When I told one of my Korean friends that I was going to Tae Kwon Do so I could get kicked in the face, he gave me a funny look. Of all the US exports here, sarcasm apparently isn’t one of them. It’s a joke because no one in their right mind would want to repeatedly risk someone’s shin breaking their nose four days a week. Or so the logic is suppose to go.
And I admit to a certain logiclessness in my own training. In the two and a half years I’ve spend intermittently training I’ve moved from Tae Kwon Do to So Bahk Do Karate to Boxing and finally back to Tae Kwon Do. When it comes right down to it, none of these are very different in application—the ways a body launches a fist or a foot is basically the same across the board in the way that using a fork is the same across the board. That is until you try eating spaghetti using your fork mashed potato style. There’s a whole crapload of nuance that goes on with each of these styles, which is what kills me. More than just learning something completely new it involves unlearning something old, and more importantly it means I always go in over-confident and have to get that confidence crushed. Its kind of like going on a blind date with a model who only speaks Pig Latin, but your friends only mention the model part and her “interesting” personality.
Fortunately all of the classes are taught in Korean so I have a reason to look confused. I’ve really perfected the side-cocked look a dog gives you when you bark at it. This might be why one of the black belts has started communicating with me by the “bad dog” whacking system using a paddle across my knee. For all the language and rhetoric classes I’ve taken, for my studies on persuasion and sophistry, being hit by a paddle is one of the most swift and influential modes of communication I’ve ever seen.
But at least I got a picture of myself trying to look tough on a mountain.
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