Lead me to Heaven

Low Blow

The following Saturday, Sandra hung out with Valerie and Shoshana at the cafeteria until she had to leave for her Kendo lessons. Both girls were so much fun when they were together, that by the time Sandra got up to attend her class her ribcage was sore and she had tears in her eyes from having laughed too hard for too long. It almost made her want to quit Kendo so she could spend more time with her friends.

After all, she was doing enough extracurriculars to keep her mother happy and still get some extra activities to spare. Her mother’s motto was “a busy teenager is too busy to use drugs” and she kept saying that as if it made any sense at all. Sandra knew most of her school mates did drugs, even those who won the math olympiads, so she had always found her mother’s motto rather ridiculous. Besides, her close friends didn’t do drugs and she really disliked junkies herself so she wouldn’t do anything stupid anyway.

After that weekend, hanging out with Val and Shan became a ritual to Sandra, one that she really looked forward to because Shoshana had turned out to be a great addition to their little group. She still didn’t feel comfortable enough around her to ask Valerie for her e-mail, but that didn’t really matter since Shoshana’s mother didn’t let her use the computer because she thought her daughter would meet an older man online who would ask to meet up with the girl and abuse her or kidnap her to sell her organs.

Yes, the woman had serious issues ever since getting divorced but, as usually happens with highly perturbed people, she was also a professional psychologist and thus, thought she knew the absolute truth about the entire universe. The same was true about Jessica’s mother, who was a very perturbed shrink as well, but that is a whole different story.

About a month later, something interesting happened at one of Sandra’s Kendo lessons. Her friend Stephanie, who was more of an acquaintance since she was one of Irene’s best friends, had a little misunderstanding with the sensei.

Steph was one of the clumsiest girls ever born into this planet. She could trip with her own feet and fall off a flight of stairs as easily as breathing and there was nothing wrong with her feet. It was just her clumsiness at work. She would usually try to eat a kurimanju and end up biting the paper napkin under it instead, or break the lead of her automatic pencil every two kanji.

She was also very breakable and got bruises really easily. Once, their mutual friend Paul, who was Sandra’s ex (who had left her for another man) and was now a declared homosexual, had tried to pat Steph in the shoulder after a joke he had told, and hit her in the forehead instead. Only twenty minutes later, she had a huge bruise in her forehead and had a hard time explaining that to her father.

That afternoon, Steph entered the Dojo as usual and picked up a shinai from the pile the students could borrow. Sandra had her own bamboo sword, so she just lined up with the rest of the class and got ready for the greeting ceremony. A moment later, Steph took her place next to Sandra and the ceremony took place.

Then the warming up exercises followed and, finally, the sensei explained the exercises the students would be practicing that class. The sensei’s son, a very handsome and very engaged young Japanese man used to come help his father with the students and usually served as a sparring partner for Sandra and Stephanie.

The class was actually meant for kids, but both girls were still a year too young to join the adult class, despite the fact that they were the only two teenagers among a sea of ten year olds. They also were the only two gaijin, which meant the sensei didn’t like them at all, as often happens with Japanese old people and caucasian strangers.

As the class progressed, Sandra ended up sparring with the sensei’s son while Stephanie practiced with the sensei himself, as usual. She often envied her friend’s luck. Steph had a huge crush on the handsome young man, who happened to be engaged with the most beautiful Japanese woman Sandra had ever seen. They knew he was engaged because the day that happened, he had her come over and show off her huge ring to the whole class.

In a given moment, Stephanie was holding her shinai’s hilt in her hand with the tip pointing down to the floor behind her, as if it were sheathed, which is the resting position in Kendo. Then someone entered the Dojo unannounced and Stephanie instinctively turned around to see who it was and hit the sensei in the crotch with the tip of the shinai in the process. That was possible due to her being really short and really curious.

The sensei cried as he fell to the floor and curled into a fetal position and the cry startled Sandra, causing her to lose her focus and hit the sensei’s son in the head really hard with her shinai. Of course, the young man was wearing his protective helmet, so the blow wasn’t really bad, but he had forgotten to put the insulating fabric inside the helmet and the blow caused him a couple of cuts in the nose and eyebrow.

On the other hand, the protection the sensei was wearing didn’t include anything that could protect his manly parts because samurai couldn’t attack so low with such long swords, so Stephanie’s blow hit him fully in his parts.

That resulted in the proud sensei kicking and banning both girls from his class for making him tear up and curl in the floor in front of several dozen kids who were actually his own etnicity.

A moment later, Stephanie and Sandra left the classs feeling very embarrassed and deeply ashamed but, for some reason, as soon as they crossed the threshold, they started to giggle uncontrollably and couldn’t stop laughing for several minutes.

The good news was, now Sandra would have all the time in the world to hang out with Val and Shan after class every Sunday, so nobody can say that miracles don’t exist.

Author’s note:

Yes, that actually happened and yes, it was even more hilarious to watch it first hand than it can possibly be to read about it. I still feel kinda sorry for the poor man. He was a good sensei.

I know this chapter is shorter. It is kinda late and I’d like to go to bed n