Rabbit Lessons, Part I

Just to be absolutely certain, I have mentioned previously that this would also touch on my education and experience as an outdoorsman, right?
Excellent, I thought I might have forgotten to mention that.
One other thing, due to the length, this commentary is going to be in two installments.
It all probably started out pretty much the same as it would have for any other child, of my generation. Too much “Daniel Boone” and “Wagon Train Days“and, until we moved out to a farming community it was all just an abstract idea. Living in the city of Cleveland, the closest thing we had to a forested area was an abandoned lot, over grown with pioneer plants and shrubs. Being between two houses with a fence at the back there wasn’t too much mischief that we could get into there.
After we moved out to Aurora, however, everything changed. The very things we had moved to escape, encroaching racism and prejudice, were already firmly established there. At that time, Aurora wasn’t even big enough to qualify as a village and its main “claim to fame” was that it was where state routes 306 and 43 met. They were also pretty much the only paved roads in the area.
After we moved into the area, I wondered where the other children were, our neighbors didn’t seem to want to have much to do with us. I didn’t understand why, or care, at the time, because I had my younger brothers to play with.
It wasn’t until September, when I was to start school that we gained a pretty good idea of what was going on, you see, the local children (in my immediate area) were pretty much all older than myself, which wouldn’t have phased me as I was accustomed to associating with adults, as were my brothers. What we didn’t know was that we had been watched, spied upon, state it however you’d like the result was the same. The local “gooks” were kept a close watch on.
Until that first day of school, I hadn’t had any real contact with bullies. There had been a few pushing matches to be sure, but nothing that would have classed as a real fight. So what education in the martial arts I received was largely limited to the philosophy and some of the basics. My uncle and my father saw no need to hurry things; my mother would have been just as glad if I never needed to learn to fight.
That first day of school I crossed the lot behind our house (which we didn’t own at the time) with a kiss goodbye from my mother and an armload of supplies (backpacks weren’t the utilitarian/fashion requirement that they have come to be). As I exited the overgrown lot, there was silence at the bus stop. After a pause, one of the teenagers standing there with the elementary school children approached me, smiling, as he watched my struggle to balance the cumbersome load.
“Well, looky here, a gook,” he stood over me for a moment, then knocked me to the ground, books, papers, crayons; all the detritus required for the first grade, on the ground in front of me. As I struggled to get everything together again, he swaggered back to the congratulations of his friends and the elementary school children. I gathered my school supplies and stood behind the others, waiting for the school bus.
The first grade teacher was standing there, waiting for her new charges to arrive when the bus parked. As soon as she saw my disheveled state she rushed me to the office, helping me to straighten my appearance out; all the while pointing out to the principal the error of permitting the high school students to use the same bus stops as the elementary school students.
What followed next were several hurried phone conferences between my father and my uncles, and late night conversations between my parents which eventually led to my starting a more formal education in the combative sciences.
But these last three paragraphs aren’t the main focus of this article, they are actually the prelude to the main concerns of this article, my education as an outdoorsman.
I know that somewhere out there, are about nineteen other men who can state that they had the opportunity to learn the things that I learned, but those are all I can vouch for.
You see, my father took those things I saw on “Daniel Boone” and built on those. We would be watching the show and he’d make a comment or two about how he might do something, which usually involved some sort of combat or scout maneuver. Generally it would involve just a small change like, “...if he really wanted to stay out of sight while he was waiting to ambush that guy, he’d climb a tree ...” or perhaps when he saw the “Rifleman” peering at the landscape while “scouting” he’d comment, “... he wouldn’t be so easy to see if he’d just crouch down beside that boulder ...” Little things, small comments, but they were the comments of a member of the Marine “Combat Raiders” and a former intelligence operative; made to a son who took note of them.
Took note of them and applied them to his own situation.
There was a small woodlot on our street; it didn’t take too long before the other children, regardless their age, hesitated to follow me into that area with violence in mind. The first times they had done so, they managed to get hold of me and a fight ensued. In those days, the outcome was highly variable. But my uncle made certain to mention that, as big as the size difference was, there was no such thing as a fair fight and that I should have no qualms about using whatever means lay at hand to end the fight, preferably in my favor.
Another elder, Grandpa Wilson, whom I met at the local general store, had advice which always seemed to sound demented but, in retrospect, was some of the best advice I got in my life. I’m only sorry that I didn’t pay as much attention to him, as I did my first love, Science.
The first time we met was at the store and he stared at me intently, ignoring my brothers. Then he came up to me and introduced himself, after doing so he asked my name; then my nation. I stared at him blankly, until Mr. Lyons told me that he wanted to know my ancestry and I replied that I was Chinese. He looked at me intently and said, “One day you will know who your people are.” Quite frankly, on hearing that, I thought he was just plain nuts. It was sure obvious to everyone around me what my nation was.
Shifting gears without a second thought he then asked why I had a black eye, I told him about the recent fight, my dash into the woodlot and the subsequent fight. He smiled when I told him about nailing the departing thug, in the back of the head, with a thrown branch (I hadn’t even heard of rabbit sticks back then!), he smiled in approval then asked why I had decided to fight someone who was so much larger. I told him that I didn’t have much choice. He told me that the choice was always there. I looked at him blankly and he laughed, “If you want to know how to escape your enemies, then watch the rabbits.”



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

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