Life at the Academy

This past weekend was our state tournament.  I decided ahead of time not to compete in this one as there aren’t many older black belts that compete which leaves me competing against 20-somethings.  I don’t think a body my old is capable of keeping up with those young whipper snappers.  I participated as a much  needed judge instead.  Buster and Doodles did choose to compete.  They both signed up for open hand forms and musical forms, but Buster didn’t feel like doing the musical by the time they called for them so he only did the open hand.  They both did well, placing 2nd in each event.  I think this is the first time they didn’t get first in something since the first tournament we did, but it’s also the fewest events they have done since then.  Doodles almost opted out of the musical forms too, but was quite happy that she chose to compete in it.  Despite competing against 15-17 year old boys and girls when she is not quite 13, she placed 2nd in it.  She also beat the girl who beat her at the last tournament which made it a little sweeter.  Sometimes it’s not about what place you get, but who you beat.  One of her other most meaningful trophies was a 2nd place that she got over another girl from our school who was very good.  She came home very happy with that trophy.

in tae kwon do class, a slow 41 year old woman is paired with an energetic 13 year old boy to spar? I’ll tell you what, the teenager shows off with a beautiful spinning hook kick while the older woman does her best to get in a punch. The result is the spinning hook kick lands on the woman’s nose causing her to fall to the ground holding her hands over her nose expecting blood to be gushing out. Think of that Brady Bunch episode where Marcia gets hit in the nose with the football. That was me today, but it wasn’t a football, it was a boys heel. Fortunately when I pulled my hands away, there was no blood but boy did it hurt! I sat bending over into a fetal position trying really hard not to cry. One of the moms came over to check on me – between half-sobs, I told her it hurt a lot. They got an ice pack for me, and I sat there holding it over my nose/eyes/forehead. I had a terrible headache from the impact. Then, I look up and see the teenage boy crying because he hurt me. The poor kid felt horrible about it and continued to cry for half of the class. I felt even worse about that than the pain of kick. I pulled myself together so I could go talk to him. Despite the headache and painful nose, I put on a smile and cheered him up, even taking some of the blame for it since I was too slow too move out of the way. Then I told him how much fun he could have telling people he kicked a woman in the nose. He finally stopped crying, but he refused the hug that I tried to give him when he was leaving after class.

The swelling is rather minimal and there doesn’t seem to be any bruising yet. We’ll see how it looks in the morning. If it looks nasty, I’ll post a picture. LOL

I don’t go looking for jobs, they just find me.  Unfortunately, none of the jobs that have found me have paid much.  This one included.

We went to taekwondo last night and the owner/senior master called me over to talk.  He asked me if I wanted the good news or the bad news first.  I chose the bad news of course.  The bad news was that you can make a lot of money in that business.  He’s Korean and doesn’t always make a lot of sense, so I had no idea what he was talking about.  He then told me the good news was that he had fired the program director that had only been there for 2 months.  Of course that was leading up to him asking me if I would like to do it.  I won’t have to pay for our classes anymore, I won’t have to pay for my testing (but still pay for the kids’ testing), and I will get a commission based on every student that signs up.  Oh, and any karate gear I can get at his cost.  In return, I will have to answer phone calls, set up appointments, show up for the white belt classes since that’s when new people sign up, make id cards, enter their information into the computer, and set up billing.  He will provide me with a cell phone and a laptop.  Besides actually showing up at the white belt classes to sign up the new people, I can do the rest of the work at home at my convenience.

It’s the summer and I don’t have much else going on so I said yes.  However, I did warn him that if it was too time consuming and interfered with our lives too much when school started, that I might not be able to continue doing it.  I figure that gives me time to get it down to a system and see how much work it really is while giving me that easy out come fall, if I need it.

So the tournament was this weekend. It was an exhausting day and I’m so glad it’s over. The kids both competed in 4 events – open hand forms, musical forms, weapon forms, and self-defense. Buster won 1st in musical, 2nd in self-defense, and 3rd in both open hand and weapon forms. Doodles did equally well with 1st in self-defense, 2nd in open hand, and 3rd in both musical and weapon forms. As for me, they ended up combing all of the black belt women over 18 into one group rather than 2 groups. That’s not so good for a 40 year old. I ended up with 2nd after being beat by a 20-something year old. Oh well, second is a nice place to be.

The hardest part for me was having to be the “bad guy” for 7 kids to do their self-defense moves. The first one was easy as she was only a white belt so there were two simple moves to do. Then I did a green belt – still pretty easy. The sweat and pain came with the next 4 kids who were brown and black belts. Doodles had made a list of what she wanted to do which I had written on my hand. At the last minute she decided that I didn’t have to do the charging attack where she ends up on the floor and pushing me into a roll over her head. I was very grateful for that as it is my least favorite one to do. I went through her list with no problems. Then I have to do it with Buster but he wants me to do the roll. How could I say no to him? The next black belt wanted me to do the same ones with her. I’m getting really hot and tired by now as I had to keep getting beat up and then fall to the floor about 8 times with each of these kids and bounce right back up to do the next move. I had an advanced brown belt to do after that, with the roll. All was going well until we got to the roll. He must have really wanted to win that trophy because he didn’t let me control the roll and instead pushed me over his head as hard as he could with his legs causing me to totally lose control of the roll. I landed on the top, back part of my head, rather hard and it was a really ugly and painful roll. I told his parents they could pay for the chiropractor! And after getting up from that, I was informed that I had to immediately go to the other ring to do self-defense with a little red belt. When I was done, I had a bad headache and my neck was hurting from that bad roll. The judges gave me a perfect score of all 10’s for my performance. LOL It was only the next morning when I realized how falling hard to the mat about 50 times in a row can cause every muscle above the waist to be very, very sore. It hurts to breathe deeply or laugh. It hurts to bend over. It hurts to do anything.

There is a tournament this weekend.  I really had kind of decided that my competing days were over.  I have placed first in forms at every tournament I’ve been in and now that I’ve gotten to black belt, it just seemed like a good time to retire.  My closet is full of trophies and I don’t really care to add to the collection.  But then, I find out that this is a national championship tournament and everyone who gets first place will also be rewarded a patch to put on their gi that says national champion.  I want the patch.  They can keep the trophy, I want the patch.  Or maybe even two of them.  So, being motivated by the patch, I’ve been working a little harder, still not sure if I’m going to compete.  Honestly, I’m a bit afraid that this time, I might not win.  I don’t know why I’m afraid of that besides the point that by the time you get to black belt, it’s usually the people who are exceptionally good at it that are still doing it.  I think I’m pretty good.  It’s not that I’m a poor sport, I actually have some second place trophies that I won for weapons.  It’s that I have never lost in open hand forms and I like being able to say that.  I think I would like to be able to say that I’m a national champion even better though.  Besides, how will I know if I am that good if I don’t try.  The worst that will happen is that I won’t get first.  Nobody will think any less of me, myself included.

I’m glad that the kids don’t worry about such things.  They both are working on their forms planning to compete in open hand, weapons, and musical.  They have both experienced winning and not winning.  I think they have always done well enough to get trophies except for Buster the first year when he got two 4ths.  We have plenty of 1st, 2nd and 3rd place trophies in our house.  They want the patch too.  Funny what a motivator a little piece of cloth can be.