Hamlette's Soliloquy

Cowboy is teaching me to box! I've always wanted to learn to box, ever since I was a wee girl watching the Rocky movies in my family's darkened living room while eating pizza and drinking that rarest of treats: soda. My brother and I actually had an inflatable Mickey Mouse punching bag when we were little, the kind with sand in the bottom so it would bounce back up when we hit it. Alas, it quickly acquired a hole that refused to remain patched.

But a couple months ago, Cowboy got some books from the library and started teaching himself how to box. Just for exercise, you understand. You see, he's always trying to get me to exercise. I was doing really well with my yoga for about six months, doing it at least 30 minutes 3 times a week. Then I went on jury duty, and never really got back into yoga after all that disruption. Then Cowboy came up with the brilliant idea of combining violence with the exercise. Perfect! Once he'd learned the basics fairly well, like the stance and things like that, we went out and bought a punching post thingie and bag gloves for each of us.

So now he's teaching me to box. I'm still working on my stance and jabbing, that's all. But we've learned something rather interesting: although I'm ordinarily right-handed, when I box, I'm a southpaw! We found out because, when he started teaching me the stance, I kept reversing my feet because I felt off balance. And he'd tell me, "No, no, the right heel has to be ahead of the left toes." And I'd complain, "But I'm gonna tip over!" Also, I kept wanting to jab with my right instead of my left. So finally we switched me around to see if doing things the other way would work out, and it did! Weird, huh?