.” Uncle Magnum was almost out the door.
“What’s the big rush? You usually stay for a snack and a show. We need to start the third season of Knight Rider.” Don’t judge. Uncle Magnum has a thing for the 80’s and 90’s and he’s been my entertainment director since mom’s been gone. We’ve been making our way though tv shows, music and movies from that era. I’ve binge watched stuff like Silver Spoons, Different Strokes, The Incredible Hulk, Highway to Heaven, Back to the Future and Rocky. Uncle Magnum grew up with those shows and he never lost his taste for them. I think he likes the simplicity and dependability of it. If you watch shows today, so much changes from episode to episode. In the 80’s, you could miss half a season and pick up where you left off. There were very few changes to the characters. The good guys were good, the bad guys were bad. In shows today, a good guy can become a traitor for five shows and then he’s a hero again or it could be that he’s always been good but was undercover for the good guys and the group he was with before was actually evil. It’s all very confusing and stressful. The 80’s and 90’s had sweet romantic comedies where the nerd ends up with the prom queen or a lonely man finds a lonely woman to talk to online. Movies today seem to want to impress you with their CGI or complicated storylines.
“Got a hot date, little one!”, he said with a smirk. Calling me that is his sad attempt to get on my nerves. It’s not going to work.
“Another Barbie wannabe?” Shapely, full of plastic and nothing between her ears.
“No way! This one’s a kindergarten teacher. You’ll like her. She’s very sweet.”
“If that’s true, then why is she interested in you? How did you even meet her?”
“Online! Where else? We’ve been writing to each other for weeks now. She finally convinced me to meet her in real life.”
“Seriously? She could be a 60-year-old, overweight, serial killer who lives in her mom’s basement. If she’s even a woman at all. You and dad have been on my case for years not to take any stranger online at face value and now you’re going to do what you’ve warned against?” I was more than slightly indignant. I’ve long lost count of how many lectures I’d been given about the dangers of meeting people online.
“Relax, Abby. I’m joking. I was just testing you. I met her through Jeremy.” Jeremy is this really cute kid in Magnum’s four o’clock, 8-12-year-old, class. “She’s his aunt. She came to pick him up a few weeks ago and we talked for a bit. She really is nice and not hard on the eyes at all. She started picking him up regularly since then and last week I asked her out. We’re going out for pizza and a movie.”
“You’re really going all out. Pizza. Wow. And a movie. Gonna be hard to top that if there’s a second date.” I let the sarcasm flow. Some people say that it’s the lowest form of humor, but I disagree. Besides, I learned it from him.
“First, I like pizza. Second, it was her idea. Third, how about you judge me after you’ve gone out on your first date.”
“Ouch! That’s low. Besides, I’m only 15. Are you really trying to pressure me into a relationship before I’m ready for one just so I can have an opinion on your dating life?”
“You’re almost 16 and no, take your time.” Uncle Magnum backtracked quickly. “No need to rush on my account. Boys are bad.” He made a sign of the cross with his fingers, as if warding off vampires. “Wait ‘til you’re 20 or 25 before you start dating. Besides, I don’t know how your father will react to you having a boyfriend. It’ll either go really well or the boy’s going to need a fresh pair of pants to change into.”
“Eeww! I really didn’t need that image in my head. At least now I know not to bring any boy I date home. We’ll just sneak around for months and not tell you guys anything.”
“That’s my Abigail! Always willing to twist my words around and not get my point at all. For that, you’ll have extra push-ups on Tuesday, during plank.” With those words, he smiled, waved goodbye and headed off. I wondered if I’d turn into a sadist when I finally took on my own students.
Closing the door behind him, I set off back to The Parlor, where Ed the dummy waited patiently for me. I stood in hour-glass stance in front of it and hit Ed’s left arm. It swung around and I blocked it before it could hit me. I did it a few more times, trying to figure out how to let it catch me off guard. I tried varying the speed of my hits and I tried looking away, but I ended up just blocking faster or a bit early. In both cases, it hurt a bit more. Everything I tried ended up with me blocking it at the last second or simply moving away. I always knew it was coming. It was like when someone tells you not to think about a pink elephant. After they say that, you can’t not think about pink elephants. In the same way that I couldn’t tickle myself, I also couldn’t surprise myself. I knew the hit was coming.
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As a last resort, I decided to see if I could get in “the zone”. That’s what I call it when I practice form moves on Ed in a quick succession, just going from form to form without thought. If I do it right, it’s very much like meditation, as I don’t think about any of the moves. I’ve been doing this for so many years that it’s second nature and my muscle memory moves me along.
I was running out of ideas and starting to think that maybe jumping in front of another bus wouldn’t be so bad, when dad shouted by name from the front door. All the noise from me repeatedly hitting Ed had masked his coming into the house and his yell startled me out of “the zone”. I turned my head towards him, just for an instant, and lost focus as Ed’s arm came around to him me. I was out of position and I turned back just in time to see the room grey out around me and the wooden arm pass through my arm as it came around from my hit. Immediately, the room returned to normal. Yes!! I’d done it. It’s real. I wasn’t going crazy.
Dad walked into the Parlor, “Hi Abby! Is everything Ok?” I could hear the concern in his voice.
I turned towards him; my face flushed with excitement. “Sure dad. Why do you ask?”
“I don’t know. I come home and find you so immersed in your Karate that you didn’t even notice me come in and you were pounding that Ed thing so hard and fast that I thought you’d taken up the drums. I just figured that you must be upset about something.”
“I was just in “the zone” dad. Everything’s ok. And it’s Kung Fu; not Karate! Also, it’s not ‘that Ed thing’, it’s just Ed. You shouldn’t pick on him. He’s like a member of the family by now and he has feelings, you know.”
“So you can punch and kick him and that’s ok, but if I call him a thing, then I’m the one hurting him?”
“He’s made of wood. He barely feels the physical hits, but his feelings can be hurt with mere words. He’s a sensitive soul, dad.” To emphasize the point, I patted Ed’s right arm.
“Oy Vey. Vat is dis vorld coming to?”, dad turned his head and his arms towards the heavens and continued in a really bad imitation of an old man with a Yiddish accent, “In my day we vould send out our golems to destroy other cities. Kids today leaf deirs lying around da house and smack dem for fun.”
“That’s truly awful, dad. I’m offended on behalf of all old Yiddish speaking men.”
“Is there anything that doesn’t offend your generation? Your generation has taken being offended to such a level that you can even be offended on behalf of others. Next, you’ll be offended by someone sneezing, on behalf of people with no noses and who can’t sneeze properly. After that, hiccups and farting will be banned.”
“I like hiccups! But farting can be rather offensive.”
Dad smiled and came over to give me a hug and kiss hello. “How come you’re home so early, dad? I didn’t expect you home until seven.”
“It’s already a quarter past six. I think that you were in your zone for too long. I’m only a little early. I just finished a part of my latest piece and it seemed like a good place to stop. Otherwise, I might have been a few hours late. Also, with this being the end of the school year, I was the only one there. I figured I’d give the cleaning staff a little extra time to freshen up the shop.”
I followed him into the kitchen, and we started to prepare dinner together. Nothing fancy tonight. Just salad and noodles. I got out the ingredients while dad put some water up.
“How was your day, Abigail?” He started ripping and chopping up vegetables and stuffing them in a bowl. Neither of us were Gordon Ramsey. We like food but we’re not foodies.
“Not bad. I slept in, went to the library, I didn’t get hit by bus, and then Uncle Magnum came by. He says hi.” I summed up my day without actually lying or leaving anything out. It’s not that I didn’t want to tell my dad, or I was worried that he would blab to anyone. That man never lost a quiet game in his life. It’s just that I wanted to figure this out by myself. In the same way that he never discussed his art until it was finished, I didn’t want to present my ability until I had some measure of control over it. At his point, I didn’t think that I had anything to show him. He couldn’t help me learn to use my ability, if I couldn’t even turn it on to use it.
“I too did not get hit by bus today. I am glad for the both of us. Why didn’t Paul stay for dinner? You two usually watch old shows after practice.” Dad never called him Magnum. He was always Paul. I don’t know why and I’ve never asked him. Dad would probably have a reason that would make me stop calling him Magnum and I didn’t want to stop, so I didn’t ask.
“He said that he had a hot date.” I proceeded to fill him in on Magnum’s latest conquest.
I set the table for two while we talked and then headed for a quick shower while the noodles cooked. I was back in time to watch dad pour the sauce on the noodles and to take our plates to the table.
After dinner, we cleaned up the mess, and settled into our routines. Dad went out back to his home shop to tinker and I checked to see what work I had for school this week, chat with my friends or read a book. There wasn’t anything to do for school, except practice for my two finals. Not much I could do to study English. I’d read the required books and knew the characters and the rest of the test would be answering questions on a short story that we’d only get to read during the test. Math, my other exam, was based on the whole year. James, Eva and I had already studied and tested each other on the material. James is really good at math and he helped Eva and I understand anything that we were having issues with.
With nothing to do for school, I made plans with Eva to meet up at lunch by the fountain. There was no need to invite James. He’d be wherever Eva was. Those two were really dedicated to each other. Thank God that neither of them was prone to public displays of affection! (PDA). That would have been really awkward, since the three of us hung out together so often.
I swiped out of my conversation with Eva and opened by Kindle app. I was reading a great book by Alan Black, one of my favorite authors, but I couldn’t concentrate. I kept going back to my session with Ed before dinner. My idea had worked, but I couldn’t count on dad surprising me every few minutes until I figured things out. At least I know knew that the level of danger required to set off my ability wasn’t mortal; even the potential of slight injury could trigger it.
I also realized that I had another problem. If the bus had awakened by ability, and a flinch could now activate it again, then would the ability simply trigger unexpectedly in the school hallway when someone was about to bump me? What if my ability activated while I was sparring in class? Shit. I really needed to get control of this ability right now.