Relax. I'm not about to dump my purse out - though, to be fair, I've done it plenty of times. It's kind of why I have a readership, now that I think about it. Shit is difficult right now. That is all.
I have already stated, for the record, that I am a lazy writer. But I'm not a quitter writer. I don't even know if that's actually a thing. But if it is, I'm not.
And so here is the next chapter of Making Sh*t Up: An Improvised Life, in which I demonstrate my ability to actually follow through with something. And only dump my purse out a tiny bit.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Jobs and Judo (And Other
Shit)
The first job I ever had was at the Rayford
Roller Rink in Spring, Texas, where I not only handed out skates to customers,
and did minor skate repairs, but I also got to DJ on nights when the owner’s
daughter was too stoned to come in. My friend Doug Meneke got me the job (he
also worked there), and it was a sweet gig. We got to skate, spin records, play
video games on our break, and eat all the concession food we wanted. To a
fifteen year-old boy, this was heaven. Doug and I even talked about buying the
place for ourselves when we were old enough. A skating rink looked like a gold
mine in 1982. But, by the time we were seniors, the skates had lost their
luster, and we moved on. Doug would always have the satisfaction of knowing he
had the all-time high score on Defender. And I would always have the memory of
the time a girl flashed her tits at me while skating past.
The one job I had all the way through high school (sometimes paid,
sometimes not) was teaching martial arts. You might remember at the beginning
of this tale that I mentioned I wasn’t very good at team sports as a kid. I sucked,
actually. Dad was desperate to find some sort of physical activity where I was
at least competent, if not excellent. In desperation, he stuck me in a local
YMCA Judo class, taught by my very first sensei, a gregarious, barrel-chested
man named Mike Law. And it was there, dear reader, where I found two things
that had been heretofore lacking in my young life: self-esteem, and confidence.
About a year prior to this, I saw my first
martial arts film: Bruce Lee’s Enter The
Dragon. I immediately declared myself a martial artist, and began looking
for every movie I could find in the genre. Saturday afternoons a local tv
affiliate could almost always be counted on to run a poorly-dubbed kung fu
flick from Hong Kong. And there was this brand-new channel on the boob-tube
called Showtime. During one glorious month, they ran all of Bruce Lee’s films,
including the never-finished Game of
Death. The problem for a young boy in small-town Texas was, watching
martial arts flicks (also from Chuck Norris, Jim Kelly, and Sonny Chiba) and
trying to duplicate their moves was about as close to martial arts training as
I could get. Until Sensei Law rolled into town.
I
took to judo like the proverbial pig to slop. I would have slept in my gi (the traditional uniform of a judo
practitioner), except that after a few classes, I’d begin to smell like an actual pig in slop. Here,
finally, was something I could do well. And, like being funny, I wanted to do
it all the time. I never missed a class, and I would even train outside of the dojo (I mean, yes… technically, it was
still the YMCA – but to us it was a dojo.)
And by “train,” I mean I would often try to trip, sweep, or throw my little
sister to the ground.
I’d never really been bullied in school; no more so than any other kid,
I suppose. And I could often preempt bullying or teasing by being funny. But
word started to get around that “Larry the Fairy” was taking karate lessons (all
martial arts were karate to the kids
of Conroe, Texas), and it wasn’t long before I got called out on the playground
one afternoon in 6th grade. The kid was a mean, fat asshole who
would regularly pick fights the minute no adult was looking. He started by
trying to goad me into it. One of the challenges of being named “Larry” is that
it makes great rhyming insults: “Hairy Larry, “ “Scary Larry,” and the
aforementioned “Larry the Fairy.” When I didn’t bite on that, he started
shoving me. I let him get away with it twice. The third time, as he put his
hands on my shoulders, I grabbed him by the elbows, went to the ground with the
force of his push and, bringing him with me, placed my right foot into his
belly, flipping him neatly over my head in what I considered to be a pretty
fair tomoe nage. (That’s the Japanese
term for flipping a fat asshole bully over your head.)
The fat bully landed behind
me with a pronounced thud, and everyone in the vicinity heard the air whoosh out of him. Still lying on the
hard ground, the fat bully began to cry. I didn’t brag, and I didn’t gloat. I
walked away as quickly as I could. While I’m almost certain some kid had to
have told a teacher about the altercation, I was never asked about it. That was
the first – and last – fight I ever had during my school years. The mythology
of my martial prowess firmly established, nobody ever tried to fuck with me
again. Which was fine by me, as I was way more interested in being funny than
being badass.
When Sensei Law announced he
was closing down classes at the Y, I was crushed. Only a month earlier, my dad
had killed himself, and I needed the order and discipline of the dojo more than ever. I was becoming an
“angry youth,” and it seemed judo was the only way to keep that beast in check.
Sensei Law was a good guy, and a great teacher. But he also had a family to
feed, and there were more opportunities for him in Houston. After we bowed out
at the end of our last-ever class, I cried. And I didn’t care who saw me.
Fortunately, less than a year
later, while I was making out in my bedroom with a girl from school, I got a
call from a guy who said he was resuming martial arts classes at the Y. No, he
said, this wasn’t judo. This was something very exotic-sounding: Tae Kwon Do.
Now, here’s something you
have to understand: in 21st century Texas, Tae Kwon Do schools are
as universal as Starbucks. If you walk outside your door and throw a rock,
you’re going to hit one of them. But in 1980s Texas, this was not the case. I
didn’t even know what Tae Kwon Do was
until I agreed to attend a complimentary class, taught by a native Ohioan named
Gary Engstrom. And after that class, I was hooked. This dynamic martial art
from Korea, with its focus on fast and powerful kicking techniques, was exactly
what I’d been missing since my days in the judo dojo. I convinced my friend Doug (my partner in crime at the
Rayford Roller Rink, and whose older sister Sara I was secretly in love with)
to join me, and a year and change later we were both testing for our first
black belts.
These days my ass does not get that far off the ground. Not unless I have a plane ticket.
Prior to taking our black belt
test, Doug and I became apprentice instructors under Gary, who himself was
under the tutelage and guidance of one Master Park Bu Kwang. I was collecting
father figures in those days, and Master Park was among the best. He’d come to
this country speaking no English after serving with distinction in the Republic
of Korea army, and he’d been among the elites training under the man generally
considered to be the founder of modern-day Tae Kwon Do, General Choi Hong Hi. Master
Park was warm and easy going – until it was time for class. Then he was a
certified, tough-as-nails badass, who never got tired, even though he was twice
as old as any of us young punks.
I enjoyed teaching Tae Kwon
Do, and I think I was pretty good at it. Keep in mind I was still a teenager,
though, with the self-importance and know-it-all bullshit that goes with being
a teenager. More than once, Gary or Mr. Park had to slap me down when I would
lord it over the lower belts. I resented it at the time, but it taught me a
valuable lesson that I would apply years later, as an actor: you ain’t all that. Soon enough, Doug
and I were testing for our second-degree black belts, and we weren’t
apprentices anymore.
At some point Gary decided he
was done with martial arts. He packed off to points unknown, leaving Doug and I
in charge of the Conroe school. I may have been a decent teacher, but I was
(and remain) a shitty businessman. If a student or their parents couldn’t pay
the tuition one month, I’d let them slide. Mr. Park was not okay with that, because he was an astute businessman. Plus, he
got a cut from every school where the instructors were his students. The stress
of actually running the school was starting to put a strain on my and Doug’s
friendship. We agreed to turn over the operations to another instructor, who ran
a school a couple of towns over. That same week, my girlfriend broke up with
me. I responded by enlisting in the army. Guess I showed her!
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