sidekicks

Rather than participate on traveling soccer teams or little league, my cousins and I spent most of our adolescence throwing punches and kicks at the local Tae Kwon Do academies. It was a lot of fun, and sometimes very serious. By the time we had earned our black belts, we were on demonstration teams and living large at mall performances. I distinctly remember being invited to perform at the opening showing of Three Ninjas.

Tae Kwon Do is Korea's martial art style, and so my cousins and I always had this idea of Korea being the mecca of the sport. On my second visit to Korea, my parents brought me to the national headquarters and I was in awe. Even though the whole building smelled like a locker room, it was pretty amazing to step onto the sparring floor, and see all these sweet pictures of black belts flying in the air. My master would also always tell me of how much nicer he was than the instructors in Korea. He was pretty tough, so it was frightening to imagine doing even more knuckle push ups and painful stretching.

Now that I'm in Korea, I think the sport's culture has changed a lot. Rather than memorize forms and different techniques, it seems like Tae Kwon Do is more of just a place to get some exercise and have fun. My cousin's son often tells me that he just plays soccer and runs around at class. While I think this is definitely what Korean children need and lack because of their busy schedules, it's kind of sad. I'm probably just being a grumpy old man about this, but I worked really hard to get my blackbelt! I see a lot of really young kids running around with red (2 away from black) or black belts, and I'm sure that they haven't fully mastered much of the technique. Anyway, there are probably quite a few academies who train in the traditional sense, and I hope (in the nicest sense possible) that there's a 12 year old kid getting whacked with a bamboo stick because he didn't kick high enough.

Well, if I didn't scare you too much, let me lighten the mood with some pictures of dogs.

If I owned this dog, I'd call it windtunnel.

This guy had a nice little strut.