Do You Trust Me? Part 2

Tim calls my name, I take up my practice sword and walk to the center of the old chapel where we did our lessons.  I was instructed not to use any offensive maneuvers and with that we squared off.  Tim extened his sword and pointed the tip at my face, he advanced in this position.  I swiped his blade away only to have him return it to it's original position.  And as this went back and forth I was asked many questions in quick succession.  These questions included "Do you trust me?" "Do you trust anyone?" "Who do you trust the most in this room?" and "Why?" "Why?" Why?".  This last one was asked after every answer I made. 

I remember it being very frustrating trying to keep Tim's sword point away from my face while answering a volley of questions.  In a normal circumstance I would come up with a shrewd cover up for these questions, not really answering them and avoid the probing, but I couldn't do that and defend myself at the same time, so I just had to answer them straight out.

After about 5 nerve frazzling minutes of this sort of interrogation, Tim said, "Ok, lower your sword".  I reluctantly let down my blade, the only thing protecting me from my enem...I mean teacher's sword.  "I am not going to touch your face with my sword Victoria," he said matter of factly.  And with those words he pointed his sword at my face and took a step closer.  I reflexively moved away.  "Don't move, you are going to have to trust me, do you trust me?"  I looked straight into his face and said, "yes".  I stood there and watched Tim's sword point come so close to my nose I thought for sure I was going to get whacked with it.  I remember closing my eyes for a second and when I opened them again, the sword was gone and Tim just stood there smiling.  We both let out our breath.

I didn't really appreciate it then, but now I can see that Tim's, ahem, unique, training methods were what I needed.  People could tell me that trusting is OK til the cows come home, but until I was actually put into a circumstance where I had to trust and it turned out OK, I wouldn't believe a word of it.

The moral of the story?  You know what?  I don't even know how to word the moral of the story. It's Ok to trust people, not everyone is going to hurt you, some people actually want to be your Allie.  There, that's the close I can come to putting it into words.