Hai Karate

Oscar went to his first karate lesson yesterday evening.

It was hugely entertaining.  I wish you had been there, or that I had been allowed to film it.  I smiled from ear to ear for the whole hour and a half.

Jason normally drops the girls at karate, leaving Oscar and I to wrestle bed time into defeat at home, but yesterday Jason had to go straight back to work after dropping Oscar home from nursery.  Work is in much the same state as the Mansion of Doom at the moment. It’s all very microcosm/macrocosm and pathetic fallacy etc.

What this means in plain English is, it’s all knackering and a bit dangerous.

This meant that the karate run was my responsibility.  I bundled everyone into the car and arrived at the church hall.  I wonder why all church halls look and smell the same, no matter which religious denomination they profess to follow, nor which part of the country you are in? Perhaps they buy ‘eau de church hall’ from the same company that make ‘fleur de leurs’?

I paid for the girls and turned to Oscar to shepherd him back to the car.  He was practising karate chopping Tallulah in the windpipe with great gusto.  He did not want to come home.  I reminded him that he was too small for karate now, but that he could come back next year.

He was devastated.

The sensei looked at him thoughtfully and asked me how old he was.  He then asked Oscar if he really wanted to stay for the lesson, to which Oscar nodded his enthusiastic assent.  The sensei said: ‘Oh! All right then.’  To which Oscar replied with whoops of delight.

I was not sure. 

Normally we drive off into the night once they are safely in class, and come back at the end to pick them up.  I did not think it was fair to leave the sensei unprotected. It was late, and the class was an hour and a half long.  I had visions of being phoned forty five minutes in, to be summoned to return, with the sounds of infant boy wailing like a car alarm in the background.

I stayed.

I marvelled.

The sensei has the patience of a saint.  Apart from being able to handle Tallulah, which is an art in itself, there are certain other small members of the class who seem to be there to address certain behavioural and attention issues.  With Oscar thrown into the mix, it was like watching him trying to tame a bag of hyperactive weasels.

Apart from the fact that his counting skills are very erratic, his grasp of Japanese is nil, and his ability to tell left from right is about the same, he did brilliantly, my small boy.  He was very enthusiastic and joined in with everything to the best of his ability.  He only got sad once when he got completely confused and realised he couldn’t do what the sensei asked.  He looked very downcast and said that he didn’t want to do it any more because it was too hard.  He looked like he would burst into tears.  His lip wobbled ominously.

I sat on my hands and waited to see what would happen. 

I was deeply impressed.  The sensei hunkered down so that he could make proper eye contact with Oscar, then he said he thought he was doing brilliantly, and if he just continued to give it his best shot for two more minutes, they would play a game, and would that be o.k.?  Oscar beamed, nodded his agreement and carried on enthusiastically sawing at the air in a karate type way.

I relaxed.

At one point, near the end of the class the sensei was describing why they performed a certain move in a certain way, and how it was an excellent and efficient way to block people who wanted to attack us.  The other members of the class were discussing it, when Oscar piped up:

‘Or we could just take a big knife and chop the top of their head off.  That will stop them!’

The shame!

Still, he is very enterprising.

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