KARATE KID

Lucas has been dying to try Karate. Not sure where this all came from, as none of his little buddies do it. But whatever the case, he has wanted to try it, so I obliged.


We first brought him to a trial class, where he met with the Master Jon in order to see if he had any real interest in Karate. At the first moment, where Master Jon asked Lucas to stand toes to the mat and bow before entering, I knew he loved it. It was amazing how well he did, I was not surprised by the fact that he listened and took direction well, as he has always been good with those things. What I was surprised with was his confidence. When the instructor told him to kick he kicked hard, when he told him to yell "HIYAH!" when he kicked he yelled "HIYAH!", and with conviction.

Why so surprised? Lucas has always been my shy, sensitive little boy. Getting his feelings hurt very easily, crying easily, running to me for comfort whenever something goes wrong... Which is alright for me, as I love to comfort him and make things better, what Mom doesn't?

But I know as he grows up this is not going to be a good thing. He is going to need to as Brian says to "toughen up". I heard Karate could help him with this. After seeing him there for just one 10 minute session, I am confident that this will in fact help. A lot.

So tonight was his very first "real" Karate class. A whole half hour session with other little boys. The class would start at 6pm, so I figured I would have the kids fed and ready to head out the door by 5:40pm. But all of the sudden I looked at the clock and it was 5pm. No dinner had been served, and the neighbor kids were still over playing. Oops. I managed to excuse ourselves from the play date, and corraled the kids into the car for a quick jaunt to McDonald's in order to fill their belly's quickly before leaving for Karate. We got home, inhaled our food, threw Lucas' Karate uniform on, got all the kids back into the car, and started to back out of the garage. But something made me stop. Some weird feeling that made me think I should check the calendar to make sure about the time. So I put the car in park, ran in the house, and checked the calendar. Sure enough. The class was at 4pm, not 6pm. GRRRRRRRR!!!! All that running around like a wild chicken with my head cut off for nothing.

Now I had to break the news to Lucas, who had been waiting all day long to go to his Karate class. Let me just say, I wish I had the camera out to capture just how devastated he was when I got in the car to tell him I had the wrong time. It was horrible.

But I managed to redeem myself. I asked if he wanted me to take some fun pictures of him doing some Karate moves in the front yard.

This put a smile on his face, and managed to right my wrong.