Fwaaa

Stateside, a grocery store. I was choosing apples when a small force approached from the cereal aisle and stopped three paces from me. A boy. Six, perhaps. A bright cloth headband tied across his brow, the way I have worn mine into matters that decided lives. A ninja. Off duty, by the look of his sneakers. He pressed his small hands together and bowed — deep, formal, wobbling, held one breath too long, the headband sliding toward his eyes. I understood at once. This was a challenge, offered with full ceremony. A practitioner had identified me across the produce section and observed the old courtesies before engagement. I returned the bow. Lower than his, because he had bowed first, and the one who is honored must honor more. We held it. Two warriors bent over a pyramid of apples, neither willing to rise first. My back began to complain. I did not let it show. "He's a real one, Mom," the boy whispered, not rising. A real one. He had named me. A master does not waste such a word — this was now a sworn duel, witnessed. I bowed lower. The blood went to my head. "You can just high-five him, buddy," his mother said. A high-five. So the duel was to be decided by a single struck palm — one strike, all or nothing. I straightened, lifted my hand with the gravity of a man drawing at dawn, and prepared to meet his. He slapped my hand and giggled. "Okay, say bye to the nice man," she said, steering her cart. The duel was being adjourned. With honor. Neither defeated. I bowed a fourth time, deeper than all the others, to seal the truce. The headband, it turned out, was the entire dojo. There was no enemy — only a boy who had found, in the apple aisle, living proof that the thing he loved was true. It was like two men holding a door for each other, neither willing to walk through first, until the building closes. My back will not forgive me for a week. I do not care. From this day a folded headband rides in my pocket wherever I go, so the next child who bows to me over the apples finds me already bent to meet him — and we will hold it, the two of us, longer than the last.

Epstein