Roots

There are a great many martial arts in the world. I've been lucky enough to have dabbled in a couple. Perhaps dabble is too generous a term, but it will do for now.

As a kid, back in the Adam West Batman days, there was a another TV show called The Green Hornet. The main character was a secret-agent type guy with a ten-cent mask, a trenchcoat, and no super powers. He'd punch out badguys one at a time. His faithful sidekick wore a spiffy masked chaffeur's outfit, was Asian, and fought like nobody I'd ever seen before. While his boss would struggle with one baddie, Kato would polish off the other ten or twelve. Can you guess who played Kato?

That was pretty much my martial arts contact in early life.

Spent a few years as a young adult in Canada's Army Reserve. One sergeant volunteered my squad into a Judo group. He had just gotten his Black Belt. Once a week for a month or two, he tried to teach us something, or perhaps tried to inspire us. It didn't take at all. Judo in army boots is just wrong. As soon as we were allowed to unvolunteer, we did.

Next contact was joining Karate in Ft. St. John, and am still involved in that.

Helen and I tried Tai Chi for a few months. Liked it for what it was, but whenever they would try and relate it to fighting they lost me. Neither the moves, nor the philosophy lined up.

Did some informal training in weapons, principally Bo (big stick), and Sai (heavy metal whackers). Liked them, but can't claim to have gained any enlightenment from them.  They did feel way cool.

I've done fencing classes a few times. Poking people with a foil or epee is fun. Pretty good at it for a low-level old guy. Many of the leg moves and stances are Karate-esque. I'll likely do this again sometime. Quite a jolly form of evening exercise.

A summer or two ago, while in Victoria, I trained in Iado. Talk about cool. That's the Japanese art of drawing the sword. Draw, slice slice slice, re-sheath. Always wanted to know something about that. I didn't get enough training time to get any good at it. All the experienced people could make their blades hum through the air, just like a bad sound effects job in a Lord of the Rings movie. The rookies blades were silent. Why couldn't I make mine sing? Decades of Karate practise made no difference. No swoosh. They said there was no trick. It just would take repetition. I understand repetition.

So if you try a martial art, and you don't make a swoosh. Remember...
...repetition.