I wonder if Eve ever felt guilty for that one

First off, I like having a place where I, for the most part, know who is going to be reading what I write. It is nice having a place to just rant or rave. I enjoyed writing my last post. It actually made me a little emotional. I also realized I only personally own one of my ten favorite movies (To Be or Not to Be) and my family owns only six others, with two different brothers owning the only copies of two of those movies. Meaning I only have access to 5 of my favorite movies at any given time. I do not approve.

But the real reason I wrote this is kind of embarrassing... I enjoy judo. I can get aggressive and do not have to worry because we all know the rules and aren't going out of our ways to harm each other. I can fight until my bones ache, my skin tears, and I bleed. It is very satisfying on several levels of humanity. My mortal shell is trained by others through repetition and trauma. My spirit exercises its freewill and desire by battling another. My mind has the chance to calculate, deceive, and plot against others, but in a way that will not land me in jail. My being is uplifted.

I am by no means the best in the class. I am just a yellow belt and while I could take most of the yellow belts in the class, I would still lose most of the time to some of the yellow belts. Also, there are a bunch of people who have just never tested for a higher belt. There are a few guys who just wear their white belts to mess with other people... Anyway, the moral is that I get beat up most of the time. Partly because I want to get better, so I try to spar more skilled people, and partly because I still have difficulty just holding my own. Occasionally I get a really good hold or throw in and it just works, but only occasionally.

Well, a couple weeks ago, we were doing randori, which is just simple free-style practicing, you face each other and try to throw/trip/reap the other person to the ground, and I was up against a higher belt who is substantially smaller than me (20 lbs probably). Well, using my size mostly, I do get a pretty good throw on him, but I hit him against the ground pretty hard, but he breathed out appropriately and just needed a slight breather afterwards. After I beat him, I still had time left in the imaginary match, so someone else came in. This next kid is someone I started the class with, so we are at similar experience levels. I think I'm a little bigger than him, but we're about the same height. I got a really good osoto gari on him, which is a leg reap, and he slammed into the ground. I did not mean to hit him so hard. Honestly, when I fight my legs start to shake. I get nervous when I fight. I want to win, but I don't want to get too excited and lose control. Unfortunately, I think that happened a little bit and he didn't breathe out when he hit the ground and I kinda broke his rib, which I found out today (I was wondering why he wasn't showing up in class anymore). I am glad to say I was successfully thrown twice by the next guy I sparred, but geez. I broke someone's rib. His rib had just healed too. Come on...I'm not supposed to do that.