Winnie-the-Pooh print flannel bedsheets were also involved somehow

last week

Flyover shot: over the Atlantic Ocean, towards the rocky coast of Sandusky, Ohio, a resort island near Boston. The camera catches up with a girl finishing a three-mile swim; it's me and POV switches to mine. I reach the beach, grab a towel and enter a giant McMansion settled among the rocks.

Inside is an elegantly appointed gym where a bunch of Victorian-style grandmothers train people about my age in boxing. It's a Jedi-style appointment: you live in one of the bedrooms upstairs while you're training there, and apparently take manners/dancing lessons as well in the grand ballrooms.

I'm dressed and I have my gym bag. A girl I think I may have spoken with once on the internet approaches me in the enormous kitchen.
"Hey, can we do a fight?" she asks.
"I'd really rather not," I say. "I just got back from training."
She insists. I can't get her to leave me alone so I finally agree.
We wrap our hands and put on gloves right in the kitchen. Mine are exactly like my real ones except immensely high-quality, and dusty.

I block all her shots, and the first punch I throw hits her hard. She shakes it off and comes back, but within the minute I land a punch on her sternum that literally sends her flying into a wall at least ten feet away. She slumps onto the ground.

"TKO," says a Boxing Grandmother who has wandered into the kitchen.

"Nice one," says my opponent weakly. She is my water bottle. A few perfect globes of vividly orange gatorade leak out of her nose, which is intermittently my water bottle's nozzle.

I want to throw up.

My mom and dad are coming in from the dining room. My dad hates when I participate in any sport he considers too masculine, and my mom hates violence, so I tell them what just happened expecting that they'll be mad at me, validating my anger with myself. To my immense chagrin, they both raise their eyebrows. They are surprised and impressed.

Later I'm still upset about it, but now it's because I'm worried I'm only that "good" at boxing because no one else around is good enough to beat me, and if I ever try to compete at a higher level I'm going to get my ass handed to me.