I wanted to take karate classes when I was young. My best friend was studying Shotokan karate at a local dojo and I could easily have gone along with him most nights. But my mother didn’t want me to learn to fight. Yes, I knew that wasn’t the point, but she didn’t at the time, and I didn’t have the words to explain it to her until much later.
A few months before Erik was born, I joined a dojo that was close to where I was working at the time in Newmarket, staying late once or twice after work to attend classes. It worked well for me and I went as far as Yellow belt before I changed locations and that dojo stopped being possible. And then I was a manager in the flagship store and had a small child and a weird schedule that wasn’t conducive to regular anything that I couldn’t move to suit my hours on a given day.
So when Erik expressed interest when he was eleven, we talked it over, and I joined with him. Melanie and Lesli both spent some time in the dojo too, but I’m the only one still doing it fourteen and a half years later.
At this point, I’ve added a couple of degrees to my Black Belt and have studied some kobudo (traditional Okinawan weapons) and a tiny bit of Kung Fu. I’m a regular instructor at our dojo and have occasionally helped some non-karate friends with a little self-defense.
I have no idea what’s going to spring out of this very basic page, but it feels important to me to have it.
Life, Writing, Weirdness 