Sunday, April 10, 2011

My Fencing Life

Several years ago my husband took up fencing with epee and from the start was very good at it (of course he had been doing martial arts since he was knee high!). Lacking a partner to practice his moves with  I, without a second thought, offered my services and before long was requesting a fencing kit and blade myself. Now I should note that I have NOT had many years of martial art experience to draw on and therefore have been quite a slow learner, unfortunately when you start this sort of venture and already have gray hair you begin to realize that time may not be on your side. Now some years later and about a week ago the “penny actually dropped” on some of the moves and with patient diligence my husband may actually be rewarded one day in the future with a fencing partner.

We visited a club in the next town to ours last week after a two year absence and to my surprise I was able to better a few young bucks and what a character building experience that was – definitely feels like it should make you live longer. However, the next day I felt a decade older! - short-lived gratification for sure.

Now, to get myself up for next Wednesday’s visit to the fencing club. They are not going to be fooled a second time into thinking what a sweet gray-haired old lady I am. What I lack in technique (my husband’s words) I seem to make up for in part by unbridled aggression. Works for me………

1 comment:

  1. Ah! Where to start! To see how far one parry and one horrible angulated attack can get one is truly inspiring. OTOH the spirit such as is evident can clearly move mountains.

    One should also express one's gratitude: Without you as a fencing partner I would not have been able to maintain and possibly improve such skills that I possess (I was going to talk about lemons and lemonade but somewhow it seems inappropriate :-)

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