Wax On....Wax Off

During 180 (high school group at church) last night we watched a clip of Karate Kid. You all remember the scene where Daniel gets fed up with doing all of Mr. Miyagi's chores and starts yelling about how he's supposed to be learning karate. Then Mr. Miyagi asks Daniel to show him wax on and wax off. At the end of the scene Daniel is left amazed that he's been training his body to do all of these martial arts moves and not realizing it. In case you're concerned, we did tie the clip to a theological point, but that's beside the point of this post.

I only had four guys there last night, and after we broke into small groups, two of them started talking about how they do martial arts and how Karate Kid was all wrong, blah, blah, blah. Now, I know Jeffrey and John are going to agree with me here: Karate Kid and anything with Chuck Norris in it are gospel for young ninjas in training. And these guys were talking smack about wax on, wax off, paint the fence, paint the house, sand the floor, and the crane kick which we all know is unstoppable when done correctly. It was time for them to put their money where their mouth is.

I said, "Hey, if you're a martial arts expert, let's see some moves. We can do a little demo right here." The two who had been talking about their training gladly agreed, but the other two weren't so sure about being the crash dummies. They said something to me along the lines of, "This was your bright idea, you be the punching bag." So, went to the center of the room.

The first guy wanted to show us some Aikido. That's the martial art that Steven Segal mostly uses, if you didn't already know, and it's a combination of hand locks and throws. Anyway, he asked me to grab him from behind with one arm and grab his wrist with the other. I'm still not sure why I wanted to grab his wrist because I'm thinking that in a dark alley I'd rather be grabbing his wallet, but this was a demo so I played along. He got out of the hold and pushed me around the room....sort of. He kind of forgot, actually, how to really do the technique.

Next guy decided that he'd show us a cool throw that he had learned. Now, please note that I had not shared with them my experience with Judo. Again, he staged the scene, I grab his shirt and arm from the front in a classic Judo grip and he executed a poor attempt at a hip throw that left him straining to get me over and left me standing. It was difficult to forget my training, and when he tried again I "accidentally" pivoted on the balls of my feet and turned his momentum into a leg throw in my favor. Whoops! He was on his back.

It was right about this moment that they became suspicious that maybe I had done more than just study under Mr. Miyagi and Master Norris, and I confessed to watching a few Steven Segal and Jackie Chan movies and sneaking in a couple of Big Trouble in Little China viewings: "It's all in the reflexes."

Not really. I told them about my Judo training, and I told them that next time they should let me fight back and we'd see what they were really made of. If they still beat me up, then I'll introduce them to the wrath of my ninja brotherhood, or at least to my two brothers, the Tae Kwon Do masters.