Jujitsu was funny today. We were so worked on abs that there were literally puddles of sweat on the mat where those of us less conditioned (or more moist) had strained. Okay, it was the older men, especially the ones new to jujitsu. One of the girls that I’m friendly with was walking toward me after the floor warmups, and she inadvertently stepped in a puddle. Instantly her face crumpled and she walked off the mat to the edge of the carpet and started scraping her foot on the carpet, while whimpering at me and saying, “Oh, ew, ew, ew…” I could not help but laugh. I had never seen her, Ms. Former Air Force Girl Vanessa, whimper like that. She said she was picturing sweat mixed with hair product and it was all squishy and cold. We both gagged.

Then later, the instructor was trying to fine-tune a new girl’s arm-twisting skill, and I was the next one up to be twisted after a punch. He was telling her to grab my hand and pull, then go into a quick twist so that it’d turn my shoulder downward as I turned counter-clockwise from the arm pressure. “You’re supposed to whip ’em with the arm,” he said. When she tried it on me, I deliberately and almost exaggerately whipped my body counter-clockwise to let her know her motion was correct, altho she didn’t have enough control to actually whip me, and then I did a forward fall. The instructor told her she did good, and I hopped off the mat to the end of the line to Vanessa, whispering as I got close to her, “I whipped myself.” I was all proud of myself for helping the new girl out, when I saw that Vanessa looked kinda shocked. “You what?!” she whispered back. “I whipped myself,” I repeated, and then realized what she thought I’d said. We both tried hard not to laugh out loud. “Yeah,” I confessed, “that puddle you stepped in earlier was actually me. Why is this class so LONG?!”

About an hour later, at a water break, I was standing about a foot away from the aforementioned puddle that was still there. Josh started walking toward me chatting with another guy as I tilted my water bottle into my mouth, and right when I got a mouthful of water, I realized he was about to step in the puddle, but I couldn’t say anything. I watched his face carefully as I swallowed. No expression change whatsoever. He did, however, meet my eyes when he saw that I had this huge smile on my face. “I was gonna warn you before you stepped in that, Josh, but I had just taken a swig of water.” “Yeah, thanks for the warning. That was — cold and squishy,” he said, still without any changes in expression. I guess guys just handle these things better.