JOURNEY - on Mastering Ukemi by Daniel Linden (classic books for 12 year olds .TXT) 📕

approach until it worked. I continued to take ukemi until I was able to succeed in finding a place where you could not lead me to resolution. I attacked relentlessly, albeit only twice, but until I had succeeded. Do you think I will allow you to be this miserable for the rest of the trip?”

“I can go home.”

“Not any more you can’t.”

“I’ll just ride back with the driver and then go home.”

Christ, this was not what I expected at all. I let him go and sat back against the bruising springs pushing their way through the seatback. We were rolling through progressively higher foothills and though the day had turned very warm and the sky occasionally threatened rain, we stayed at speed and made good progress. I hoped we would be able to make it by dark and knew that if we ran into no trouble we would. No trouble that could not be solved, that is.

“Christian,” I said gently, “I guess I should have warned you about what you might see, but really I thought you could handle anything you would find on the street or I would never have agreed to come on this trip. I still think you can and that you are using this incident to focus all your misgivings upon.”

He glared at me and I held up my hand. “That’s okay. I just need to tell you that if you had grown up on a farm or in a family of men who hunt you would have learned to butcher hogs and cattle, or to gut out deer at a young age and while what you saw the other night might have surprised you and left an impression you will always remember, you would have carried on with no ill affect. You still can. I’m not going to tell you that you won’t always carry the image of that bull and the swinging khukuri, but it’s up to you how much you let it affect you.”

“Sensei, with all respect, you were not there.”

I sighed. “Christian, when I was eighteen I flew to Viet Nam and when the plane was just touching down, - there was no taking off again you see - the runway started taking mortar fire. There were all sorts of people out there and when the doors opened and they started hustling us off, the mortar rounds, hell, they might have been rockets or even artillery; they started to come in again. I was thrust down the ladder and shoved forward and when I finally stopped to get aboard a transport parked next to a gaping pothole from a recent blast, I looked down and saw a… well, a body part. I was not ready for combat. No one is ever ready for it. But even though the shock of seeing that was so great I can still see it with my eyes open after thirty-five years, I did not let it make me immobile. On the contrary, I used it as a kick in the pants. And later, when things got very tired and strange I used it over and over.

”I was six years younger than you are right now. So what I am going to say to you might not taste very good, but it is the absolute truth. Son, it’s time to grow up.”

He flashed a glare at me very quickly and began to protest. I let him go on until he was at an end of it. It was all the usual things one would expect from someone who heard that phrase. When he was finished I said it again. “Son, it’s time to grow up.”

He went at it again. It was a long hour later that he finally got it. I kept repeating that phrase and he kept arguing and then finally Curtis said “Sensei, why don’t you change attacks and see what he says?”

Christian looked at Curtis and then back at me. He hesitated.

“I’ve been taking ukemi,” he said.

“No. I have. You have been trying to find a way to dissipate the truth of what I have been saying and to pin me, throw me, or just stop me, but my ukemi skills are far more advanced than yours. I am being a true uke and you just keep floundering.

“Isn’t the definition of insanity doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results?” Celine asked over her shoulder. Esra said something to her and then Celine was explaining what had been said to her in Turkish.

“Christian, it’s time to grow up. A much smarter guy than myself once said, ‘Argue for your limitations and they’re yours!’ and I tend to agree with him. You had a shock, okay; mature, intelligent people learn from this type of thing. That you understand that sometimes a verbal battle takes the shape of uke and nage tells me that you are doing just fine. If you wish to be hamstrung by this, you can be, and think of the mileage you’ll get from it when you tell stories. But I have to believe that you will get more mileage from using it as a focal point when you need to be serious and bring all your powers to bear on a situation.”

“You were just taking ukemi,” he said again.

“I think most argument takes this form, because usually both people know intrinsically that one side of an argument is the stronger even if one person feels ideologically compelled to sustain it.” I scratched my head and looked out the window. “But, I think you feel better, now. I can see it and if you really wish to go home I have done my best and will make the arrangements for you. What do you want to do?”

“Come on, suck it up, you jerk.” This voice came from the back. Chris was sitting up and frowning over the rear seat.

I looked ahead and saw we were coming