*Quick Summary: The author was a karate student and instructor who met his first love in class. She later died of leukemia.*
Although a bit of a 70’s/80’s tough guy cliché, I studied karate and progressed through the ranks, eventually becoming an instructor for two schools. I greatly enjoyed instructing. To be able to share my knowledge with those students also helped me in many ways. Not only did it strengthen my own skills and give me additional practice time, but it helped me better understand how to both communicate and teach. All valuable lessons for a young man to learn. Of course, the lessons of self-control, pain management, and mind-over-matter are things I use to this day. I will always recommend martial arts for any young person after age 6 or 7 when their coordination starts to improve.
The senior instructors would have me fight highly-ranked adults at an early age because I could hold my own technically with almost anyone. One way I was particularly useful was having me spar with, or outright fight higher ranked newcomers transferring from other schools as a way to gauge their skill set. The thought was if they could beat me, they were good. If not, fighting me would highlight their weaknesses and the senior instructors could know where to focus their instruction.
During my time at my first school, Karate American Style, I fell in love for the first time with a girl in my karate class named Crystal. She was a stunning beauty with the longest, prettiest, straight brown hair I’d ever seen. We grew a little closer as I tried my best to get over my shyness and talk with her. I was paralyzingly shy then.
Crystal stopped showing up for class. After a few weeks, we were told she was “sick” and would not be coming back. I had no idea why. Later, Crystal’s dad brought her for a visit. Of the whole class, she came to see me first. It was just before she made it over to me that her father told the class she had Leukemia. Being so young, I didn’t fully understand what that was, but I knew people could die from it.
I saw something different about her as she got closer. Her beautiful, long, straight, brown hair I liked so much was gone, and replaced with just a ball cap. The treatments had taken her hair and much of her strength. I told her I wanted her to take the cap off, but she was so embarrassed and started crying. My intention was to show her I loved her no matter what she looked like. In a moment I can see clearly even to this day, I reached over, removed her cap, and kissed her bald head. Then I put her hat back on and told her I still liked her no matter what happened to her hair. She cried, I cried. Then she saw the rest of the class and her father took her home. Before she left, she turned around, smiled and waved at me for the last time. She died a few short weeks later. After her death I found a ball cap of my own, and I still wear one as a tribute to her, the fight of cancer patients, and that lost childhood love.
Overall, my experience with karate was an extremely positive one. I feel a few of the injuries I have now are a result of some of the exercises we did, but I’m also aware that if I had continued practicing karate, I might have prevented several other injuries through the years.
The first photo below is me as a white belt, when I first began at Karate American Style. The other photo of me with the hat, was taken as a tribute to Crystal, several years after her death, just before my Brown Belt test at Denny’s School Of Self Defense. (I also studied and taught at Springs American Karate Academy between the two)
