Changes

For the first few years, everything was very intense. I was expected to learn beside, and with, adults. I had to compete with them, and against them, but nothing was watered down, no exceptions were made. Kovacks-sensei made it very clear that if I wished to be promoted two things had to happen. The first was that my grades couldn't fall below a "C" or I would be placed on probation. If I got an "F," well, I'm sure you can imagine. The second thing was that anything I did was measured the same as the adults. If they broke boards, I was to break boards. If they kicked to the face, I had to find a way to kick them in the face also. Kovacks-sensei didn't teach us forms as he first wanted to make certain that we would live to see the age of eighteen.

Kovacks-sensei made it very, very clear that just being a strong fighter wasn't enough. You had to be a canny warrior as well. He taught my brothers and I (they began training about a year after I did) from "The Art of War" and "The Book of Five Rings" in those days. He made it quite clear that, as did Sun-tzu, he considered the greatest victory to be that achieved without bloodshed or violence. I learned why later.

We were doing well enough as fighters that at one point we even had some of the police officers in the training hall teaching us to be "tougher" mentally (on their own). To handle the verbal abuse that they felt we would run into. It was a few years too late but it did come in handy.

As we had made progress and were doing better than anyone had anticipated, we were featured in the local newspapers, which led to a demand for childrens classes. Everyone seemed to think that just because we were doing well, that ANY child could do as well.

This is what led to a ....... complication.

I don't know what happened in the childrens classes, but I can guess. Kovacks-sensei had expected my brothers and I to "take a bump" just as any of the adults in the class. Its an old way of training and is a good practice. The only problem is, the degree of force that one had to put out for an adult to feel the same "bump" when a six, or even eight year old is the "aggressor."

This is where it got interesting.

Although we usually trained with the adults on Thursday night, one week Kovacks-sensei told us that he also wanted us to come to the Saturday afternoon children's class.

Everything went pretty much as expected except that there was very little in the way of "contact drills." Hard blocks against each others arms, legs; block and strike drills. We didn't understand it but had sufficient discipline to not question it.

Everything took a left turn when we lined up for "free sparring," kumite. Free sparring is when you have three minutes to score points against each other. Strikes and kicks had to be clear, strong techniques. There couldn't be floppy strikes, weak forms or anything else that wouldn't have worked on the street.

I was lined up opposite a twelve or thirteen year old girl who stood head and shoulders over me. She had a fit of the giggles, I just stood there watching her, looking for weak points in her technique; the way she presented herself. There were no shortage of them. The girl's mother (sitting in the viewing gallery, newly installed) thought the fight was going to be terribly one sided; well, she was half right.

The fight only lasted about fifteen seconds, but it changed a lot of things for me, she tried to come in with a back fist strike but it didn't work like she wanted it to. It didn't work because she ran into my skipping side kick. Which knocked her about six feet back, flat on her back, struggling to breathe.

Kovacks-sensei yelled for the break, directing me to my corner, I sat there waiting for the girl to get her breath back. To me it was no big deal, you took a hit, you lose the point, you get up and carry on. What everyone else had forgotten was that I had spent all of my time training with adults.

In (what was to me) a surprise turn of events, the girl got up, gathered her things and went home. While she was doing this, Kovacks-sensei knelt down beside me and said, "K____, I know you didn't mean for that to happen like that, but you must never, never hurt a girl like that again."

For whatever reason, his instruction that day had an immense impact on me. My mother could always tell when I'd been in a fight and what gender it was with. If I got into a fight with a boy, she'd get a phone call from some irate parent who got told that the mere fact of my being a small teener, did not mean that I was the punching bag for their delinquent.

On the other hand, if I got into a fight with a girl, I'd usually come home with a black eye.

I was probably thirty something before, with the help of an aikidoka friend, I figured out how to defend myself against a woman without hurting her.

This has been a sometimes problem for me, but it has also caused a certain amount of merriment among my friends, and consternation for my commanders.

One last thing, to those who've commented on my first post, "gassho," I thank you deeply and I will definitely take what you have stated to heart. To the gentleman who wished for the colors to be other than what they are, my apologies, but it is a "style" thing. Most of the other color combinations didn't feel appropriate to the topic.

It's not about anger - it's about peace
It's not about power - it's about grace
It's not about knowing your enemy - it's about knowing yourself.

the Monk