Warrior Skills (Amendments from the First World)

I have poor to average physical coordination.  In gym class, I was too slow (witted?) to ever steal the ball from the other team, and I was never convinced that this was a truly necessary act in life anyway–this “getting the ball”.  The heady emotional cloud of hormones that hangs over a game among teens, won or lost, affected me none–I would be showered and dressed again with my nose in some Italian play, while girls were still screaming about unfair calls made by our middle-aged, bottom-heavy Ms. Gibson, who hardly made it around the court fast enough anyway.  I just didn’t care about competition in sports.  (“Sport”?)  Sports.  My body never called out to me to run faster, jump higher nor high five with a heartier, more collegial smack.

And I’m also astigmatic and myopic, which I don’t mind.  Glasses look good on me.  It’s a pretty low-maintenance affliction (?) in life.

We were hunters.  We were warriors.  And if it weren’t for the sedentary ass-cushion of comfort that physical skills are no longer really on the human genome’s soup list of main ingredients, I would feel badly about myself.  Clearly, I don’t.  Though, I also bear no grudge against sports, in the same way I bear no grudge against ideas like the US’s 2nd Amendment.  After all, you never know when the Zombie Apocalypse is coming.  In the meantime, it behooves us to work on our cardio and aim, why not?

I will admit that it’s a little lonely to think that I have NO deoxyribonucleic shared history of prowling and conquering.  So, upon thinking hard, I realize that whatever my latent instinctual gifts may be, they likely happen to be stuffed up in my brain, if not my glutes.

For example, I often find myself holding out my hand split seconds before something falls off the table into it or I have shielded my head split seconds before a projectile came directly at it, without seeing it or even knowing what I was doing.

Also, I have been in the middle of dealings with assholes in life where I only hear the sound of my calm breathing, still, with the clear vision of myself, victorious.  Then, if necessary, I pursue a cold and unrelenting (but socially sanctioned!) karmically retributive hunt and hold long and fast until my objective is exacted.  And I feel nothing.  I just note that it’s done.

I have had years where life’s routine landfill dumping rounds came by my door, repeatedly.  Ok, they were stupid #firstworldproblems like sexual harassment, eviction, unemployment, lawsuits, no clear future etc.  Those with me, were worried, sleepless, sliding into depression, hopeless, and worst of all, panicking.  But I felt none of that.  I watched movies like March of the Penguins and cried for their suffering in the cold (my poor circulation come winter being my real empathic thread here).  These animals would  waddle dutifully inland for tons of kilometres from a food run only to find their babies sometimes dead or missing in the impossibly vast monochromatic tide of penguinity.  Or I would read about how villagers in Tibet, forbidden to carry a picture of the Dalai Lama, would be arrested anyway by Chinese authorities for carrying an empty frame in peaceful protest.  How cheeky!  The first world country I lived in, Japan, in comparison, had clear channels of action for my problems.  Chances were, I was not a person or creature on Earth who would need to worry about the maw of nature dashing my dreams, nor about perishing in confinement of rules and walls no one I knew believed in, yet had the power to suffocate us at whim.

I think this galvanizing of my stomach went down when I was a 17 year old girl, when I suffered heavily, unable to enjoy any day of life for a year due to the TKO of love lost, sexual assault and a robbery.  I had loved high school and this is how it was ending.  I was trying to apply to good universities, keep up my grades and wrestle with regular teen bullshit all in addition.  Being the daughter of practical-ass immigrants, who measured the success of their parenting by my body weight and grades, there simply was no concept in our house of psychological issues.  Plus, they had brought me to Canada where there is education, the rule of law and hope.  Wasn’t that enough?  Sheesh.

So, deal I did.  I surfaced.  I showered, got dressed and went about my day.

Oh, and I crossed each of the known assailants off my list, one by one.