More Proof That I'm Evil

I was sitting here a little while ago, taking care of one of my swords and looked over to where my gloves were laying.

As some of the people who have trained with me over the years can tell you, I tend to get attached to my gear. After a while, it sort of becomes a part of me. It's true of my swords, it's true of my armor, and it's true of my gloves (whose smell I admit that I find intoxicating and a powerful memory trigger. There's just something about well-worn leather).

Part of the reason I am so attached to a simple pair of gloves is the time that it takes to break them in. The current pair I use, I've had for almost 8 years now, and it took over a year to break them in.

That's right. It took a year of fighting 2-3 days a week for 2-3 hours per day to break in a simple pair of gloves. For that year, until the inside of the gloves were cured by my sweat, my hands would be blue at the end of the night from the dye leaching out of the leather.

This is where we get to proof that I'm evil.

Among other things, I was in charge of training the problem fighters - the ones with too much aggression, too little aggression, poor control, etc (this is what growing up training will get you: more responsibility). The result of this was that I dealt with a lot of slaps to the hand area. It's a good thing my gloves have padding across the back of the hand.

One of the problem fighters was Karyl.

Her problem was that she had too little aggression, so I pushed her. I made her hit me. I taunted her into it. I demanded it. I actually yelled at her to hit me harder because she wasn't even hitting hard enough to score a fatal hit (which doesn't take a whole lot of pressure). I even whacked myself in the mask repeatedly with my sword to make the point that she wasn't going to hurt me.

She finally started to hit harder. However, being a beginner, she was still a bit sloppy so there were more than a few slapping shots to my hands (I wasn't allowed to train them the way my sifu trained me. They should be glad for that, but their control would have been a whooooole lot better lol).

Now, remember what I said about the gloves? Well, they were still leaching.

At the end of the night, she's standing there when I pull off the gloves. Both of my hands are bruise blue from the black dye in the gloves.

I can NOT pass up a joke like this that falls into my lap.

I look down, pretending to notice my hands are covered in "bruises," and she follows my glance.

"LOOK WHAT YOU'VE DONE TO ME!!!"

Karyl promptly freaks out, falling all over herself apologizing and looking like she's torn between running away and passing out while I nearly fall over on the floor laughing.

Hi. My name is James, and I'm an evil bastard. =]

At least she laughs about it now. lol

Current mood: amused yet frustrated
Current music: Billy Joel - I go to extremes