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People shouldn't ask me for directions.
In college,
when freshmen asked me how to get somewhere, I was no help.
"Excuse
me, do you know where the art building is?"
"Art
building?", I replied with incredulity that such a place existed. "No idea. I can
only get to three locations: the science building, my dorm,
and the cafeteria. Sorry
kid."
My limited navigational abilities were no problem because
those were the only three places I needed to go. But
in London, I walk around and explore the city every day.
I think I know the place well.
But
I don't.
Foreigners like to ask me for directions. Now
my false sense of confidence becomes
their problem too.
On the underground, an American man asked me how
to get to the Black Line.
"Oh, you mean the Northern
Line." I replied with the air of a native born Londoner. "Go up the stairs behind you, turn
left, and cross the little bridge."
He thanked me and
disappeared into the crowd. I carried
on my way, and passed a sign directing people to the Northern Line. Not in the way I had given.
At least I didn't lead him outside the
underground station.
While standing on the Royal Oak platform a
Russian man wanted to know the best way to connect to London
Bridge. I can't make a mistake
here,
I naively thought. There's a
big underground map in front of us. So I plotted out the course
for
him.
An underground train pulled in on the opposing platform.
"Is
that the train I take?", he asked.
"Sure is."
"Thank
you much!"
And off he went.
I then realized the
train I was waiting for was the same one he should have taken. Whoops. Oh well,
he was a huge Russian guy. I wasn't too
worried about him getting into trouble.
Today, a
little old lady hobbled up to me and asked, "Which way to the
Serpentine Lake?"
This time I was sure I knew the way. I had
just come from there.
"Just
follow the path behind me to the end."
She smiled and slowly
departed. I felt like a Good Samaritan...
until two minutes later when I found myself on the bank of
the Serpentine.
"Gee,"
I thought, "I don't remember turning around."
I consulted
my map book (London A-Z, a book I could not survive without) and saw to
my
horror I had directed the woman across the longest diagonal of the park. It looked to be a kilometer in the wrong
direction. At the rate she walked, she
might still be on that path.
I now apologize to anyone I have wrongly
given directions to, and, I issue a warning...
Tourists of London
beware! If you see this man, do not ask
for directions!
* * *
I picked the hottest week in Britain
in thirteen years to start my martial arts lessons.
Three nights a week I dragged myself to the other side of
London
to learn Aikido while sweating off what I calculated to be about 2
liters of
water. It's been great.
I
have this desire to arrive fifteen minutes late so I can miss the
aerobic warm
up and skip straight to the marital arts. But
no, I show up on time to run in a circle, in bare feet
while
swinging my arms in large arcs, in a church with seven other adults.
After
the exercises are over, our instructor gives a little speech that
sounds
to me
like this: "OK, everybody. We're
going to do some really advanced stuff today. Well,
all of us except the one student I tell to teach
Grey how to
stand right."
I always feel badly for that person. The
other side of the room is doing fun
ninja-matrix maneuvers while this guy is showing me how to position my
hands. They are always patient, and I
do my best to express my gratitude to them for their time.
This
martial arts class is the first thing I have done requiring physical
co-ordination since my parents sent me to Camp Fatima when I was 15. I will never understand what they were
thinking.
"Our son seems to like reading and highly values his
privacy. Let's send him away to sports
camp. He'll just love it."
I
didn't.
Slowly learning the basics in Aikido is what I want.
The slower the better. If I
spend the first month just getting the
basic stance right, I'll be a happy man.
There is one other guy who
just started and I'm usually paired off with him to practice. Unfortunately, he does not share my learning
philosophy. He looks longingly at the
advanced side of the room.
"How about I try that advanced
attack technique?" He asks.
"But
I can't block yet." I reply.
Did
I mention the attack involves a bo?
Two people, who don't know what
they are doing, fighting each other with five foot long wooden poles is
a
dangerous situation.
Ever since I watched Teenage
Mutant
Ninja Turtles as a kid,
I've wanted to learn how to fight with a
bo,
so the lessons are the fulfillment of a childhood fantasy.
But, there is one problem I have that Donatello
never seemed to deal with:
Where do my hands go?
Unlike
a sword,
or a sai,
or nun-chucks,
on a bo there is no distinction between the
part you hold, and the part you hurt people with.
This isn't a
problem when attacking, but it makes defending an exercise in panic. Here comes my attacker, swinging the bo at
my head with alarming speed. (Alarming
here means `any speed at all'. A wooden
pole coming at me is always alarming.) In
order to block, I need to hit his bo out of the way
with
mine. And preferably I should do this
without the hands I'm using to hold my bo getting in the middle.
So,
of course, to make myself more nervous, I start doing the math.
This
bo is five feet long, that's 60 inches.
My hands are about three
inches across, and I hold the bo with two of them, so that's six inches.
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