Martial Arts Stories - Part V

Story 5

At the risk of sounding like I'm beating up on home-schoolers, which is not the case - I have another funny Martial Arts moment to share. Be advised, home-schoolers are not a group I pick on, they just happened to provide 2 necessary qualities for humorous stories:
1) I have 10 years of experience teaching home-schoolers, and
2) Home-schooling is a magnet for some eccentric personalities.

I had couple of parents that lived next door to one another ask me if I could come over on a Saturday and help their kids w/ karate and baby-sit. I had a free day that Saturday (which was rare for me during college), so why not?

Everything went OK - until the next Saturday. I got a call from another parent - completely separate from the ones I had helped the prior weekend - who asked when would be a good time that day for me to come to his place and tutor his son in karate, free of charge, as well!

I politely informed him that my day was rather busy already, but perhaps some other time. He proceeded to chew me out for being "unfair" and gave several demands that I come out on my time and tutor his son for free. (BTW - I had received payment from the first set of parents for the babysitting, but their son had told his son that I did not charge for the karate).

After a long, rather one-sided argument (on his part, anyways), for the first time in my life, I fired a student. It was saddening. It almost brought tears to my eye. Now, I look back with fondness. That situation taught me a lot about life and dealing with people.

PS - the first family mentioned happened to be the same ones that had the mom I had to restrain later (Story 4). How ironic, huh?