Bork! Kids suck.

I am getting extremely stressed out with school and martial arts. Right now, I am on spring break, which has been dominated by catching up on papers and training for the tournament. My hip is still a little sore, but I have been pushing it to get back into the swing of things. This frustration of not even being sure that I'm ready for the tournament is combined by the fact that the kids in the karate class are worse then ever. And the thing is, it's the same kids over and over causing the same problems, except now, they are at a higher rank.

The greenies are moved up to purple people eaters and now have a giant ego problem, and the brownies have all become stagnant and lazy. The former purple belt girl is now getting prepped for her first stripe, but (as expected) could hardly care less. Sometimes I think her parents hold a shotgun to her back and make her get out of the car when it's time to go to class. Wheezy kid is still staring up his nose in the mirrors when he should be doing something else. I'd like to know what he's looking for some days. And his partner (I'll call him Owl) could actually be good if he would stop getting yelled at. There's three more brownies- my doppleganger and two boys who I have a feeling are three-sport stars, but they don't factor in much (which is a problem in itself that I'll mention later). Then there's the black belts- the perfect children and the newest one, Prince Valiant (who apparently thinks he's been coronated king now) who just do their own thing in complete unawareness that greenies are climbing the walls every class. The greenies have thinned out a bit as a collective of crazies, but are still annoying as hell. They can't even stand in a straight line without trying to kill each other.

But now, I think after witnessing this week, I have finally figured it out. THERE IS NO LEADERSHIP. The black belts and brownies have all forgotten that "sensei" does not mean black belt, it means "teacher". It's a novel thing, unfortunately. They have become so obsessed over what katas and techniques they need for their next rank that they have completely ignored everyone behind them. A student is a mirror reflection of his teacher, as Zen would say. When the teachers fight, they fight. When the teachers are lazy and don't heed to etiquette, neither do they. So there shouldn't be such a big surprise as to why the greenies and purple people eater are so bad- they were taught to be that way from watching their teachers!

And it started out with just the little things, like putting the mats in the right place at the beginning of class and offering belt-tying help to white belts. Neglecting these things has led to mats NEVER being put out in time for class and orange belts not tying their belts correctly. That used to be unacceptable. Now there are so many kids that the one or two adults cannot handle them all, and the time used to be spend on helping people with techniques is now gone into babysitting kids who should know better. The competition between kids for the next rank is so fierce, they bump and push each other in line to line up by who's been ranked first even when they are the same rank! You never see same-ranked kids working together, and they are oblivious to when others are doing behavior that warrants 100 pushups for everybody.

It's time we get the "me" out of karate and develop some sense of hierarchal responsibility. Head sensei shouldn't have to worry about class behaving when he isn't looking, it should just happen. And it'll happen when the black belts and the brownies help out a little more in class.