016 Competing
For me, the journey to black belt was very much a journey of physical fitness. I took an aerobics class for two semesters in a row. After the first four weeks, it made a difference. At first I had to stagger tae kwon do classes to give me a chance to recover from the aerobics, but as the weeks passed I resumed a three-times a week tae kwon do schedule, interspersed with two classes of high impact aerobics that lasted an hour each.I was still losing weight, and I did notice that being lighter also made the difficult kicks and the jumps less difficult.
Professionally, I had achieved a lifetime goal when I published my first book, a fairly forgettable children's adventure called Derwood Incorporated. By the time the draft got through the editing at the religious publisher that produced it, most of the jokes and humor had been fairly well eradicated from it, but it was still billed as a comedy adventure. And though I wasn't impressed with it, the publisher wanted another one, and so I began the next in the series. Over the next six years I would sell 13 novels to this publisher.
If life has any "golden years," I suppose that mine began then. One drawback was that, just when I had my head together and had shaken off my past, and was now ready to really play and have a good time, all my friends were settling down and getting married. I knew I wasn't ready for marriage and had no interest in it whatsoever. Men, to me, were pals and were useful as highly efficient insect killers and furniture movers. In fact, my apparent inability to commit the sin of lust used to worry me. But for all that sex or romance appealed to me, I might as well have been 11 years old. Writing adventure stories gave me great pleasure, and I loved working out in tae kwon do. And it was compensation that even as old friends got married off and moved away, I was meeting new friends. I was having a great time.
But it all came down to Hong's. I began to free spar in earnest, and I entered competitions. Tournaments were held in high school gyms, and the "rings" were regulation-sized squares marked by tape on the floor. These were the last days of the old style tournaments, when the fights were called light contact but were full contact, and the only protection was mouthpieces and shin guards. In the last year before the WTF mandated comprehensive protective equipment, the tae kwon do tournaments adopted the rubberized, lightweight gloves and foot shields made popular by the PKA competitions.
As far as the men were concerned, they may as well have just wrapped their hands in plastic wrap. And women tended not to go for knockouts, anyway. I certainly didn't. I hated the thought of knocking somebody senseless. I really did want to work on technique and kicks.
I did enter one tournament in which one of the girls, who was an inch taller than I and heavier, wrapped her gloves with duct tape. When I asked her why, she said the gloves were ripped. One of the other girls clued me in as I sat down on the sidelines.
"Duct tape sticks," she told me. "If that girl hits you in the face, it'll stick. The glove won't slide off."
I immediately complained to the referee about this and insisted that the gloves be thrown out. He got angry with me and told me to sit down and be quiet. And then she and I were called up first to fight.
The very first time she punched me, I thought a locomotive had run between my eyes. It threw me around and dropped me to the floor. The referee helped me up and asked if I was okay. I think he was humiliated, but he still didn't throw the gloves out. I said yes, I was fine, and I went back to it.
I learned a lot about fighting in the next twenty seconds. Again and again she almost had me knocked out by those sledge hammer punches. I think that the only thing that kept me up was that I was so mad at her for cheating that I refused to go down.
And then, suddenly, I realized that every time she hit me, she only hit once. She had no combinations. As I staggered towards her, I used an old trick from basketball and waved my gloved hand right in her face. Next thing I knew, I was inside. She couldn't touch me. Jab, jab, backfist, all right on her nose.
She staggered back. I was right on top of her. I knew if I backed up, she'd slam me again. Jab jab backfist. I followed her around the ring, crowding her. Somehow she got distance, and I saw that duct tape glove coming at me. WHAM!
My vision got red, but I didn't go back. I rushed her again and kept up the light fast patter on her face. I was hitting fast, not hard. Quickfire, hard hitting punches were still years away for me. I could do one or the other, but not both.
This time when I saw the glove I ducked and for the first time in my life, I threw a left cross. Full force, it hit her high on the cheek bone, and she fell back. The ref got between us.
"Now, now girls, this is just for a trophy," he said. I could have killed him. The time for that speech was before the match, when he should have been throwing those blasted gloves away. He stepped back, and she slammed me in the face again. And then I was on her with the rain of right jabs and backfist strikes.
At the end of three grueling minutes, the match was declared a tie, and we were given a minute to rest. Most of the girls were on my side, and as I sank to the floor, one of them said, "If you can just kick her, you'll win. They want you to kick more."
She was right. The problem was that by now my head and feet felt like lead.
But as we were called back in, I shakily threw a kick that actually did tap the side of her jaw. And then we were back to our slugfest. But in the final few seconds, I did control the match. I was declared the winner.
And then I saw her pass the gloves to her sister, who was also very tall and very powerfully built.
I fell back onto the floor, exhausted. The haze of red over my vision gradually cleared away. Oh good, I thought. I would live. Brain still intact and both retinas still attached.
There was another match between two of the lighter weight girls, and then I was called in against Little Sister. And Little Sister had the duct tape gloves. We bowed in.
She rushed right at me, leaning too far forward, and threw a tremendous roundhouse punch at me that would have finished me. I ducked down as I slid back and then slammed a roundhouse kick right into her head as she was off balance. I used my instep rather than the ball of my foot as the striking surface, but she got the message. It threw her over sideways.
"Not so hard!" she exclaimed.
"You punch me in the face again, and I swear, I'll knock you out!" I exclaimed. "Do you understand me?"
She glanced at her sister, and then she meekly said, "Yes." Wisely, the ref said nothing.
It was a more moderate fight after that, and I won by a point.
There were more matches, and then I went up against a much lighter girl who was a lot smaller than I. She was very honest as we bowed in.
"Please, don't hurt me," she said.
"I don't want to hurt anybody," I told her. "Let's go light."
And we did. I still won by virtue of my superior reach. She was too small to get in on me and land much.
At the break, one of the women I had not fought came up and introduced herself as Arlene. "I really admire you for holding back on that little girl," she said. "That's how I like to fight. It ought to be skill, not brute strength. But I am glad you beat those two."
I introduced myself, and then I said, "Well, if you and I fight, let's agree to keep it light and fast and show some good technique." After all, what's the point in women relying so much on strength? Any physically fit man would hammer you into the ground on strength alone. A woman has to excel at technique, speed, and timing, with strength as one component of many.
She agreed. As it turned out, she and I were the finalists, and we fought for first place. After my bad experience with the first two girls, it was a reaffirmation to fight Arlene. We both stayed true to our agreement and spent our whole match trading kick combinations. We went fast and light, and the girls encouraged us both. We would even encourage each other and say things like "good shot!" when something landed. We went into three sudden death overtimes with each other but kept tying because when either of us landed anything, she would get successfully countered by the other. Finally, Arlene tagged me with a round kick, and that ended it. She took first place, and I took second, and one of the lighter weight girls took third.
I never saw Arlene again, but I'm always glad that I met her. As we received the trophies, one of the judges came up and shook hands with us. "You girls are examples of what tae kwon do should be," he said. "That was a great fight."
Almost everybody who had competed from Hong's had won trophies. But there was little time spent on congratulations. Come Monday, we were back in the training hall. It was one thing to excel against overweight girls who cheated by putting duct tape on their gloves. It was something else entirely to train with lean, fit people who had a passion for excellence and not for glory.
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