Ok, so yes, I asked for an unabridged dictionary one year for Christmas. I was an English major, so sue me. I like words, especially those archaic and super-specific words. Unfortunately, at school we only have these lame student dictionaries that include things like "dog" and "ice cream," which the kids already know, but pass right by "okapi" and "arachibutyrophobia," which are so much cooler. (Okapis are these little dark brown African deer-looking critters with zebra-striped rumps, and arachibutyrophobia is the fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of your mouth, just in case you wondered.) But with the lame dictionaries, we can't look up fun stuff like that, so I have to compromise. I have them look up most of the words in the lame dictionaries, but then they have to use the big unabridged one to look up DEFENESTRATE. That one's been my favorite for years, ever since I leaned what it meant. And the kids are hilarious when they find the definition. Reactions range from "No way!" to "She said she'd throw us out the window?!" (It's one of my favorite 'dire consequences' to deter misbehavior. They get a kick out of it since the windows are only about six inches off the ground.) I used to threaten my little brother with defenestration too, but those plans got scrapped when he ended up taller than I was. I always hoped though... someday I'd make it happen!
Fast forward. For the past two weeks, we've been working on the sprechfensters- speaking windows. If I've got it right, when you find yourself with your sword in langenort, you try to use your spidey-fullen sense to figure out what the other guy is going to do with his sword. If he applies no pressure, just wind in or duplieren or something. If he does apply pressure, use his force on your sword as leverage, travel after him and whack him in nachriessen with a nice oberhau. I think this is one of the ones I actually understand- I just have difficulties in actually doing it correctly when it's at combat speed. Apparently this is another one of those muscle memory things, that eventually will become second nature. I'm thinking really though that my second nature must be part rabbit, part sloth: my reactions to swordy things seem to be either panicky self-preservation or terribly slow recognition and reaction. If I'm watching others fight, I can see what should be done. Just can't seem to translate that to my own situation when I'm fighting, at least not in time for it to actually matter. It's a bit frustrating.
We had another new guy come join us, so now we have Old New Guy and New New Guy, at least until they get better nicknames. New New Guy did fencing in college or something, so it's not entirely revolting that his footwork and stance are already better than mine. But it is a little. New Guy and Old New Guy were paired up, Deadpool was with Mr. Piccolo (old student of the Professor's from before my time), and, much like the Hostess factory itself, our very own Twinkie finally returned from the brink of obscurity and came back to practice this week too, and we paired up. With the new and newly returned folks, the Professor had us review the meisterhau and the vier versetzens to be sure we were all on the same page. Twinkie's got an injured paw too, so we were working with the sabres again for this exercise. Working with the off hand takes a lot of getting used to, but I guess the up side is that I'll be ambidextrous when I can finally use my left hand again.
After the vier versetzens, the Professor re-explained the sprechfenster and had us all practice those. We were supposed to do an uncooperative spar, starting off from longpoint and going wherever the wind took us, based on whether or not there was pressure applied to the blade at any given time. Twinkie's out of practice and was learning them for the first time, I was using my off hand again, and we hadn't much sabre experience anyway, so it was an interesting experiment. I think I understood what we were doing enough to get the idea- at least I was able to turn most of my langenorts into successful attacks, when we went slowly anyway. Then it was Twinkie's turn to do the same. I'm not sure how well we did, but when the Professor came by, he didn't have a whole lot of criticism, so I suppose that's good. We did a lot of watching the other guys too, then traded off partners a bit and tried it with masks also. Head shots only, and we were supposed to be sprechfenstering and watching for our windows to be open. Best part?
As the Professor put it: "If I am standing in the speaking window, and you do something that forces me to break that guard, then in a very real sense, I have been forced out of the window, see? Defenestrated."
So technically, I finally got to defenestrate someone! Woohoo!
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