Chapter 8

My dear brother,

Your last letter got me giggling. You seem to think I'll freeze the first time I'm told to strip naked in front of others. Brother, I do take physical education at school, and while I know a lot of the boys like to smell after class no girl would be caught dead covered in drying sweat in a later class. So I've used the group showers more than a hundred times, and let me remind you, girls can be vicious. I hear way too many comments about my tiny breasts after P.E.

Yes, I know it will be worse since men will be looking and I'll end up looking at men's dangly bits. But that will happen even if I have the score to sponsor, the only difference is I'll get to be like Empress Nympho from Mel Brook's History of the World Part One movie. That might actually be fun.

I still want it to be romantic. But I can accept that the only way to make it romantic will mean study and train. I already started when I showed up for Chin-pa's first Tai Chi class. I told you about him in my last letter when he beat me running one lap around the track. It's scary in a way. He insists that everyone call him Chinpa, which appears to be what his great-grandkids call him. The man always has a huge smile on his face as if he's learned some great secret of life. But at the same time he works at play. I always thought Tai Chi was just a weird slow moving dance, and in a way it is, but if you do it right, and Chin-pa is a tyrant about how all his students must do it perfectly, your muscles feel it. It's about balance and control. Every motion is to be kept slow and even, no jerking, no rushing. You know me; I've done dance recitals that lasted over an hour and been fine. The first Tai Chi class lasted thirty minutes and afterwards I just lay in the grass for another fifteen while my muscles recovered. Only five students returned to try again, and I was one of those.

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