November 1, 2006

One of these things. . .

I’ve been watching a lot of Sesame Street lately, and it’s a good thing. Because tonight during karate class, I had a certain song in my head. . .

One of these things is not like the others,
One of these things just doesn’t belong,
Can you tell which thing is not like the others
By the time I finish my song?

Here’s another version of the song, and this one works too. . .

Three of these kids belong together
Three of these kids are kind of the same
But one of these kids is doing his (her) own thing
Now it’s time to play our game
It’s time to play our game.

Can you guess? Do you know what I’m talking about. In the above song, substitute "four" for three. In the third line, substitute "people" for "kids" because I’m obviously not one of those and this is the PERFECT song for tonight.

Hello nunchaku, my old friend. Nunchaku is one of those friends. You know the kind. The idea of the friend is great. You sort of build them up in your head. But then, when you’re around said friend. . . it’s not so much fun after all. In fact, your friend? Kind of annoying. It’s not that fun hanging out with your friend after all.

My advanced class is growing rapidly. It now consists of three black belts (in addition to our instructor), me, and two young green belts. I say young like they’re so different from everyone else in the class. Let’s put it this way. All attendee’s other than me and the instructor have yet to graduate from school (some from elementary school). So, when we did the nunchaku kata the first time around, we went slowly. The green belts were new to it. My instructor then asked the greenies to have a seat so that the higher ranks could run through it quickly. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to go hang with the green belts. I may have taken a step or two back towards then in an attempt to just sort of sit without drawing attention to myself.

Doing a nunchaku kata with four black belts is just a tad bit intimidating. There they are, whipping around wooden nunchaku; and there I am, trying to avoid smacking myself in the face with a foam set. So we ran through the kata. . . the black belts sent their nunchaku slicing through the air making the dojo sound like a Star Wars set. I just tried to keep up. I did a lot of "hmph"ing to myself and tried to make light of the fact that I am slow as molasses with those suckers.

Maybe I should watch some Star Wars movies or something to get inspired. Wait, did I just say that? That statement alone is enough to show you what type of detrimental effects this nunchaku kata is having on me. I’m typing something with the words "Star" and "Wars" in it and I just know it’s only a matter of time before my husband my husband read this and is whipping out the DVD’s and calling for a weekend marathon. . .

and then?

I’m going to get out the wooden nunchaku and knock myself out on purpose.

Song lyrics are from this site.