But first, the test. As always, I messed a couple things up because testing makes me nervous, but I recovered quickly and my flubs may have gone unnoticed. Also, I got to do this:
That board was one piece until it met my elbow.
My daughter videoed this for me. I sent it to my mom and then to Sensei noting that I wasn’t too old to proudly show my mommy my board break. He responded:
And so, another belt for my rack. I had blue, my favorite color, the longest, and I’ll have that boring brown the shortest.
The girls’ red belts are beautiful. Hopefully I’ll get mine soon. That test requires kicking a board, so… yeah. Hopefully I don’t injure my good foot. But also, whatever. At this point, I no longer care.
On December 20th, my three daughters and I tested for our third belt, yellow. We started as white belts, did a super-stressful-because-it-was-the-first-one-ever test for orange, then came the yellow belt test–only slightly less stressful.
When it was my turn, I was eager to get it over with, and grateful that we start with our current form–the part I was most nervous about. After that comes our “back form,” the one we learned prior. When I performed this in an earlier class, “Sensei,” (not actually what we call him) nodded and said, “It’s like breathing, isn’t it?” So I knew I had that one down pat. The third part of the test was demonstrating our mastery of three self defense and three street defense moves. No problems there.
The weird thing was, as I did the more difficult current form, my hands were tingling. “This is odd,” I thought. “My hands sort of feel numb, but not quite. It doesn’t hurt, thankfully, but it’s strange. I wonder why that’s happening. Nerves, probably.” And the next thing I knew, I was done. I did the form without thinking, which means I couldn’t second guess or freak myself out. I smiled inwardly. “Thanks, hands! Well done.”
They were no help at the end of the test, however: the Bowing Out Ceremony.
Writing and Martial Arts 