Got My Orange Belt

I got my Orange Belt! Remember my description of the last grading? All frowns and intensity and pain? And that I was the only white belt grading in a group of all adults going for advanced ranks? Well, this time it was a huge group, with lots of kids. I was one in four Yellows, three of us adults. The two other adult Yellows were the only adults grading this time around.

So, because of that, the super-tough attitude of the last grading didn't come through so much. No, "Who feels like more push-ups?!" "Me sir!" "I can't hear you!" "ME SIR!". Apparently they don't do that so much with kids. I even got to see some kids do that advanced kata that, in the last grading, included a blackbelt beating the tar out of you while you had to keep dancing. It didn't come across as a real beat-down this time around. It was more like, applying pressure to a shoulder here to test their balance, pushing on their fist as it extended to test strength... If that had been the first demonstration of the kata I'd seen, I wouldn't have called it a beat-down... I would have called it a series of technique checks.

But even with the lighter attitude, the endurance testing wasn't any easier. It was slightly humiliating, seeing some of those kids looking better than me during that testing. I broke a couple times on the slow push-up. Last time, I told you that I held a wall sit until my shaking knees shook the wall, and the shaking wall shook a picture frame, and it's clattering attracted the attention of blackbelts. No matter how long and painful, I've never broken on a wall sit. It'd be so dramatic and obvious, while, with a slow push-up, you break, and you're up again in a split second. Plus, you've got things to concentrate on and do, and that might trigger the collapse, whereas a wall sit is just holding one stance. But even so, I feel like I had a bit more lenience with myself this time than last time.

Last time, I thought there was a good chance I wouldn't get the belt if I screwed up, and everyone around me was so pro, I thought I needed to live up to their standard. This time around, even though I was concentrated on doing my best, with more people, and less judges, the focus taken off you, seeing others fail, receiving encouragement and knowing you're going to succeed... It kills that little edge you get from that gut-feeling of adrenalin.

I think I did well, though. At the end, when you go through, shaking hands and bowing with each judge, I got a lot of specific praise outside of the traditional "Congratulations". The guy who let me squeak through let me know ahead of time he'd be paying attention to the stance he almost held me back for. He let me know afterwards that I did way better than I had during striping. The head Sensei said this was my best grading yet, which I didn't honestly feel had too much impact as a complement, since I've only ever graded one time before. It still means I improved more Yellow-Orange than White-Yellow.

In the self-defense section, because there was an uneven number of students, they had me practice on a blackbelt judge. That means I perform twice as much, and I constantly attract the attention of at least one judge. That happened last time, too.

I got corrected once, and a judge caught my eye at one point and gestured a suggestion for one of my stances, but that wasn't too bad. Two advanced ranks needed to be talked through their katas at certain points, and one guy got pulled aside to be given advice on his performance.

On my way to the dojo, a muskrat charged me!It bounced out of the tall grass, ran at me, and then, when it was about two feet from me, it flipped sideways and disappeared into the grass. I guess something must have startled it, it ran out in a panic, ran into me, and booked it in a different direction. Or maybe it was a mother and it's young were nearby, so I just accidentally stepped too close and it tried to scare me off. I was so focused on Karate, I just registered it as a low strike and I automatically moved into my low block. But good luck blocking something that's a foot high! Would've ran right under my fist. It would have been better self-defense just to boot it.

Made an impression though, apparently, because that night I had a dream about a friendly, fuzzy, cute-looking creature biting me, turning into an eight-foot tall body builder, and charging me. I guess it symbolizes something cute and sweet-seeming suddenly gaining an intimidating and ferocious appearance, like it did in real life. Strangely, though, in my dream, a friend of mine kicked it in the back of the knee, causing it to stumble, and I swept it's legs over my shoulder and flipped it, making it tumble down a flight of stairs and be ultimately defeated. I then reached out to it with words and helped it overcome it's psychological problems which caused it to attack me (a raccoon tricked it into thinking something untrue about me), and it turned back from the bodybuilder into it's fuzzy woodland creature self.

Also, that creature wasn't a muskrat. It was a shrew. And the dream started with someone telling me that you can't trust shrews, and me telling them they were wrong. The moral of the dream seemed to be that you can trust shrews, but you need to have good communication.

Well, that doesn't sound so related to my muskrat anymore. Whatever.