2025, Business, Kids, Mysteries, sports

Chop Chop

22 Comments

There has been a karate school a few blocks from my house all the time I have lived here (think going on 3+ decades).  I’ve really never paid attention to it at all.

Well, I got invited there to watch Marie (little girl who used to next door to me) take part in her karate class.  If I had any assumptions before going, they were almost all wrong.

The karate school is woman-owned (not Japanese karate master-owned) with primarily women instructors (not Japanese karate masters).   I saw a bit of three classes – the one before Marie’s, then Marie’s and then the very beginning of the class after.  It was approximately 2/3 girls (not a bunch of Asian little boys).   I actually only saw one Asian kid the whole night.  So much for all my assumptions.  To be fair, all I knew about karate before this was what I learned from watching James Bond movies.

Marie’s class is about 40 minutes long and the very first class was half instruction about when and when NOT to use their karate skills.  Marie is the smallest in her class but pretty feisty.  Another little girl had the karate yell down pat and one of the little boys could hardly wait for the instructor to give the go-ahead for the next move.  They were all very cute.

I did a little searching on the internet and the history/etymology of karate is WAY too extensive for me to even try to parse it.  You’ll thank me for that!

Have you ever learned any karate / judo / taekwondo / sumo??

22 thoughts on “Chop Chop”

  1. We took son Joel and his cousin to (I think it was) a karate class held in a strip mall in Minnetonka in the late 80s, on the recommendation of one of Husband’s sisters. Pat had taken her boys there, and then she started taking lessons! She ended up with one of the advanced belts (tho’ I don’t think it was black belt).

    The closest I’ve come is learning t’ai chi, which is actually the slow form of a martial art. Sometimes the instructor will demonstrate by doing the move fast, and you can see how this could be damaging!

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  3. Nope. I’m a lover, not a fighter. And not a very good lover, to be honest ( a one-woman man here!)

    Chris in Owatonna

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  4. Almost forgot! Stepson is now a Maestre in Capoeira – a Brazilian martial art that traditionally happens in a circle of people singing and playing instruments.

    “Capoeira traces its roots back to the 16th century during Brazil’s colonial era. It was developed by enslaved Africans as a means of resistance against oppression. Disguised as a dance, capoeira allowed practitioners to prepare physically and mentally for confrontations while appearing to engage in harmless activity…”

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    1. On a trip to Brazil back in 2016 we went to a Capoeira performance. It was amazing! Photo/video was prohibited but I managed to sneak a few pics and video clips. I still enjoy watching them.

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  7. No fighting for me. In grade school (can’t recall the grade) gym class had wrestling. Both NDSU and Concordia had elite wrestling programs. Also, Moorhead High was very competitive. Now in thinking about it, I believe the instructor was “grooming” kids for wrestling.
    I hated DOING the sport but enjoyed watching the professionals on tv. If I remember correctly, a station out of the Twin Cities produced it.

    Anyway, for some reason, there were tournaments between elementary schools. I remember Park v Sharp. Dead of winter and this looser walking home all sweaty. Miserable.

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  8. Our son did tae kwon do and Korean weaponry. That involved the nunchucks, a wooden sword, and a staff. He never looked like he loved it. He enjoyed it and he was decent at it but he lacked the zeal and enthusiasm that some kids have. That would’ve been 20 some years ago, I think it was right around the time I sold the cows, because the first class was at 5:00, for an hour, and then the next class was at 7. So we’d go across the street and get something to eat. Some days I had to wait to take him home and I remember not milking cows until 8:30 at night every now and then.
    And then I must’ve sold the cows and it wasn’t a big deal to hang out there all night I don’t remember what color belt he got, yellow or green?

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  10. If I were ever going to learn a martial art, I’d like to go to the planet Vulcan and learn it there. I think that nerve pinch could be very useful.

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      1. They sent the two Kirks, the good part and the bad part, back through the transporter which had initially split them, and this time the transporter put them back together into just the one Kirk.

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  11. I’ve never had experience with any martial art, either as a student or as an observer. I’ve also never had occasion to wish I had any such training.

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