Peanut came back! Plus, we had two new people join iai- a mother and her son, who also study shotokan karate. The mother seems more into it than the kid. That brings our iai class up to 5 kids, and 4 adults (including me and excluding the senseis). That was about how big the class was when I started two years ago. Yesterday as I practiced, I thought about how many kids should have been sho-dans before me. Two people, Valleyboy and Prince Valiant (I call him that because of his haircut. He's the kid my mother wants to kidnap 'cause he's cute') started in class the same day I did. Today, Valleyboy has moved away to college and brown belt boy is occasionally in class. He recently got promoted to san-kyu in iai, but his attendance in karate and iai is so sporadic that it's hard to teach him anything. Before me were two others- the kid with the papparazzi dad and his blond friend, both quit. Also, there was the little senseis (before they were senseis, of course)- they have decided to concentrate on karate. Frankly, they have all the time in the world to reach sho-dan in iai, unless they quit when they're old enough to play football or something. The iai sensei that left a while back had a brother in the class that quit couple months after I joined. Since I joined, the only people to really stick around has been Nerdverd and Cigarette man. The latter had his wife in the class, but she dropped out too. Then there was that boy who came twice in his first month, once a month for three months after that, then not at all.
It is thinking about these people, and about my dog's eagerness to steal food, that remind me that skill is nothing without persistence. Here in the picture above is a blind beagle who did not let his vision impairment (or the fact he just ate) sway his desire to rip the bag open. I guess my beagle knows something of what I am talking about.
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