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Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION
I still haven't given up on my dream of karate
You see a lot of unusual things while wandering through Assiniboine Park.
Such as a family happily taking its pet ferret for a walk on a little weasel-sized leash. Or a wedding in which half the guests are decked out in full-dress Scottish kilts and toting bagpipes, while the other half are resplendent in multi-coloured Jamaican regalia and lugging steel drums.
Or like this weekend when, as my wife and I were walking our newest dog, Mr. X, a ball of white fur the size of a small watermelon, we stumbled across an entire karate class working up a serious sweat in the searing heat outside the conservatory.
There were about 30 of them -- adults and kids, guys and girls, short and tall, skinny and cherubic -- wearing their nifty white karate robes and black belts and performing assorted karate-related activities, such as spinning and bowing and kicking and chopping and generally looking like 20 pounds of lethal awesomeness in a 10-pound bag.
My wife and Mr. X glanced briefly at the outdoor martial arts exhibition and were ready to walk away, but I was transfixed. This is because I am a guy, which means when I was just a spindly, dorky kid, I was obsessed with learning karate so I could make myself irresistible to the opposite gender via the time-tested romantic technique of smashing boards and cinder blocks with my bare hands.
That was only part of the teen dream, however. The main reason concave-chested, pimply faced guys such as myself wanted to get our black belts -- and we all did -- was so, as grown-ups, we'd be ready for the only job worth having -- being James Bond.
Back then, I knew in my heart that, having mastered the ability to kick someone in the groin using the Crane technique -- "If done right, no can defence!" -- I'd be the obvious choice for the next Bond, a Tuxedo-wearing secret agent or, as my other hero Jethro Bodine put it, a double-naught spy.
As you may have guessed, I became a newspaperman, a notch below international espionage, but I still dream of one day immersing myself in the mysterious ways of karate.
"I could do that," I whispered to my wife.
"No, you couldn't," my wife sniffed, disdainfully. "You'd kill yourself."
"No, I wouldn't," I snorted.
"Yes, you would."
"No, I wouldn't."
Then I noticed one of the karate instructors teaching a youngster how to defend himself against bricks, boards and enemy agents was, in fact, a young pregnant woman.
"Look, she's pregnant!" I said, elbowing my wife who, unlike me, is not a professionally trained observer.
"You don't miss a thing, do you?" my wife muttered in what I suspect may have been an insulting tone.
"But. She. Can. Still. Do. Karate," I whined helpfully in the tone I use to inform my wife she is totally missing a key point.
"So what?" she demanded. "She looks great."
"Duh! So if she can still do karate, then I could still do karate," I grumbled, ogling the sweat-stained combatants with envy.
"No, you'd kill yourself," my wife repeated.
"Would not!"
"Would, too!"
As we strolled away, a middle-aged dreamer with his wife and dog, it suddenly dawned on me why James Bond had such a hard time committing to long-term relationships.
Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition July 9, 2012 A2
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