Fencing: A Real Social Experience

Last night, I got stabbed at least 30 times, and stabbed my attacker back at least 40 times.   I was participating in Rebel Swords, a fencing club here at BYU.  Throughout the hour and a half of instruction, I learned how to hold my body and the foil (a fencing sword), how to lunge and recover, and how to parry and thrust.  I learned what it means to suit up in communal fencing gear, and let's just say it is smelly!  I was taught by someone who had been fencing for about a year, and then as I practiced my partner and I taught each other through the experience.  At the end of the night, we were able to view a mock duel from some of the more skilled fencers in the room, and it was an amazing experience.  The most interesting part of the Duel for me was watching the referees.  I myself am a soccer referee, so I have a little empathy for all sport judges, but this was completely different.  I felt awed at the vast knowledge this fellow student had about his sport, and how complicated it all looked and how quickly he was able to see what happened.  The calls he made sounded mostly like a foreign language, but they were probably normal fencing words and I could only interpret the little that I had learned that night. 

We didn't do any moves as cool as these... at least not yet....

Any sport, I feel like, is a very social and folk knowledge type of thing.  It helps to actually see the skill in action when you are trying to learn it, instead of just having someone explain it to you, or reading about it.  I would not be able to do the little that I can if I had tried to learn it from Youtube.  Despite our amazing social networking techniques, there is still something amazing and very important about the personal, physical presence and interaction between two people or a whole group.  I definitely would not have been as excited about learning fencing if it was going to be an experience in front of my computer or TV or a book.  This experience helped me define folk knowledge more personally, and understand the concept better.  Folk knowledge is what we learn when we are with "folk", things that are only experienced in some kind of social context and are best learned that way.