“Dum Spiro Spero”: While I Breathe, I Hope.

Kick, Kick, Punch, Punch-HIYA! Who doesn’t love a good martial arts movie! I love them. I took a few months of Karate when I was 5 years old, my entire family did. Including my Mother. Because of all the things she was experiencing in her self, she felt doing karate would make us assassin proof. I actually remember having a lot of fun with this, the Sensei, Sensei Wallace was funny and very kind.

The last class I remember having was actually a party. They were showing a movie in the main office and there was pizza. We were doing classes as a whole group and just doing fun stuff. When we needed stance corrected, Sensei Wallace would walk through the ranks with a foam baton and he would gently tap you until you adjusted.

I was amped up from being there and from the party, after it was almost over, I picked up the baton and laughingly whacked him with the baton. Boy did I not realize how much trouble that was going to make for me. He laughed and asked “well what do I need to correct”, but he was talking to my Mother and basically told her if I had done that during a class I would be doing push ups to learn discipline.

I must have really embarrassed her. When we got home, it was about a 10 minute drive, it was dead silent. She had my siblings leave the room when get got in the door. She grabbed me by my arm and threw me to the floor. “Do push ups” she screamed at me. She took on the same demeanor that the Sensei used. But she was mad. I remember pushing and pushing and pushing. At 5 years old it didn’t take long for me to get tired.

Mother was good at dishing out pain. When I couldn’t go any more, she grabbed me by my hair and forced me up. Then back down. This went on for a while. She finally stopped and the last thing she said was “You wont ever do that again”. She was right, I didn’t. I was so terrified going into classes after that, I did exactly what I was told. Even when we could just play, I would sit in the corner, I didn’t want to possibly do something that would be wrong.

I remember when the Sensei noticed and he asked me if I was okay, I just shook my head. He spoke to my Mother about it and she told him that she had been working on discipline. I could see the concern even at 5, but nothing happened. We eventually quit going. As with most things we did, Mother would eventually feel like something was going on or get paranoid about something. It was an abrupt stop.