My Silent Twisted Friend

We were in our street clothes – a half-dozen gangly, bulging masterpieces of grade-school physical education. It was our “free intro lesson” at the local branch, tucked away next to Duck Chang’s Restaurant and one of those ‘dollar’ stores. The instructor herded us into the storefront space to the side, just off the main room where regular classes were always in session.

There were four or five of us newcomers that day – I was almost 13, the others random teenagers and a pudgy, balding accountant guy. The room would have been the showcase for a normal store, packed in next to the entryway, tiny office and closet stuffed with sparring pads and red and white uniforms.

There was some discomfort at being on display for passers-by, had there been any. Annandale was small, defined by the main crossroads midway between the suburban blips of Alexandria and Fairfax. The school faced the lone Sovran Bank nearby and the K-mart on the other side of Little River Turnpike, Tuthill Stationery and Dawson’s Sporting Goods, where I would window-shop for bows and arrows and BB guns. I bought a ‘flu-flu’ arrow once because it looked cool.

The highlights of our 30-minute promo were kicking over our heads and yelling when we punched. It felt strange punching in thin air, or punching at all, for that matter. I had never thought about thrusting a fist forward on command, ‘like you mean it,’ in broad daylight. How far do you extend? Where do you aim? What do you do… after? Somehow it reminded me of ‘lift with your knees, not your back,’ that ubiquitous but elusive piece of advice. Don’t I lift with… my arms? Okay, bend my knees, how far? What if I can’t reach? Umm, my knees hurt… Is this right? Anyone?

Kicking felt more accessible – I was playing lots of soccer those days, as right wing and default goalkeeper, being tall for my age and able to punt the ball halfway downfield. “Believe it or not, you can already kick higher than your head!”, exclaimed the young instructor, zinging with confidence in his snazzy red ‘karate’ uniform and black belt. Raise my foot above my head, while standing? This seemed supernatural, unearthly, the stuff of movies.

There was some giddy expectancy as we sized each other up. We discovered soon enough that, yes, it was indeed possible, each with our own self-inspired combination of lurching and flapping. A single, glorious exertion could in fact raise our foot higher than our head, while standing. Not our measured height, necessarily, but at least our scrunched-up height, for that fleeting moment when your foot reaches peak altitude. Your arms take on a counterbalancing, counter-momentum life of their own when you first try to kick high in mid-air.

Yelling was a new chapter altogether. Our first semi-expletive bursts fell just short of the window in front of us. Some encouragement triggered a more imposing round of barks and yelps. Soon enough the room was resounding with veritable sonic blows, next to our initial efforts, chased by grins and furtive glances checking for witnesses. Be heard!

And so we were off, with a swashbuckling glow, setting sail from the old world of dodgeball, 50-yard dashes and pick-up basketball games. Seduced by the coveted ‘black belt,’ heralded from the pulpits of Saints Bruce [Lee] and Chuck [Norris], the ship was leaving port.

It was an innocent, mindless adventure at the time, in earnest anticipation of The Karate Kid and wide-eyed tribute to Enter the Dragon, plus a tip of the hat to John Belushi’s Samurai Baker on SNL. Luke Skywalker was stationed at Annandale High School for a couple of years, incidentally.

Martial arts – fun, macho, adventurous, challenging and esoteric, all in one – primal, tasty and exotic, like one of Chang’s famous duck wraps next door, a soulful endorphin rush in what seemed a land of the lost. My heart was setting sail into uncharted realms of the PHYSICAL, just as normo-world was poised for the global digital metastasis.

In retrospect, this normo-life departure was merely the first episode of a decades-long odyssey. Were the winds blowing towards any particular destination? Or was ‘karate,’ along with all its unforeseen tangents, just another unit in the PE class of life? Just another line item amid ‘soccer camp,’ ‘the volleyball unit’ and ‘square dancing’ led by Mr. Dick McClintock, the JV football coach/elementary school gym teacher?