Betsy gets thrown

Jiu-Jitsu was canceled Saturday because Instructor’s wife had a baby in the wee hours of the morning. When class did resume, a student, whom I’ll call Thoughtful One, slipped me a card and a pen. Many others had already signed the congratulations on the new baby card before it made its way to me. He was also collecting cash, “No pressure, though,” he said several times, to purchase a Target gift card.

I couldn’t help but feel ashamed of myself for not having been the Thoughtful One. I figured saying congratulations to his face would be enough. And it probably was, and yet… as the lone female, shouldn’t I have been the one to organize a card and gift? Yes, I know that’s stereotyping women. Still, I felt I should do more as the only mom and the student in class the longest.

So, this morning I ordered this for Instructor’s new daughter:

I’ll let you know how it’s received.

While I was shopping Amazon, another shirt caught my eye. (Oh, gosh, not THIS again!) It combines my love of Jiu-Jitsu and cats, as well as what has become my signature move, the Kimura. Last time I did it on Surfer Dude (SD1), he said, “You like that one, don’t you?”

“It’s my bread and butter,” I told him. (I don’t fully understand that expression, but it’s what came out of me at the moment.)

I didn’t buy it, though. I’m not trying to single-handedly finance Amazon’s entire line of Jiu-Jitsu shirts. (Besides, the Kimura requires two hands. Or paws.)

A couple more Instructor funnies:

E. T. is becoming a problem

No, I’m not talking about the famous movie where the people in space suits freaked me out as a kid. I’m talking about Enthusiastic Teen whose fervor in our Jiu-Jitsu classes has taken a turn.

I used to see ET sparingly, but he’s been showing up more often than not lately. Because we don’t bring out the best in each other, I try to avoid him. Thankfully, the next class after the scolding was when Jack the Black Belt volunteered to work with me. However, near the end of class, we did a musical chairs-type thing, which led me to interact with ET. I told him what happened after the “Ugh. I got ET” comment. He grabbed both my hands and said, “I am so so sorry you got in trouble.” Then he said more and tried to grab my hands again, but I wouldn’t let him.

ET is becoming a problem.

In the next class, I arrived a bit late and so lined up at the end. ET stuck his head out from farther down the line to look at me, but I averted my eyes. At a pause in instruction, he moved to stand next to me.

ET is becoming a problem.

When instruction was over, ET asked, “Want to work together?” I wasn’t prepared for how to say no, so I felt I had no choice but to agree. He’s sort of difficult to work with in that he messes around too much.

He did, however, teach me (or rather remind me of) a valuable hook technique (I forget the name) that helped me lift his leg, which is probably about half my entire body weight, so I could sneak my leg out from behind his.

“Nice, Betsy. Using the ___ hook,” Instructor said as he walked by on his rounds.

ET is sometimes not a problem.

Traps and T-shirts

I went down an Amazon T-shirt rabbit hole. Throughout this post are pics of the two shirts you overwhelmingly voted for last time (immediately below) and several more for your consideration and entertainment. Let me know which are your faves. I will purchase one of them, but know that my vote counts triple. 😉

1. Art of folding clothes.

2. First lesson free.

I received this email recently.

Aww. My JJ family misses me. I also got a text. Probably The System recognized that classes hadn’t been logged for me in a while.