Grand opening

So sifu is opening a second studio about maybe half an hour away and he's been talking of nothing else for months now. It's a big stretch for a small business and sounds sort of like a make-or-break type of thing. We hardly ever see him now, as he is off minding the new store and we are left in the (quite capable) hands of his lead instructor and kung fu son.

(In kung fu, we're all a family, so I guess I'm a kung fu daughter, but it's more like I'm the fifteenth daughter by one of the lesser wives; Ryan is heir to the empire.)

There are further breakdowns. Maybe about a year ago, sifu instituted a three year instructor training track which buys you into two extra classes a week. (They kind of remind me of the black belt class except that they're longer and the uniforms are snazzier.) The curriculum is expanded and it serves as a shortcut around what otherwise would (I think) require your third degree black belt.

So last night's class, sifu announces to us that he's holding tomorrow's instructor training class at the new studio, blending the first hour with the regular class. People get lost, so I'm the ranking student out of seven or so when I get there. (I am the lowest-ranking black belt and black belts can only take black belt and instructor training classes so I am never, ever, ever the ranking student, but this is a blended class and, out of the instructor trainees, I outrank the smattering of us who were able to find the new place in time for class.) The studio's small so we fill it pretty nicely.

These kung fu studios are very, very small businesses. There's no receptionist and no extra instructors. If the phone rings in the middle of class and Sifu's not there, the instructor answers it: that's a potential sale. Don't get me wrong, they make an appointment to meet with the potential student and get the @#$! off the phone so they can continue leading class, but all I'm saying is that they do occasionally answer the phone. So when that sort of thing happens, the ranking student keeps the class going until the instructor can get back-- almost invariably within a minute or two.

Sifu begins the warm-up and is all of fifteen seconds into it when two young men show up at the door. This is a potential sale, so sifu leaves the room to take care of the customers and I start calling out the rest of the (routine) warm-up. Sifu's office door is still closed, so I start us up on our drills, basically calling for anything that comes to mind and hoping for sifu to come back. Four rows of high kicks later there's pretty much no room for hope anymore: sifu is well into the sale, giving young man #1 his free introductory lesson and I'm drilling the class back and forth across the room calling out combinations as they come to mind, adding flashier moves when the customers can see us and counting in our customary Cantonese.

This has happened to me once before. A few weeks ago, I'm stretching in the hour between black belt class and instructor training when Ryan comes back to me and says "Take the class." I must have given him a look because he follows it up with "You're in instructor training, take the class." They'd started in on drills when a customer showed up for an appointment (the free instruductory lesson.) Sifu was off at the new school and there must have been some sort of scheduling meltdown. I could hear the class counting in the background; they'd gotten to thiry-something of whatever it was they were doing. We're sort of a ten-to-twenty repetition studio, so a leaderless thirty-something with no end is sight wasn't quite a klaxon going off but it would be in another twenty reps or so. I ran up in front of the class and started calling out anything reasonable that came to mind, trying vaguely to remember if this class started at 12 or 12:15 so I would know when to stop drilling. About ten minutes into this, the instructor who was supposed to take over shows up and promptly rescues me. A little too fast, a little too complex, but altogether acceptable came the feedback.

So today, drawing upon my vast minutes of experience, I am surprisingly comfortable: the pace is better, the instructions are clearer, the combinations build more methodically. I wade in a sea of very athletic people who are dutifully kiyaping and snapping their kicks and generally throwing themselves into the series of extemporaneous drills I'm cobbling together for them when, thankfully, it's halftime: time to stop the drills and wander between them, checking their material and moving them forward individually as they're ready.

By this time, the lost people have found their way over-- including one of the instructors, and another guy who outranks me, by the way-- and quietly joined in the last five minutes of drills. No rescue this time, which I think means I'm doing Okay. By the time we finish out the first hour (time to dismiss the non-instructor-candidates) I've figured out something helpful to say to pretty much everybody in class (can't really help the late arrivals who outrank me.) Sifu just finishes his sale in time for the first batch of people to salute him and leave. Time for instructor training, in which things settle back to normal.

Young man #1 signs up; young man #2 doesn't and I'm wondering if I shouldn't have thrown in a few more flashy jumping spinning kicks to tip him over the edge.