Tonight after Karate, Sensei Hartman told us that he enjoyed reading our blogs, but “we need to stop posting so much nerd shit so he can understand what’s going on.” In that vein, I will attempt to keep this blog post free of anything nerd-related.
Karate was great tonight. I enjoyed the fact that I was able to work out the whole time without sending my back into the Fifth Circle of Hell, thanks mostly to the fact that the black belts got to correct the beginners class instead of working out. Now the problem isn’t so much abject pain from doing techniques as it is pain from fatigue. There were a few times during the blocking drills tonight I actually felt good. Once this back thing clears up, I’m going to make it my best effort to make it to the Mapleton dojo so I can start to get ready for my Nidan test, whenever that may be.
Tonight I realized why I’m missing school so much and at the same time not missing it at all. I am still in daily contact with my friends from school and I miss the day-to-day hanging out that we used to do… stuff like tossing back beers, watching TV till all hours of the night, and shooting pool until all hours of the night. There is no problem with this, in fact, it seems quite natural to miss them.
The reasons I don’t miss school at all are many. Class is no fun. That’s right up there. My dorm room was tiny. My family and fiancée are here. Tonight I was reminded again of one of the things that I have known for a long time: I have a second family.
I go to their house on Tuesday and Thursday nights and beat the piss out of me, and I love them for that. I have about five extra fathers who have helped raise me in many ways, I have a tight-knit group of brothers and sisters that always know how to give me a hard time, make me laugh, or bust me down a peg or two. These people also inspire me all the time. We also have the extended family, including queer uncles and cousins that disappear at length or end up in with a bad crowd. We have our fights (both political and physical), but all-in-all we create a very important dynamic that I just can’t walk away from.
Strangely enough, most of this was triggered when I saw Rush-san tonight for the first time in many years. My brain indexes things so that occasionally I relate certain injuries to certain people (since I’ve had so many!), and I immediately was reminded of the time we were both brown belts together and Rush-san accidentally kicked me in the nads. I remembered how hard we were sparring that day and how much I always had a hard time getting techniques past him. This reminded me of the time my cousin John and I were sparring on a dock on the Fourth of July when he was a green belt, and I was a high purple or brown belt. I couldn’t get anything in on him, and he slipped on the wet carpeting that covered the dock and kicked me in the nads. I think this is where the whole “Karate is my Family too” tirade began.
So to sum it up, I have my friends still at school that I want to hang out with and can’t, but on the flipside, I have both my real and karate families here that I have stronger ties to than friendship. As I work all of this intellectual mishmash out of my brain, I think I will end up feeling better in the long run. You all get to go along for the ride.
I’m pretty surprised… this non-nerdy blog post actually turned out pretty well, if I do say so myself.
A sidenote to this post: I ran the spellcheck, and the system wanted to replace the word “nads” with “nards”. I can’t believe nards was in my system’s dictionary.
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