Chapter 146: Lunch with the Two Nice Eatons

Friday, April 29, 2005 (Continued)

Carol and I arrived at the boys and we sat in front of them. While I was opening my lunch (it'd never left my hand, ESPECIALLY not after the disaster that had befallen an earlier incarnation of it at the Duckling visit), I said to Wayne, "Katelin's telling her story. Judging from what I heard she's telling the long version, so I've probably got a while to talk here. When she finishes she'll call out, and you and I will go help her answer the girls' questions, okay?"

"Yeah, that's fine."

"So what can I do for you guys?" As little as possible would be my choice, because of the disruption they'd already caused, although I'd thoroughly enjoyed how well the put-down had worked. I was also feeling uncharitable toward them because none of them had introduced themselves to us, and worst of all, they were staring at Carol's chest considerably more often than I would've liked, which was not at all. All things considered, they were annoying me. I couldn't really blame them for their last 'offense', as Carol was dressed particularly sexily today, but I blamed them for it anyway. [Carol was wearing another of the outfits Julia had chosen for me to admire Carol in. It was quite low cut and had been chosen for today's attire because it was very suitable for the tit-flashing trick we were ready to play on Chloe, as soon as she was judged ready for it. Julia kept saying, "It'll be any day now."]

It turned out that the boys wanted to hear about the fighting. Imagine my surprise! During our brief conversation thus far, most of them had continued to stare at Carol's chest. Even when I put my spare, non-lunch-eating arm around her, they kept staring. Occasionally looking at me, but mostly at those two specific parts of Carol. It got annoying, and then even more annoying.

I waited until it was my turn to speak, then I turned and called out to the girls behind me, "GIRLS! Sorry to interrupt. These guys keep staring at Carol's chest. What do we say to guys who try to hit on Carol? All together now, on the count of three: 1, 2, 3!"

The chorus yelled back, "SHE'S A LESBIAN, DUMMY! Haha."

"Thanks girls." I turned back to the 'boys'. "Will you 18-year old seniors please stop staring at the tits of my 13-year old, lesbian sister. Neither she nor I appreciate it. Try to demonstrate some maturity please."

I'd been stupid bringing up the "lesbian" issue, as it just got them more excited. (There must be a logical reason why guys react that way to lesbians, and when I figure out what it is, I'll let you know. Regardless of its doubtless being highly logical, it was still very annoying at the moment.) There were several different reactions: "Thirteen? No way!", "Your sister's hot, dude", more sensibly, "Oops" and "Sorry", but my personal favorite for the Most Annoying Prize was, "She's NOT your girlfriend; good!"

I seized on the last one. Looking at him, "Why on Earth is it good?"

He looked bashful and didn't answer.

"Seriously. I'd love to know why Carol's being my sister and not my girlfriend is good? What part of '13-year old lesbian' did you fail to understand? You can count to thirteen, can't you?" Charitably assuming he could, I pressed on with, "When you get home, ask your mommy to explain what 'lesbian' means. Your brain cell must be confused because you seem to think she might return your interest in her."

By now the others were laughing at him. Obviously not because they were much better themselves; just because that's what guys do to each other.

He came back with a brilliant defense, "You've got your arm around her!"

"What's that got to do with ANYTHING?"

I thought I knew what he'd say, and sure enough, "She can't dislike guys if she cuddles with you like that."

Carol beat me to it though. She said, "EEK! You're a GUY, Mark! Why didn't you tell me?" She recoiled out of my arm in mock-shock, then laughingly added, as she stood up, "I'll go back to the others; I'm too distracting here. Seniors are no better than 8th grade boys: get them near a pair of tits and their brains stop working, haha." Carol walked off, laughing. I was VERY impressed by her strength of character. Admittedly what she'd said was pretty similar to what Julia had told her to say when she flashed her tits in my class, but I was still impressed by her delivering the line with such confidence.

"Thanks for driving her away," complained one of the others to the guy I'd teased.

I told the complainer, "Another one of you that doesn't understand 'lesbian'. What's the matter with you people?"

"I know what it means. Doesn't mean I can't enjoy looking at her though."

"YES it does! That's the point. She doesn't enjoy the attention of males; it makes her uncomfortable. Why on Earth would you stare at a girl's tits knowing that you were making her uncomfortable? Go find some girl who enjoys parading around for guys and stare at her instead. Staring at a lesbian is inconsiderate and impolite."

"Then she shouldn't wear a top like that!"

"Her GIRLFRIEND bought it for her. She wears it because her GIRLFRIEND likes looking at her. And, yes, I know guys take advantage and stare at her too. I'd just expected that when you found out that she was a lesbian, seniors would be mature and considerate enough to look away. Never mind. It's obviously pointless to discuss polite behavior with you. Let's drop the topic before it ruins my appetite." I like to think that I'd mainly made a big issue out of it to convince their dirty little minds not to read anything into my having my protective arm around my sister. By emphasizing 'lesbian' so strongly, they shouldn't think there was anything sexual between Carol and me. In reality though, I think I jumped on the chance to belittle them just because they'd pissed me off so much already.

Wayne said, "I didn't know she was your sister either. You're very friendly with her."

"That would be because she's one of my best friends. Near the top of that list actually. We've shared a lot of our life together, funnily enough. She's had a difficult time coming to terms with her sexuality, so I like to support her as much as I can. Your 'friends' certainly don't make her feel any more comfortable with herself." It certainly couldn't do any harm to accentuate Carol's reported orientation.

^-- "Never mind her being a lesbian for a moment, you CAN'T go around lusting after 13-year old girls. You're going to get yourself in serious trouble if you get caught doing anything about that, ESPECIALLY if I catch you doing anything about it with my sister!" I continued, with an amused tone of voice, "Which has brought us right back to the topic of me beating people to a pulp, so what did you want to know about the fights?"

They wanted to know everything. They wanted me to describe them in detail, which I could easily do. They wouldn't be particularly accurate details, but that didn't worry me. I figured that it might be a good idea to impress these guys enough to put them off trying to get all competitive with me, so I started, "The first attack was when I was standing in the middle of the living room drinking a glass of milk. Don, Junior and Gunner were blocking the door and wouldn't let me out. Wayne, do these guys know who your brothers are, their ages, etc.?"

"Yeah. I told them all that stuff already."

"That makes it easier. Anyway, the three of them charged me - Don and Junior side by side, with Gunner running in behind Junior. Don was the oldest and I guessed probably the best brawler, so I started with him. I poked him in the eyes just hard enough to temporarily blind him and to cause him a great deal of pain. He collapsed..."

"Hang on. How did you poke him?"

I answered by extending my right hand with the first two fingers extended and separated. To make my answer even easier to understand - given that they hadn't understood a concept as simple as "lesbian" - I mock-poked a point of air a few inches ahead of my hand. I even said, "Poke" at the right moment to make it REALLY easy for them.

"What did Don do?"

"He collapsed screaming, covering his eyes with his hands. A bit too late, haha."

"I meant, what did Don do when you moved in to poke him? We want all the details."

"I'm giving you all the details. He was charging at me, with Junior alongside him. I poked him - in the way I showed you - and he collapsed screaming. All he did was lie on the floor screaming, then groaning for quite a while after that."

I knew what their problem was, but I was enjoying pretending not to. Mostly, though, I was simply being uncooperative by making the conversation go slowly. Eventually I could end this crap and go back to the girls.

"What did Don do when you moved to poke him? He must've seen you coming and done something."

"I stepped forward and poked him too fast for him to react. He didn't do anything to stop me."

"But he must have seen you coming."

"Sure he did. But I was too far away for him to do anything when I first started moving, three or four yards I guess. And before he could react, I'd poked him and it was all over. The only movement of his I had to react to was to avoid his falling body landing on me as it went down."

"That's hard to believe..."

"They probably have visiting hours at Don's prison. Go ask him." I'd not long before thought it might be a good idea to mention prison, to make sure these guys remembered some caution, rather than getting all macho on me.

^-- That gave them a pause, which I filled by saying, "Wayne, did you tell them about my catching flies?"

"Yeah, but they didn't believe me."

"Why would they think you'd lie about that?"

I'd asked a question I knew had no good answer. I'd done so only to stall a bit, while I thought about doing a speed demonstration. I first thought of doing a LIGHT eyeball poke on one of them, but decided that it'd be better to 'slap' one of them on an ear instead, using NP of course, but pretending to move my hand as if doing so for real. The eyeball poke would be completely safe for my target, as I could control my NP force very accurately. Even if my target leaned forward at the same time, it made no difference. If I used a 0.5 pound push, for example, and he leaned forward, he'd simply push my NP-fingertip away, except for a 0.5 pound differential force. I preferred an ear slap simply because it was less scary for the recipient, and he was less likely to be scared into reacting aggressively. Plus I really shouldn't go on about eyeballs all the time. Eyeball poking is my only special attack, so I shouldn't advertise it.

[To explain my writing, "I could control my NP force very accurately". I could NOT "accurately" choose 0.237 pounds, for example. I didn't mean "accurately" in that sense. When I'm pushing with an NP-fingertip, I visualize how hard I want to push, similar to how you visualize doing the same thing with your real fingers, only I do it better because I've had a lot of very precise practice flying things around. Unless I change that visualization, the force won't change. It's like setting an unmarked dial to a position; unless I move the dial, the force doesn't change. If a certain visualization corresponds to 0.8 pounds, say, then that's how hard the push will be, whether the guy leans forward or leans back (leaning back usually isn't a problem, because NP-points are massless so I can move them forward at an effectively infinite speed, provided I want to follow my target).]

#1: <Yeah, we don't want someone to smarten up and attack us with ski goggles on.>

#3: <Whoa! I never thought of that. Even glasses could be a problem if we couldn't see around them, or pull them off in time.>

#1: <Yeah. That's something worth remembering: we should avoid bullies wearing glasses or ski goggles.>

Wayne shrugged, indicating he didn't know why they thought he'd lied about the flies.

"I'll give you a speed demonstration then. You," I pointed to the guy in front of me. "Sit like this." I sat in seiza (sitting upright with my knees and ankles together and under me, my ass resting on my ankles). He copied me. I shuffled my position until I was the right distance in front of him, with our knees nearly touching. I rose up on my knees, to make it possible for me to reach him, moving my hands up to be in reasonable starting positions, then I announced, "I'm going to slap - LIGHTLY slap - his left then right ears." To my slightly worried looking target, I said, "They won't be hard enough to hurt, so don't worry. Try to block my hands if you want. Watch my speed carefully guys."

Before they really could get ready to watch carefully, I shot my right hand toward his left ear. Before it got there I NP-'slapped' his ear with a momentary 3.5 pound poke, at the same time as I deliberately changed my hand's direction so it started swinging away. He'd only just started reacting, when I did the same on the other side. It was all over in next to no time. (If you move your hand REALLY fast, it's very hard for an observer to know exactly where it went. Try it if you want; I'll wait.)

I sat back on my heels. My target's reactions clearly told them that I'd made contact on both sides. It was also clear that his attempts to block me had been pathetically late. They were VERY impressed by my speed, haha.

Some of them wanted to argue, but that was easily countered. I asked my target, "Did I, or did I not, hit each of your ears?"

"You sure did! You were FAST!"

"Fast enough to catch flies?"

"I think so!"

Naturally they all demanded the next turn of me doing it to them. I very definitely didn't want to repeat the exercise, as there was far too much chance of them catching on that I was somehow cheating. I had a quick discussion among myselves, and we decided to "Get Yoda on them." If nothing else, it was a great way to stall, hoping Katelin would finish soon. I called, "Sit down and calm down. Wayne has told you I caught flies, I just demonstrated my speed right in front of you, and you know that I demolished three of Wayne's brothers and his father. Have any of you guys ever done any martial arts training before?"

I didn't care about the answer, as I was only using the question as a bridge to change the subject. It turned out that most of them had, which was hardly surprising given their interest in the fighting aspect of the story.

I started Yoda-izing them, which is simply another name for bullshitting them, "There are two ways to learn martial arts: with your body or with your mind. The vast majority of students learn with their bodies, including Wayne's three brothers and father. And, I am sure, all of you that've studied a martial art. It's very easy to fall into that approach because martial arts - whichever one you're doing - look like they're a physical activity. Students are punching, kicking, flying through the air, etc., and all those things certainly seem very physical. If a student works at the physical aspects of an art, he can learn, advance, and get quite good. He'll never be an expert, but he can get reasonably good. A good sensei will be looking for students who start to understand the mentality of their art. There are probably plenty of poor senseis who don't even understand that themselves, but a good sensei will understand it. Eventually, using only the physical approach, a student's improvement rate will start leveling off. He'll reach the limit of what his body can physically do with - and this is VERY important - with an undisciplined and untrained mind. The mind is far more important than the body if a student wants to get extremely good at a martial art."

^-- This was bullshit based on the stuff I'd read in the Aikido books, plus crap taken out of what I'd seen on TV or in the movies. I didn't know what movies specifically; I was just quoting from the 'culture' of martial arts. It was just plausible sounding bullshit. Because it was the sort of stuff it was, they'd all heard something like it before, and were - more or less - nodding along. It was therefore safe for me to ask, "Those of you who have trained, have your senseis talked to you about the importance of concentration, focus, and those sorts of mental things?" Several of them confirmed it.

^-- "They were trying to encourage you down the road of mental development. Unfortunately very, very few students take that path. They'd much rather go punch something than discipline their minds. The mental path is not easy, and it takes a great deal of self-discipline. I'll give you a contrary example, all of you were clamoring for me to repeat my speed demonstration. 'Clamoring' is NOT the behavior of a disciplined mind. It's the behavior of an uncontrolled, undisciplined mind. After your undisciplined demonstration, I would very confidently predict that none of you are very advanced in whatever arts you are learning?" They were eighteen years old, so how advanced could they possibly be? No one claimed they were advanced.

^-- "To unlock the full potential of your body, you have to have an EXTREMELY focused mind. I could not have hit his ears unless my mind was 100% focused on the job." That was the first reasonably true thing I'd said! "Likewise when I was catching flies. The speed required isn't that hard to achieve; an undisciplined person can move fast enough to catch a fly in their hand if they're lucky. The hardest part of my catching flies was to grab them by pinching them gently between my thumb and forefinger. That requires incredible control! You try that sometime, and you'll know what I mean. I'm sure that none of you could repeat that feat. If you were extraordinarily lucky, you might pinch a fly between thumb and forefinger, but you'd almost certainly crush it in your haste. I wasn't fluking my catches, as I caught several flies in a row, which couldn't have been pure luck.

^-- "I beat Wayne's family because all of them had minds that were - to put it mildly! - completely lacking in self-control. I had every footstep, every hand movement, and every body turn planned in advance. My mind was TOTALLY focused on what it was doing, when, how, why, etc. They charged toward me like the thoughtless idiots they were. They never had a chance against me. Did Wayne tell you that I deliberately kept a glass of milk in one hand when the three boys attacked me the first time?"

Wayne answered, "I told them you had a glass, but I didn't know it was deliberate?"

"Yeah. I stood up because I knew they were going to attack, then I picked up the glass so I could take the three of them down, then show you and your dad that I hadn't needed to use both hands and that I hadn't spilt a drop. I thought that'd be the most effective way of teaching you to give up trying to fight me. Your dad didn't have the self-control to remember the lesson though. Even before I'd stood up, I had that whole fight planned out in my head, including turning to you and your dad and theatrically taking another drink when your brothers were down." It was an exaggeration, which made it more truthful than most of this bullshit.

^-- "You guys know my nickname is 'Egg', right? And what the last 'G' stands for? Genius?" They knew.

^-- "I'm lucky enough to be extraordinarily intelligent, so when I started learning martial arts it was the mental side that appealed to me the most, and which made the most sense to me. That's the path I went down right from the beginning, and that's why I'm so good now. None of you guys will ever be as good as me, but if you want to get a whole lot better forget about the fighting part of martial arts, because that's an external activity. Instead concentrate internally, on your own mental self-discipline."

#4: <And, "Good Luck with that," haha. There's no way we're going to talk 18-year old macho martial arts enthusiasts into not fighting, but it sure sounds good.>

Unfortunately I'd taken that particular thread of bullshit as far as it could go without starting to sound lame. I had to think of what to do next, because I'd looked back and Katelin was still going strong. I was debating doing something else, like using proximity to avoid being attacked from the rear, or identify who each of them was when they were behind me. Or alternatively, blindfold myself and pick them out of a shuffled lineup, presuming I got them to tell me their names first. I could spread quite a lot of bullshit about the quality of my other senses, hearing and smell, when my mind was strongly focused. I liked something that involved a blindfold, as that gave me an excuse to take my shirt off to use as the blindfold. Showing them my torso would impress them, but my main reason was so a lot of the girls sitting just a few yards away could see me shirtless, haha.

My internal debate went on for quite a while, because there were quite a few pros and cons involved in doing a demonstration along the lines I was thinking of. Some of them started asking me questions. Normally I prefer to control the topics, but the questions were easy so I let them continue:

"Where do you train?"

"In my head."

"No, I meant what dojo?"

"Yes, I know you meant that. That's relatively unimportant. It's FAR more important what you do in your head. Let's say you train for three hours a week in a dojo. How many hours do you spend OUTSIDE the dojo? Twenty hours a day times seven days is 140 hours, less 3 in a dojo, so 137 hours you spend training outside a dojo, 3 hours inside. Obviously whatever you do outside a dojo is FAR more important. I train my mind as much as I can. If I train it 140 hours per week, rather than 3, I learn a lot faster. Obviously I have to do schoolwork and other things, so I'm not thinking about martial arts all 140 hours, but I am disciplining my mind virtually all the time."

When I started the calculation part of the above, I'd been intending to use sixteen hours per day, as the number of hours a normal person is awake. At the last second I changed to twenty hours, because that was the number of hours that I was awake, which I could make up some impressive bullshit about. I hoped someone would ask me why I'd used twenty, but they were so eager to ask more questions about fighting that no one noticed the twenty. They REALLY need to discipline their minds, haha.

The advantage of several asking questions simultaneously was that I got to pick the question I wanted to answer.

The one I picked was, "What martial art do you do?"

"It doesn't matter. Whichever one you do, you use the same mind. It's your mind which is important."

The questioner didn't want to accept my answer, but I chose another clamorer, "What grade are you?"

"I've never been graded. I don't train that way."

"Huh? Why not?"

Grades are very important in martial arts, so my answer made no sense. Which was exactly as I'd intended, as it gave me a chance to spout more time-wasting bullshit. I continued to shovel it, "How do you grade what someone does in their mind? When you UNDERSTAND martial arts individual techniques become meaningless. They become part of the 'All', rather than an individual thing. When I did the fly catching demo at Wayne's place, I told him that I'd never tried catching flies before, but I'd known I could do so if I wanted to. Because I knew my capabilities were up to the task.

^-- "When you understand enough you can make up techniques as you go. Even that's not a good way of putting it, because I don't make up a technique; I just do what I want to do. If it happens to be something I've never done before, then I guess that'd make it a new technique, but that's not how I think of it.

^-- "I know the capabilities of my opponent. I probably know where they're moving and what they intending to do as well. I know my own capabilities, so I just decide what to do and I do it. It's more of a flow than anything else. I realize that seems to contradict my earlier statement that I planned out in advance what I was going to be doing, but it's not really a contradiction. I saw Wayne's brothers' movements in my head, and worked out my flow to work with theirs. If any of you get good enough, you'll understand what I mean."

#1: <In which case, please tell me, because I've got no idea! Haha.>

"Who's your sensei? Do you even have a sensei?" The second question pleased me, as it indicated that this idiot believed me. By the looks on their faces, more of them did too.

"I have a sensei, but I'm not going to tell you who he is."

"Why not?"

"Because none of you are anywhere near good enough to waste his time answering your phone calls."

Most of them said something like, "Oh," but one of them took exception, belligerently demanding, "How do you know how good any of us are? For all you know I could be good enough!"

I gave a good laugh. I was intending to make it quite a long one, but I could see that he didn't take it at all well so I cut it off, and asked, "What does the middle letter of my nickname stand for? The first 'G'?"

Several of them worked it out, "Graceful."

"Right. And why am I graceful?"

"Huh?"

"How did I learn to be graceful? I wasn't born that way, you know. I learned it. How does one become graceful?"

Not that it mattered, but I hadn't expected an answer. I was going to answer it myself, but several of them did so for me. They made a variety of guesses, all of which were roughly on the target I'd set up for them, e.g., "Through your training", "Because your mind's focused on the way you move", etc.

"Yeah, you've pretty much got it. My mind and body are one. Not perfectly yet, because I'm still learning... ,"

#4: <You mean we haven't learned it all yet? Even though we've had THREE lessons? Damn, how LONG is it going to take! Haha.>

" ... but they're a lot more unified than your bodies are. I've watched all of you move, and you all move like drunken oxen. I don't intend that to be an insult, because almost EVERYONE moves like drunken oxen as far as I'm concerned. That's why my nickname includes 'Graceful', and - I'm guessing - none of yours do."

A couple of them took exception to being called 'drunken oxen'. That might not have been a smart move on my part, even though I'd depersonalized it by saying "EVERYONE". I think they'd stopped thinking about what I'd said after they heard what they considered an insult. With an abusively sarcastic tone of voice, one of them demanded, "I suppose you think you can beat ME?"

With supreme confidence, I said, "I THINK I can beat all of you at once. YOU, by yourself, I wouldn't even bother standing up for." That way, if he did charge me, there'd be no doubt who the aggressor was. I didn't think an attack was likely though. Most of the other guys had been convinced I knew what I was talking about, and I had cleaned up Wayne's family after all. They restrained the big-mouthed guy.

I was reminded of a bullshit topic I'd originally intended to use with the Eaton boys, back when they'd been conscious enough to listen. I needed to take control of the conversation, and waste more time with it. I said, "Let's think about the aspects of a good fighter, seeing as how you're so fighting oriented. Speed is extremely important, and I've already demonstrated how fast I am. None of you would've been able to block my slaps to your ears. If he hasn't yet described it well enough to you, get Wayne to tell you EXACTLY what I achieved in my fly catching demo. When any of you can do that, I'll apologize, but I'm sure NONE of you will ever be as fast as I am now."

^-- "Let's consider precision. That's very important too. I said I'd only hit this guy's ears hard enough for him to notice, but not to hurt. I bet if he thought about it, he'd agree that I hit both ears with exactly the same amount of force. Can you confirm that?"

"Umm. I think so. They felt about the same."

"Thanks for saying so. Same with catching flies between thumb and forefinger without damaging them. That requires a considerable amount of precision." I didn't mention my precise eyeball poking because I wanted to downplay that technique. While I was thinking of what to say next, a nicely time-wasting idea came to my mind. "Are any of you wearing a ring? I see you are. Can I borrow it for a second please?"

With a little bit of reluctance, he handed it over.

I said, "I'm wearing a ring, quite a large one," I held my finger up, to show them the ring and to subtly express my opinion of them, "but for my next demonstration I want to use a ring I've never held before, so you know I haven't been practicing with it." I directed the owner to take several steps away from me, then kneel and lay his hand palm up on the ground.

^-- "I'm going to throw your ring at your hand. It's going to land on your palm and stop there. You won't even have to close your fist to trap it. Just keep your hand flat on the grass where it is. I'm even going to throw from this kneeling position, which is fairly uncomfortable and not something I've practiced. Here it comes."

I threw it, as accurately as I could, toward his hand. I almost immediately caught the ring with NP, and guided it to the center of his palm, where - surprise, surprise - it dropped flat, without even bouncing. It was quite a long throw, about six or seven yards, and a small target, so it was a fairly impressive throw.