Confessions of a Karate School Dropout

Confessions of a Karate School Dropout

-September 25th, 2008 by Scott Urmson

If you have a young one coming of age and you'd like to teach him or her the art of respect, discipline and self-defense, why not do so with belts? Not Karate belts, of course. Karate is a joke. I'm talking about going old-school and beating sense into your kids with belts until they're big enough to beat you back. You'll get better results than paying for karate lessions and less confusion of what's happening from the child.

I'm not going to recite the origins and history of karate, or acknowledge the probability of it's immense power as a respected and feared martial art when given to the hands of a true master. Instead, you'll see true insight from the perspective of a young student attending a small-town dojo in a strip mall next to a sub shop and a print-copy office, and in turn, find out why it's a waste of a parent's hard earned goddamn money.

First however, let's take a look at a couple of reasons why I find karate classes to be a ridiculous waste of time. I studied Shaolin Kempo, which translates to, "No, you didn't do it right. Punch at me again". You see, the first reason I find karate ridiculous, is that one of the biggest things we were taught is memorizing a series of preset counter-attack combinations. All of which stem from the same exact attack.

This implies that every attacker—be it a gorilla-armed drunk fool or a jockstrap school bully—will come at you every time by cresent-stepping forward one step with a straight mid-range punch to the torso. Check out this video. These people are black-belts and the very best at what they do. At face-value, they look like they're freestyling it, but these are preset combinations. In the midst of the visual flurry, if you pay close enough attention, you'll notice a lot of the initiating attacks are those mid-range straight punches. The addition of the Drowning Pool song gave me douche-chills watching it.

The second reason I find learning karate ridiculous, is that it's supposed to be for self-defense. Yet from the very beginning, they urge you over and over to never use it if you don't have to. Only use it as an absolute last resort. Like all of a sudden you're a walking super-weapon just because you gave them the money to show up. Not only that, but if you're a kid and a more timid one at that, you're going to avoid fighting in the first place. So now, they've beat that into your head so much that you could be captured in someone's basement and a guy is walking at you with a ball-gag and a knife and you'll be like, "Now-now, you don't have to resort to violence. Sensei would be disappointed in me". No other sport or class can you sign up for and they say, "Don't use this ever". You don't sign up for basketball and they say, "Only play this game as a last resort". It's like a class that shows you tricks to be a good arsonist, but tells you don't play with matches.

When I was twelve years old, I took karate lessons for approximately a year and a half. In that time, I progressed half-way up the belt color chart. I believe I made it to purple, just when it started getting dark—and sexy. I learned nothing about fighting. In fact, it was a disturbingly ginger process given the subject matter. I was burning my way up the charts like a 50 Cent song and I had yet to be in anything close to a fight. Oh, we had sparring. My parents had to spent $150 dollars on sparring pads and equipment. They were in pristine condition when I quit, too.

It wasn't difficult to keep them in such great shape when sparring sessions consisted mostly of a bunch of nine-year-olds whiffing their padded fists at air in slow motion like they're reinacting to their friends what they just saw someone do in a game of Street Fighter II. Looking back now, I'm surprised that we didn't make the, "Hwah-pshhh!" noises. Actually, we couldn't have if we wanted to. We were wearing mouth guards to protect us for when we never got punched in the face, ever.

Sadly, I was one of the oldest and biggest kids in the class. Once, I had to spar with the littlest of all the karate-ers. He was multiple feet shorter than I was. I felt wrong about trying to kick his ass. Especially after the sensei said 'go' and he began 'kick-walking' at me, one foot in front of the other. I'm supposed to fight a kid literally half my size when he's just goose-stepping towards me like he's doing a John Cleese impression. So, I let him win and had to act like, "Wha? How'd he do dat? Dis kid's a fuckin' karate genius!"

The two senseis who owned this joint were a married couple. Sometimes, we'd be graced by the presence of their son. He was at least a year or two younger than me, yet he was already like an octuple black belt. His parents must have been thrilled that their kid turned out to be a super karate master and they coincidentally have rank-granting authority. That worked out great! I wonder why I never saw him on the cover of 'Super Karate - fuckin' - Prodigy Kid Monthly'. He earned his masters degree in business in two years. He was like the ITT Tech of karate.

The truth of the matter is that the only way to become one of the awesome ninjas that we always picture in our heads is to focus more on gymnastics. Wear the fruity tights, go to the dance studio and in a couple years, you can be as cool as Joe Eigo.

This guy is the fucking man. He's worked with Jackie Chan as a member of his stunt team. He can jump on top of a garbage dumpster without using his hands. The super black-belt prodigy kid with the promotion-happy sensei parents, hasn't and can't. So, you have one of two choices, you can suck it up and become a gymnist—a manly, ninja-in-training gymnist, that is—thus gaining the ability to freestyle flip off trees and work on stunt teams in Hollywood; or you can practice preset combinations at air for hours on end, learn Katas—which are nothing more than glorified country line-dancing routines—and only gain the ability to deal with any troublesome ghosts or imaginary friends who may need to be set back in line.