I've been thinking about my karate days, 'way back in the early 1990's, and how that missing grandfather of mine might have made a difference in the outcome.
I've never been into the regular athletic stuff. What I remember of the softball, soccer and touch football games of middle school in the early '80s is being the last kid picked. I was typically passed off to the other team--"Eh, you can have him." I was used to being the kid no one wanted; I didn't want to be there, either. PE was more punishment than pleasure.
I'd stand way out in left field, ignoring the game, wishing I had a book, wishing the class would END already. Every now and then a batter would lob the ball out into my real estate and I'd mosey over to its general area, pick it up, and throw it toward whomever was waving the hardest, not really caring whether the ball got that far or not. Payback for picking me last. Should have been nicer to me.
Once I got up to bat, though, I put everything I had into hitting the ball--but not to help the team. I just wanted to hit something.
Soccer was fun that way, too. Last one picked, put with the other outcaste kids at the goal, ignoring the game and just hanging out. Every now and again, the ball comes our way and I run all-out to intercept it. Then I'd kick it as hard as I could downfield, not bothering to aim for any of the arm-waving jerks. It was fun to watch both teams suddenly reverse course and go barreling after the ball. Payback for picking me last, etc. Soccer for the passive-aggressive!
Fast-forward to college in the early '90s. I fell in love with Shotokan karate from the first class in 1990. It was exercise that didn't feel like exercise, wasn't boring even for being repetitive, and was individual instead of a team thing. I kept my enthusiasm going for years, never in a hurry to get that black belt, because I was having so much fun in the moment.
I wasn't a prodigy, some reborn Bruce Lee. There were plenty of techniques to learn and some of them came easily. There were some--especially roundhouse and spinning rear kicks--that I couldn't seem to "get" no matter how hard I worked at them and it aggravated the hell out of me. I'm a perfectionist about the damndest things.
Apparently some of the higher-rank folks misinterpreted my enjoyment as arrogance. I didn't know it at the time, but they thought I had an attitude, that I was acting above my rank, wouldn't listen, and stuff like that. That's not how it really was, but I can see how people would think that of a socially-inept kid (25 is still a kid). I tried to explain that I was frustrated with those kicks, or that my left ankle didn't have quite the same range of motion as my right.
It all came to a head--and an end--in 1992. It was a good class and we were working on spinning rear thrust kicks. I was utterly failing, spinning too far or not getting my kicking leg up, juggling a thousand little things in my mind, trying to get it right this time and getting more and more aggravated.
Sensei stopped the class and called for a circle so he could demonstrate the kick with one of the black-belts. I must have muttered something, because the guy I was partnered with (both of us green-belts) asked what was wrong. I told him I was frustrated. No big conversation. But across the circle, one of the black belts--Farmboy-san--saw me talking. A breach of etiquette. After the class was over, Farmboy-san pulled me aside, stood me at "attention," and bitched me out: "If you ever do that again I'll kick your ass!"
All in that moment, it wasn't fun anymore. I gradually stopped going. Within 3 weeks, I was done with it.
I've looked at my journal for that month. I can't relate to the 20-something kid I was then, furious and scared, freaking out over being yelled at by someone with no real authority. It looks like I was back in middle school, ranting about one of the bullies.
I wish I'd at least given him some of his own--a simple, calm "You can try" in reply, or maybe just one of those Looks Clint Eastwood used to be known for. I don't doubt that my grandfather would have grinned his shit-eating-grin and fed Farmboy-san his belt.
I don't particularly believe in karma, but I learned that within a year of all that crap, Farmboy-san slipped on a ladder while doing some roof work and damaged his knee. No karate for him, at least for a few years.
Every once in a while I'll pull out my karate notebook and folders to see how much I still remember, what I can still do. I've got a few books on Japanese language, some on the culture, a crapload of martial-arts movies and anime. But right now, I can't do most of the karate stuff: ever since that aortic dissection hit me, I've been warned to avoid any stress or strain, or anything that might raise my blood pressure, which has stayed in the 160 to 180 range while the doc tinkers with my meds. I finally got it down to 141 over something in the last week. In the four months since I left the hospital, I've regained only a little of the muscle tone I lost in both legs; a short walk or shorter bike ride is about the most I can do, but it occurs to me that I can work on the basic karate stances as low-impact therapy, if I can get my knees to handle it.
All I have left is two sets of karate pajamas and my green belt that are more than slightly smallish, fading memories of the things I learned, and a slogan I thought up back when it was fun: "Two years of karate, and all I can do is get my ass kicked in Japanese!" The karate class didn't make fighters out of anyone. We weren't learning self-defense. It was Art Karate, or Tournament Karate, aerobics, exercise, form over function.
Even so, it was fun. I miss that most of all.
Showing posts with label Karate. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Karate. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Sunday, February 7, 2010
Bullies...and the Old Man
Still thinking about the Old Man, and my own troubles.
I was afraid of him for most of my childhood...disliked or hated him for that into my 20's...angry with myself into my 30's for not standing up to him, all because of those whippings that seemed all out of proportion to whatever I'd done, the threats of taking an ax handle to me...I wasn't a great kid, no, but I wasn't that bad or all that different from any other kid my age. Maybe it was his own upbringing; for the few years I was around his father (he died in the late '70s), most of the memories I have of Grafton were of a stern stranger. I don't remember him as a loving grandfather figure or much of anything else. And I don't know whether he whipped the tar out of his own kids.
I see other people, their closeness to family, and I wonder what it feels like. In my forties, the old fear is gone, the anger still there: I never stood up to him, or to anybody else. The closest I ever came to fighting back against bullies amounted to peeing on one. Would have been more satifying to knock him down and beat him unconscious, to make sure that was the last time he bullied anyone.
There was a teacher who was worse than that, in some ways. I was in her marketing class. One day, on the way across campus to her "portable" classroom, I found a pair of aluminum push-pins in the dirt. I like shiny things and metal, so of course I grabbed them. I had them on my desk during class (no book bag? Can't remember--but I had enough sense to not sit down with those things in a pocket).
One of the bullies got assigned to pick up trash in the room: the teacher's notion of punishment for talking. He walked up and down the rows, smirking, collecting paper or whatever and putting it in the trash can he was toting. When he got to my desk, he swept my pins into the can. I told him to put them back--and the teacher got involved.
She looked at the pins and told me I'd stolen them from her bulletin board. Wouldn't listen to my side of things. Go sit down.
As I walked away, I muttered, "you f*cking bitch."
This got me sent to the dean's office, got my mother called in for a conference with the three of them...and got me suspended for a few days. No one bothered to ask me my side. All they cared about was the disruption, not right or wrong. To this day, I stand by what I did--but I wish I'd been better at it, my own defense attorney, able to use words as weapons, with the conviction of being in the right--the pins weren't stolen, and she was a farking bitch.
Funny thing is that she was supposed to be psychic. It was years later that I thought that I could have used that--"You're psychic, right? Why don't you use your mystical powers to find the truth?"
Nah. I never had the backbone to stand up to any of them, the Old Man, his son, the bullies at school, the teachers who didn't care anymore about teaching and just wanted to get through another day of dealing with us teenaged terrorists. Then there were various management types, both in civilian and military employ, where pushing back would bring worse than schoolboy suspension...well, a boss can only fire you. Military people can throw your ass in jail whether they're wrong or not.
So many authoritarians and incompetents. Teachers fail upward and become administrators. Sergeants collect more rockers on their sleeves. Crappy team leaders become managers become district managers. Brown belts become black belts--and there's always someone who thinks his new rank should be used as a bludgeon. The new administrator wants to clean up the school, get rid of things he found offensive and could do nothing about. The new sergeant tries to shape up his platoon by becoming a shouting drill instructor. The new district manager has to be consulted for every decision, demanding that payroll be kept unrealistically low--but those sales have to go up, whether there are enough people to do the job or not. The new blackbelt looks upon simple mistakes as infractions to be punished.
They're all the same. But the stepfather, the stepbrother...where do they fit into this? An administrator or manager can be shuffled sideways, a sergeant reassigned, a black belt put through a "guantlet" where he must face the other high-ranks, to be shown how little he knows.
What the hell do you do with family?
What the hell do you do three decades later, when you're not that scared little kid--just an adult looking at new things to be afraid of--your own failing health and that of your surviving parent, looking for a new job.
What the hell do you do when that giant with a belt is just an old man?
I was afraid of him for most of my childhood...disliked or hated him for that into my 20's...angry with myself into my 30's for not standing up to him, all because of those whippings that seemed all out of proportion to whatever I'd done, the threats of taking an ax handle to me...I wasn't a great kid, no, but I wasn't that bad or all that different from any other kid my age. Maybe it was his own upbringing; for the few years I was around his father (he died in the late '70s), most of the memories I have of Grafton were of a stern stranger. I don't remember him as a loving grandfather figure or much of anything else. And I don't know whether he whipped the tar out of his own kids.
I see other people, their closeness to family, and I wonder what it feels like. In my forties, the old fear is gone, the anger still there: I never stood up to him, or to anybody else. The closest I ever came to fighting back against bullies amounted to peeing on one. Would have been more satifying to knock him down and beat him unconscious, to make sure that was the last time he bullied anyone.
There was a teacher who was worse than that, in some ways. I was in her marketing class. One day, on the way across campus to her "portable" classroom, I found a pair of aluminum push-pins in the dirt. I like shiny things and metal, so of course I grabbed them. I had them on my desk during class (no book bag? Can't remember--but I had enough sense to not sit down with those things in a pocket).
One of the bullies got assigned to pick up trash in the room: the teacher's notion of punishment for talking. He walked up and down the rows, smirking, collecting paper or whatever and putting it in the trash can he was toting. When he got to my desk, he swept my pins into the can. I told him to put them back--and the teacher got involved.
She looked at the pins and told me I'd stolen them from her bulletin board. Wouldn't listen to my side of things. Go sit down.
As I walked away, I muttered, "you f*cking bitch."
This got me sent to the dean's office, got my mother called in for a conference with the three of them...and got me suspended for a few days. No one bothered to ask me my side. All they cared about was the disruption, not right or wrong. To this day, I stand by what I did--but I wish I'd been better at it, my own defense attorney, able to use words as weapons, with the conviction of being in the right--the pins weren't stolen, and she was a farking bitch.
Funny thing is that she was supposed to be psychic. It was years later that I thought that I could have used that--"You're psychic, right? Why don't you use your mystical powers to find the truth?"
Nah. I never had the backbone to stand up to any of them, the Old Man, his son, the bullies at school, the teachers who didn't care anymore about teaching and just wanted to get through another day of dealing with us teenaged terrorists. Then there were various management types, both in civilian and military employ, where pushing back would bring worse than schoolboy suspension...well, a boss can only fire you. Military people can throw your ass in jail whether they're wrong or not.
So many authoritarians and incompetents. Teachers fail upward and become administrators. Sergeants collect more rockers on their sleeves. Crappy team leaders become managers become district managers. Brown belts become black belts--and there's always someone who thinks his new rank should be used as a bludgeon. The new administrator wants to clean up the school, get rid of things he found offensive and could do nothing about. The new sergeant tries to shape up his platoon by becoming a shouting drill instructor. The new district manager has to be consulted for every decision, demanding that payroll be kept unrealistically low--but those sales have to go up, whether there are enough people to do the job or not. The new blackbelt looks upon simple mistakes as infractions to be punished.
They're all the same. But the stepfather, the stepbrother...where do they fit into this? An administrator or manager can be shuffled sideways, a sergeant reassigned, a black belt put through a "guantlet" where he must face the other high-ranks, to be shown how little he knows.
What the hell do you do with family?
What the hell do you do three decades later, when you're not that scared little kid--just an adult looking at new things to be afraid of--your own failing health and that of your surviving parent, looking for a new job.
What the hell do you do when that giant with a belt is just an old man?
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
"Everyone Wins!" karate tournament
Back in my karate days--I think this was 1991 or early '92--I went to the one and only kata tournament I've ever attended.
What's kata? Basically, it's a specific sequence of techniques and stances intended to get you used to moving around in a proper stance. The link takes you to the North Austin Tae Kwon Do site for an MPEG demonstration of Heian Shodan, the first such kata (or "form") you learn in Shotokan karate (and maybe other Japanese/Okinawan tyles--but I only know Shotokan).
This was a local event assembled in a high school gym. There were maybe a dozen people from my class (local Junior College), lots of kids from Tae Kwon Do classes, a Shotokan club from the University of West Florida, maybe 100 participants total. Everyone got a T-shirt when they signed in and paid their fee.
The UWF Shotokan guys' stances and technique execution were subtly different from ours. One guy did the "spear-hand" strike (about 16 seconds into this kata (Heian Sandan)) at about a 45-degree angle downward rather than keeping his right arm horizontal. I've always wondered why, since it doesn't seem practical. With that strike, you're using the tips of your fingers--only good against a soft target like the base of the throat, below the sternum, or the eyes, for example. If he's going for a groin strike, there's a lot of stuff in the way that could earn him broken fingers.
So anyway, I was one of a mess of other orange belts from my club, and all of us were doing Heian Yondan. The idea was that each participant can do whichever kata they want, but it was recommended that they do their testing kata. There wasn't really anything making us stand apart as far as performance, so I ended up with a silver. I can't remember whether I messed up somewhere or not, but it could have been any little detail that scored against me. Or it could have been "not standing out" that did it.
I shoulda done this one (Heian Godan)--the next-higher one. And I knew that even before I started the one I did do.
That said, I didn't really give much thought to the "everyone's a winner!" approach of the tournament. I can understand the notion of wanting to protect the kids' ego and self-esteem, but it seems like an attempt to make life seem fair regardless of the effort one puts into it. I wonder if it's the right sort of message to be teaching various precious snowflakes.
What's kata? Basically, it's a specific sequence of techniques and stances intended to get you used to moving around in a proper stance. The link takes you to the North Austin Tae Kwon Do site for an MPEG demonstration of Heian Shodan, the first such kata (or "form") you learn in Shotokan karate (and maybe other Japanese/Okinawan tyles--but I only know Shotokan).
This was a local event assembled in a high school gym. There were maybe a dozen people from my class (local Junior College), lots of kids from Tae Kwon Do classes, a Shotokan club from the University of West Florida, maybe 100 participants total. Everyone got a T-shirt when they signed in and paid their fee.
The UWF Shotokan guys' stances and technique execution were subtly different from ours. One guy did the "spear-hand" strike (about 16 seconds into this kata (Heian Sandan)) at about a 45-degree angle downward rather than keeping his right arm horizontal. I've always wondered why, since it doesn't seem practical. With that strike, you're using the tips of your fingers--only good against a soft target like the base of the throat, below the sternum, or the eyes, for example. If he's going for a groin strike, there's a lot of stuff in the way that could earn him broken fingers.
So anyway, I was one of a mess of other orange belts from my club, and all of us were doing Heian Yondan. The idea was that each participant can do whichever kata they want, but it was recommended that they do their testing kata. There wasn't really anything making us stand apart as far as performance, so I ended up with a silver. I can't remember whether I messed up somewhere or not, but it could have been any little detail that scored against me. Or it could have been "not standing out" that did it.
I shoulda done this one (Heian Godan)--the next-higher one. And I knew that even before I started the one I did do.
That said, I didn't really give much thought to the "everyone's a winner!" approach of the tournament. I can understand the notion of wanting to protect the kids' ego and self-esteem, but it seems like an attempt to make life seem fair regardless of the effort one puts into it. I wonder if it's the right sort of message to be teaching various precious snowflakes.
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