I have found it!

I have found a collection of about a dozen strange, funny, and interesting things that I have witnessed and observed in the martial arts. Mostly, these are stories about silly things parents and students have done.

Be prepared as I will document these on my blog for your reading pleasure. Do understand, these stories come form over 25 years experience... not everybody is as eclectic as I will describe. This represents less than 1 out of 1000 regular full-time students.

Story 1:

I had a potential student’s mom observing a karate class I was teaching at a Chattanooga YMCA back in the mid 1990’s. As she was asking about classes (the assistant instructor was leading in drills), every count of "10" the students would Kiai (karate-shout).

After the students had done this a couple of times, the mom asked: "Are they saying 'kill'?"

I explained the students do not say "kill," they are just doing the karate shout.

Then the students kiai again. "There it is again!" she exclaimed, "they are saying 'kill!'" At which time she pointed out (with words I won't write here) that I was a "very bad man" for teaching these kids to kill.

I responded with sarcasm (don’t I always?) - pointing out that we had the most difficult YMCA in town to get hired at and my supervisor was one of the people that attended class. There was no way I could brainwash the students, even if I wanted to! (How do you politely explain to a prospective student that they might want to go see a doctor who specializes in hearing?)

She wasn't buying it, so she promptly left. I heard later that she tried to file a complaint with the General Manager. She became upset at the GM when she found out that the GM's grandson and granddaughter were both in the class and that was not at all what was going on!