overboard

"I think we went a little overboard last night," said Victor.

"You're telling me," I told him. I glanced up from my beer and caught Victor staring vacantly across the room. Immediately, he sensed my gaze and turned to return it. I went back to my beer and listened to the sound of Victor's breathing. Victor has allergies, the kind that don't go away with meds. He's got a constant wheeze from blocked sinuses. It's almost impossible to hear, like the sound of a television or a fluorescent light bulb, but having known him as long as I have, I can no longer not hear it.

Victor wheezed. I listened. I kept my thoughts to myself.

"Do you think he'll recover in time?" Victor asked.

"No," I said. "I think he's down for the count."

Philip had had a rough night with the two of us, last night. It came at the worst possible time for him. In three days, Phil's flying out to Rochester to meet with potential investors in his new, innovative toilet-paper softening process, and to spend time in Jersey with his girlfriend. Phil and his woman don't get to spend much time together, and it's truly a wonder they've been together as long as they have.

"It's just as well," said Victor. "His girlfriend is probably cheating on him."

"How do you figure?" I asked.

"Oh, come on!" said Victor. "How could she not? She only sees him once every three months. She's smart and attractive and he is never there."

"So?" I asked.

"So there you go," said Victor. "It's part of our programming."

"Oh man," I said. "Not that again!"

Victor gave me a sour look and went back to studying dust particles suspended in the stench of Chancellor's stalest air. I could tell he was disappointed that I wouldn't engage him on his pet topic. We'd been over this ground too many times, and neither Victor nor I was about to change our mind. As much as I was tired of his views on the biological imperative to mate, I also did not crave to suffer through Victor's take on the silent treatment.

"Phil did well up until the third guy," I said.

"No way," said Victor. "If it hadn't been for Margie, he wouldn't have made it past the first one."

After her August seminar in Rochester, we'd been nagging Margie, constantly, to swing by the dojo. It was her own fault, too; when she came back she decided she had to show off her new moves. Victor, Phil, and I threw our best into it, but none of us have been training for very long. Even so, we've been at it for a lot longer than just the two short weeks that Margie had spent with the Colonel (retired). Those two weeks were well spent, it turned out, and the practical training that Margie applied to us made it obvious that all the martial mumbo-jumbo about Chi and balancing energies and visualization and "flow" didn't help much at all against someone trained in a modern martial art.

So Margie beat the crap out of the three of us her first evening back. She felt a little sorry about it, I think, and we used that to our advantage. She became our teacher, and since August, under Margie's tutelage, we've been training in Krav Maga. That's in addition to our regular Aikido training. Margie's been off to three more seminars since then, and the speed with which she's absorbed the material is a little frightening. She's deadly.

"They didn't get his mask off, at least," said Victor.

"Thank god," I said. "You think we went overboard last night, well, that's nothing compared to the disaster we avoided."

"Margie was amazing."

"Yeah, I know, I was there," I said. "But you know, it ain't the movies, where they come at you one at a time."

Margie's training taught her to deal effectively with multiple opponents, and that's the way we trained together: never one on one or even two on one, but always three on one. When she went to the seminars, they usually trained four or five on one, and often, three or four of those would have weapons. Margie told us she was routinely pummeling five armed opponents at a time, and based on how she fared against the three of us, we believed her.

We didn't do so poorly ourselves, though it was confusing at times when we began to execute Krav techniques in the Aikido class. That's the way it goes, I guess, with training.

Back in August, right after she mopped the floor with Victor and me, we asked Margie to swing by the dojo and demo some moves for the class. She refused then, but constant wheedling over the months wore her down. She agreed, Monday, to a Tuesday night demo. On her terms.

"It wasn't the numbers," said Victor, "it was who went at him. If he'd gotten Willie and Jones, that's one thing. But he ended up with Angeline and Jose. They've been training for sixteen years, minimum."

"Yeah," I said. "But Margie beat all four of them to get at Phil. I'd say it's more a matter of who your teacher was than how much training you've had."

"You saying Margie's not a good teacher?"

"I'm saying that the training we've gotten from her is not as good as the training she's gotten from the Colonel (retired), yeah. That's no surprise. That's why he gets paid."

"I guess," said Victor.

Tuesday night, after a light warmup, we jammed ourselves into Phil's Civic and drove on down to the dojo, right in the middle of the advanced class. Half the class was doing striking exercises and the other half was sparring. The four of us approached the sparring ring. Margie spoke up, announcing that she was trained in a martial art far superior to what was being taught, and asked if anyone would care to be the subject of a demonstration.

After three students and an instructor ended up on their backs, she asked them to try using weapons.

Until this point, Victor, Phil, and I had been standing around the sparring ring, just watching. As the other half of the class filtered into the sparring room, we explained that a demonstration was in progress, and that they were welcome to join in.

Maybe that was not the best possible phrasing.

The newcomers piled on to Margie all at once. They didn't go "kung-fu style" like in the movies, they all went on at once, elbowing each other as they jostled to get in (clumsy) punches and kicks. There were eighteen or twenty of them, and apparently, that number is above and beyond Margie's sweet spot. She didn't ask, but it was clear she could use some help.

Phil, Victor, and I came in from behind the crowd of attackers, pulling them off and tossing them around the ring. I was pleased at how well the new techniques worked, though, of course, I had to be careful to avoid using the deadlier choices at my disposal. Just as things were going well, for those first few seconds, the remainder of the class, another twenty or so students and instructors who had been watching the sparring before we arrived, joined in. Very quickly, we were all well beyond our sweet spot for number of opponents.

"We probably could have managed a more graceful exit," said Victor.

"I'm not so sure," I said. "All things considered, I think we did pretty well."

"It would have been wiser to leave the engine running," said Victor.

"Now that," I said, "I agree with."

When someone shouted, "take off their masks!", we knew it was time to leave. We didn't have to say so, though. We'd agreed well beforehand that if it looked like we were about to be exposed, it was time to get out, fast. We moved in unison toward the door, but our combatants followed us, and in a flash, Phil was overwhelmed. Once Angie put him on the floor, some of the more junior students, lesser trained in the peaceful ways of Aikido, began to pummel him. Margie caught my eye and gave me a hand signal to go start the car. I nodded and squeezed out the door.

Back in the car, I recovered the from under the seat and got the engine running. A second or two later, Victor and Margie emerged, dragging Phil, all three of them with their masks still on, fortunately. They made it to the car and pounded on the windows as they realized the doors were locked. Phil's car has manual locks, so I had to scramble to get the doors open with the angry class tossing insults from the bottlenecked dojo doorway.

None of us took away any serious injuries, and as best as we could tell, none of us dealt out any, either. Still, Phil had a bloody nose and a pretty good cut over his eye, and all of us scored multiple bruises.

"A little overboard," said Victor.

"Yup," I said.