Hindu for the holidays

Whenever there was function that required the use of the church social hall the club had to move elsewhere to work out. This wasn't much of an issue in warmer weather. We'd just go outside. However in the colder months we'd have to try to find another spot in the church. Since there were times when the clubs membership was pretty small we were able to use one of the Sunday School rooms at the other end of the church. It would take a while to move everything out of the way and to put it all back like we found it, and you could maybe get two people doing a kata at the same time if you were lucky, but we made it work.

It wasn't much of an issue one year when we were flushed out of the social hall for a preparation for a Christmas event and had to take refuge in the room at the end of the hall. We only had six kids in the kid's class so it wasn't an issue. The adult class consisted of myself and Alex De La Zerda that evening. Everything was peachy and then Mario Sensei (AKA Dad) got out our old friend the rubber knife.

Dad had the knife and struck at me with a horizontal slash. I blocked and spun in to secure a standing armlock to try to make him drop the knife. I was still working on the technique. He twisted and I missed the lock. I kept my grip and tried to readjust hoping to make lemonade out of of lousy technique.

That didn't happen as Dad yanked all 150 pounds of me into the air and put me on my head. I still had the arm with the knife and wasn't about to let go. I pulled it to the center of my chest and while upside down went to kick my legs around and secure an armbar. I needed a second to make it happen, but that's too long against Dad and he planted his big ol' knobby middle knuckle dead center of my forehead.

I was fine of course as most everyone who reads this knows full well that hitting me in the head isn't going to damage anything important. However, its kind of hard to armbar someone as they're trying to make sure they didn't hurt you. We broke it up.

The end result was a round bruise in the middle of forehead perfectly shaped like Dad's knuckle. This was a bit tricky to explain to Gran'ma at Christmas dinner.

Well, it was easy for me to explain. Not so much for Dad.

-Sensei Marty