Respect can be hard

I had a good sword class today. There was much sparring with many different weapons.

At one point, Sensei Varady and I faced off, him with paired shortsword simulants, me with a longsword simulant. It went pretty well for me; sensei is bigger, faster, at least 20 years younger, and more skilled than I am (he runs the school), but he kept letting his guard fall just a _little_ bit too low and I got in three or four kill shots on the left neck-and-shoulder pocket – a favorite target of mine at any blade length.

Understandably this adrenalizes him some and the next time by block is not quite fast enough he fetches me a whack on the ribs that he immediately realizes was way overpowered. Starts apologizing, grins, and says something like “You’re a good, tough fighter, I tend to power up automatically to deal with it.” (Sense exact, words not.)

I said “I am very happy that you treat me with that respect.”

And absolutely meant it. Given a choice between taking a bruise occasionally because the instructor has to play hard to beat me and being ineffectual enough that he always has control of the fight…I’ll take the bruises, thanks. And enjoy how I got them. A lot.