Helping out Brad

One day we all went to help Brad move some stuff. I think he was moving out of his house. Or maybe he was putting stuff in storage because he was going to travel. I forget.

I recall that Lonnie, Jeff and myself were there for certain. I think George or somebody else must have been there but I don't remember for certain. It was a beautiful sunny day. The area where Brad lived in was a nice area. I recall feeling impressed or invigorated as we drove to his house. The sun, the air, the houses in the neighborhood made it one of those "life is good" moments.

At some time or the other, Brad had mentioned he had a girlfriend. I don't remember what was said about her other than that he had one. I think that Jeff might have said she was attractive. I guess he had met her as part of Brad and Jeff's friendship.

We got to the house and pulled into the driveway. The house was beautiful. I can clearly see an immaculate piece of white concrete for the driveway. Maybe I am embellishing my memories. I can't get over that feeling of, "Wow. This is really nice".

We went to the door and his girlfriend opened it. She was a Chinese woman which surprised me. I don't know why. I just pictured a rich white guy like Brad with a white girl. This woman was a dark colored Asian with jet black hair. It seemed so out of place.

She was as attractive as Jeff had said she was. I don't think she was dressed in any way special. Maybe jeans and a top for working on the house preparing it for whatever. We all exchanged some small talk and then went inside to move the heavy stuff.

It didn't take very long. There was not much stuff to move. We all said our goodbyes to Brad's girlfriend and piled into Brad's car to leave. I had an electronic watch that could do all kinds of things. When the buttons were pressed, it would beep to tell you the button pressed. I was pressing the buttons on the watch to set the time or something. It beeped in rapid succession. Brad said "Oh Oh. I hear someone beeping".

I have no idea why, but it was one of those weird magic moments where time seems to slow down and everything happens in slow motion. Those moments when it is obvious that something wierd is going on. I recognzed the moment, but I had no idea why it had occurred. To me, I had been beeping the watch to make it set the date. For some reason, the way Brad said he heard someone beeping, it was as if he was saying something momentous. It literally felt like the attention of every person in the car was focused on the same thing. Whatever that was.

Knowing what I know now, maybe my energy was doing something. I was in the backseat with the watch pointed to the front of the car. That means my energy would have been focused that way. The cadence or rythym of how I pressed the buttons of the watch would mean something to people. The cadence would be almost as clear as spoken language to some people.

They might have interpreted what I was doing as a call for attention. That is so weird to say because I would never think of that. Pointing the watch and making the loud beeps was like I wanted them to listen to me for some reason. The focus of everyone's attention I felt was them focusing on me waiting for me to say whatever it was. But I wasn't saying anything. I was only setting my watch. ;)

That kind of weirdness is one of the things that made Ba Gua stressful for me. Instead of sitting in a car and driving around with friends helping people, every action of every minute had to be analyzed for some hidden meaning. If you did not get the meaning, you were hosed.

So her I am, recoginzing that something odd is occurring, but not knowing what to do. Thinking I will be polite, I blurt out that I thought that Brad's girlfriend was healthy looking. No one said a word. I repeated myself. I think I said, "I could tell just by looking at her that she was very healthy".

I felt at the time that I was becoming insightful about people and the martial arts. I had been involved in the martial arts long enough by that time that I felt I could look at a person and judge their strength or weakness. A byproduct of that ability is the ability to tell if a person is healthy or unhealthy. I can look at people and see where they have trouble with their bodies.

By saying "I could look at her and see she was healthy", I was trying to say to Brad that he was a lucky man because in my skilled opinion, she was both very health and very strong in a martial arts kind of way.

I have no idea what the guys thought. After repeating myself, they still refused to say a word. All of them. No acknowledgement. No changing the subject. Nothing.

I am sitting here laughing. Knowing the way those people thought, they were probably silent because they were waiting for me to say more. That is a psychological as well as a martial arts or a social ploy. If someone is talking, and your refuse to talk, it puts pressure on the talking person to continue speaking. If they have anything to say.

If I had more to say about Brad's girlfriend, but I was shy or ashamed about it, by being silent, they were putting pressure on me to say whatever else I was thinking. I wasn't thinking anything else. I was only trying to be polite to Brad because of the weirdness with the watch I did not understand. There was nothing they could pull out of me.

Now I wonder if they thought I was attracted to her. Maybe I wanted to say she was hot or I wanted to date her. They thought if they were silent I would say I wanted to grab her boobies or something. Or maybe it was completely out of line to complement another man's woman. Heck. Can you see how much trouble those guys were? ;) Even the most simple things were made stressful and complicated.